Mr Harvie- Brown on the Squirrel in Great Britain. 61 



Shortly summarising the foregoing evidence, we have seen 

 that the squirrel occurred at an early date, and had a wide 

 distribution in the pine woods and country — perhaps, all the 

 country — north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde (as shown 

 by the records of Sir Eobert Gordon and the " Old Statistical 

 Account " of Kincardine Parish, Eoss-shire, not to speak of the 

 other evidence I have given). We have seen also that there 

 is every reason to believe that it did not become absolutely 

 extinct in Scotland, but lingered in the great old forest of 

 Eothiemurchus until resuscitated by the new growth of suit- 

 able woods ; and that it remained in Argyleshire up to an 

 unusually late date, probably surviving up to about the 

 year 1839 or 1840, when Ewen Cameron, as related above, 

 probably killed the last, and had it stuffed. Further, that 

 our record from Eoss-shire, in the *' Old Statistical Account," 

 makes it probable that it survived to a comparatively late 

 date — towards the close of the last century — in the wooded 

 glens of Ainaig. Like native races of men at the present 

 day, which are fast approaching towards extinction, the 

 squirrel lingered longest in the more inaccessible and wilder 

 wooded parts of the country — in the " MeridionaHs Plagse 

 Scotiae " of Sibbald, and the " Sylvae Lornse Superioris " of 

 Dr Walker, and the forest of Eothiemurchus. In Ireland 

 our data are not sufficiently full to place heyond douht its 

 former occurrence there. Upon a correct reading, perhaps, 

 of the poem above mentioned, and a right interpretation of 

 many of the animals' names mentioned therein, will depend 

 the decision on this part of its former distribution, as well as 

 upon the comparison of the minutiae of early distribution of 

 various other species, with geological changes as pointed out 

 by Mr Alston (vide antea, p. 41). 



I believe that a minute study of any single species, or 

 group of species, which has become extinct or nearly so, will 

 develop new facts regarding variations in population, depend- 

 ing upon changes of condition. In the case of the squirrel, 

 several factors seem to have been at work in bringing about 

 its decrease or extinction. In some parts of Scotland, the ex- 

 tinction may have been due to one only of these factors, viz. — 



