Mr Harvie-Broion on the Squirrel in Great Britain. 43 



the fissures in the limestone strata at Campsie, and "had 

 been brought into that position by water, entering the rock 

 from the higher portions of the hill. The most interesting 

 point about these nuts, however, is, that there are now no hazel 

 bushes on that part of the hill, nor has been in the memory 

 of the oldest inhabitant. In the neighbouring glens where 

 hazel bushes are still found, we find no nuts so large or well 

 grown as those filling the limestone fissures." 



Having admitted that other rodents besides squirrels gnaw 

 nuts, of course, we must also admit the possibility here ; but 

 it is only right also to consider the circumstances. 



First, we may admit, I think, that these large well-grown 

 nuts, larger than those upon bushes growing at the present 

 day in the neighbouring ravines, belonged to a bygone era of 

 hazel growth, and may have been gnawed at a very early 

 date before the juicy kernel had wizened or dried up. But 

 we must also remember the w^onderful antiseptic properties 

 of peat, and allow for the possibility that these nuts may 

 have been preserved in the higher peat; and, in compara- 

 tively recent times, during floods and rains, have been 

 washed out of their beds and brought into the position in 

 which Mr Young found them; and the further possibility 

 that some other rodents may, in their wanderings in search 

 of food, have found them out, and had a good meal, like 

 Peregrine Pickle, " after the manner of the Ancients." Here 

 is a possibility which only shows, I think, how impossible 

 it is, according to our present lights, to place any real impor- 

 tance upon discovered stores of gnawed hazel nuts as tending 

 to prove a former distribution of the squirrel, or decide as 

 to the species which fed upon them and gnawed the holes. 

 Such a question opens up many other points of interest. 



However, it may just be worth passing notice to mention 

 that there is some shade of reason for believing that the 

 species may have populated as far south as this limit. There 

 is good reason to believe, that for a considerable distance 

 south of the southern limit of the old Caledonian pine forests, 

 a country clothed w^ith oak groves extended. We have 

 abundant evidence of this in the peat-mosses of the Vale of 

 Menteith, which, it is believed, were contiguous to the pines, 



