Mr Harvie-Brown on the Stj^uirrel in Great Britain. 53 



bers were much diminished by a series of severe winters.* 

 I am certain," he continues, " that squirrels were not known 

 in the lower or northern part of Elginshire, or on Speyside, 

 at least, from 1810, until the recent immigration from the 

 west ;"!- and I do not find any record of them being here after 

 Shaw's day. They were not met with on the lower reaches 

 of the river until after they had spread eastward from Caw- 

 dor (in Nairn), and Altyre (Moray) to the neighbourhood of 

 Elgin." J He further remarks — "It is certainly remark- 

 able that these animals should have disappeared for so long 

 from a district " (referring to Moray and Inverness) " where 

 there must always have been sufficient wood to shelter 

 them, § and where of late years they have spread so vigor- 

 ously and extensively." 



* After passing through a winter of unusual severity, 1878-79, our thoughts 

 are not unnaturally turned to consider some of those severe winters which 

 have occurred before. It is not long since a writer in one of our Scottish daily 

 papers gave a resume of these ; and it is not, perhaps, without some signifi- 

 cance in this connection, that two of the most terrible occurred just about the 

 times between which it may be supposed the squirrel became scarcer or ex- 

 tinct. One was in 1740, and it continued for Jive months, and "destroyed 

 vegetation of all kinds over wide districts of country. " The next occurred in 

 January 1795, when thousands of sheep were lost, and a number of shepherds 

 perished. In 1788-89, 1794-95, 1797-98, the mean temperature was equally 

 low with that of 1878-79. It is this succession of hard winters which one of 

 my correspondents alludes to. Various reports have also reached me of the 

 decrease of late of squirrels at many localities in Scotland, which decrease 

 is usually ascribed to the severe winter of 1878-79. Some of these will be 

 found recorded in this essay under Dumfriesshire, and also in a paper by me, 

 "Ornithological Journal of the Winter of 1878-79, etc.," in the Proc. Nat. 

 Hist. Soc, Glasgow, 1879, p. 142. The decrease here, however, is often 

 counterbalanced by as rapid an increase in other districts, pointing to migra- 

 tion as the result and not deaths, outlets for migration being now more numer- 

 ous than they were before x)lanting became general in Scotland. 



+ Referring to the extension of range eastward from Beaufort Castle centre 

 subsequent to 1844 — see under " Extension from Beaufort centre," next part, 

 i7ifra. 



X In lit. 



§ On the banks of the Spey "so late as the year 1728, masts of fifty and 

 seventy feet in length were procured for the navy," as we are informed in 

 Campbell's "A Journey from Edinburgh through North Britain," 1811 

 (the first edition was issued in 1802), vol. i., p. 42. At a later date, accord- 

 ing to Dick Lauder ("Account of the Great Floods of 1829," p. 203), viz., 

 1730-37, — the York Building Company purchased a portion of the forest of 

 Abernethy for £7000, and worked it till as late as 1737. The ancient forest 



