Mr Harvie-Brown on the Squirrel in Great Britain, bb 



House and the Mains. A gun was fetched, and the animal 

 shot. This, he believes, was the first squirrel seen in the 

 Belleville woods, although, after that date, they became familiar, 

 and increased very rapidly." The same person " believes the 

 patch of wood at Dalwhinnie to be about sixty or seventy 

 years old. He stayed at Dalwhinnie for some time in 1824, 

 but never saw or heard of a squirrel in the plantation." 



Mr James MacPherson himself states his opinion, that 

 squirrels did not become extinct in Inverness-shire, and he 

 remembers them as numerous about Belleville " thirty-five 

 years ago," say 1844 — i.e., the same year that they were re- 

 introduced at Beaufort; and, he adds — "and I do not recol- 

 lect having ever heard of them spoken of by old people as 

 Strang erSy although I am certain it cannot always have been 

 so in that precise locality. The Craigbhuie was planted with 

 fir, I should suppose, about IV 90 or 1795, and twenty years 

 later would afibrd an ehgible settlement for prospecting 

 colonists from Eothiemurchus. . . . About the same time, 

 immediately beneath the Craigbhuie, the more ornamental 

 spruce and larcli were also introduced ; " and other strips and 

 plantations of different kinds of woods formed "an almost 

 unbroken woodland communication with the forest of Eothie- 

 murchus and Glenmore, and so on down Strathspey." 



The fact of their being present so early as 1829, and num- 

 erous so early as 1844 at Belleville, certainly points either 

 to one of two alternatives — either, as he suggests, they did 

 never become actually extinct, and were resuscitated by the 

 new planting which took place under the directions of, and 

 on the extensive property of. Sir J. Grant of Strathspey — 

 which, we are told, along with those of the Duke of A thole 

 and Lord Breadalbane, ''would far overbalance in extent 

 those of any other private proprietor perhaps in Britain," 

 all of which plantations were performed betwixt the years 

 1777 and 1817 ; — or, the squirrels had reached north from the 

 Dunkeld Restoration, via Kingussie and Glen Truim, and by 

 Dalwhinnie, in an incredibly short space of time, taking the 

 bare and elevated nature of the country into consideration, 

 and the great extent of unsheltered moor over which they 

 would require to travel. 



