Mr Harvie-Brown on the Squirrel in Great Britain. 57 



the extension from Perthshire, via Glen Truim, but it does 

 not prove that the squirrels which first appeared about Avie- 

 more were not indigenous, or were not resuscitated by the 

 fresh planting. [The passage is quoted from the Elgin 

 Courant in the " Scottish Naturalist," vol. i., p. 49, and will 

 be found in full in the next part.* I believe it expresses 

 the opinion of Captain Dunbar Brander of Pitgaveny.] 



Old people still alive in Strathspey speak of the squirrels 

 as old acquaintances, and never heard of them as strangers, 

 and there seems to be abundant evidence in favour of the 

 supposition of their continuance and subsequent resuscitation 

 in Badenoch and Strathspey, f 



Malcolm Clark, the fox-hunter in Glenfeshie, on being in- 

 terrogated by his son on behalf of Mr James Macpherson, 

 depones that he is eighty-five years of age. He saw the first 

 squirrel he ever remembers to have seen in the natural pine- 

 woods of Eothiemurchus. His son writes : " My father is 

 now eighty-five years of age, and has been acquainted with 

 the Feorag since his boyhood. He has never heard them 

 spoken of as strangers in this country." 



The Eev. W. Gordon of Braemar supplies the following : 

 " An elderly man (sixty-nine), Mr Eobert Grant, a native of 

 Eothiemurchus, but who has been resident here for about 

 forty years, informs me that some of his earliest recollections 

 are associated with squirrels, which were abundant in his 

 native woods of Eothienmrchus." 



Mr D. MacDonald, writing to a friend from Glenfeshie 

 under date of 3d March 1879, has the following very interest- 

 ing note : " I have also observed that the few to be seen on 

 my own side of the Feshie are larger and lighter in colour 

 than those I have seen in the woods skirting Loch Insh. The 

 former woods, you know, are natural forest, whereas round 



* Infra. 



t Captain Dunbar Brander's opinion that all of Nairn, Elgin, and Banff 

 owe their population of squirrels to an extension from the south would thus 

 appear to gain additional support, while the extension eastward from Beau- 

 fort Castle, being of a somewhat later date, very possibly may have been over- 

 taken and merged in the southern advance. There are, however, sufficiently 

 extensive areas of country having no connecting records of appearance along 

 Speyside to cause one still to favour the extension from Beaufort. 



