58 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



Loch Insli they are all planted. My inference is that squirrels 

 feed chiefly upon cones in natural woods, and on bark in 

 plantations ; that the cone-fed squirrel is better off than his 

 bark-fed brother." * 



We may, I think, then, safely conclude that the squirrel 

 did not become extinct in Strathspey, and that, although the 

 young planting was too late to save the indigenous caper- 

 caillies, it was in time to save the indigenous squirrels, and 

 that they rapidly revived, and had already become very nume- 

 rous by the year 1844 or earlier. The woods on Spey at 

 Belleville would be in a fit state to receive and support them 

 probably as early as 1815 or 1820. 



I cannot learn that they lingered in Strathglass or the 

 north of the county, any persons whom I have interrogated, or 

 who have given evidence, saying that " they do not remember 

 them as ever inhabiting Strathglass before the restoration at 

 Beaufort." 



Boss-shire and Cromarty. 



In Eoss-shire we find trace of the squirrel in Glen Ainaig, 

 a wooded glen running down from the wild mountains of the 

 Balnagown and Frevater deer forests to Oykel Bridge, in the 

 parish of Kincardine, which is partly in Eoss and partly in 

 West Cromarty, and marches with Assynt in West Suther- 

 land. The Eev. Andrew Gallic thus records the fact : 

 " Squirrels are also found in Glen Ainaig." i* 



* A similar statement is made regarding the squirrels of Roxburghshire, 

 their unusually large size being specially taken notice of ; and the very small 

 size of squirrels north of Loch Ness is also noted. 



t "Old Stat. Acct.," vol. iii., p. 514 (1792). 



This record is quoted again in the " New Statistical Account, " word for 

 word {op. cit. , Ross and Cromarty, p. 404), in a somewhat pretentious list of 

 the animals of the parish ; but though we must accord credit to the earlier 

 account, I hardly think it credible that they would survive till 1842. The 

 Rev. Hector Allan, however, in the "New Stat. Account," gives us the fol- 

 lowing particulars of his predecessor's life, which will prove useful in this con- 

 nection: " Mr Andrew Gallic, who succeeded, was ordained at Nigg by Mr 



John Sutherland of Tain, 27th July 1756, to the mission of . On the 



6th September 1758, he was admitted to the parish of Laggan, in the Presby- 

 tery of AbertarfF, and transported to Kincardine 11th October 1774, Mr Gallie 

 died on the 15th May 1803, in the twenty-ninth year of his ministry here." 

 It is, therefore, probable that the squirrel survived in this part of Scotland 

 until a comparatively late date. Possibly the last remnant may have had 

 their dissolution hastened by the severe winter of 1795. 



