Mr Harvie-Broiun on the Squirrel in Ch^eat Britain. 143 



dukedom in 1774, and died in 1830. Colonel Drummond 

 Hay suggests what seems extremely probable, viz., that the 

 growth of the larch plantations, some time prior to 1820, 

 caused their rapid increase around Dunkeld, which was the 

 first locality where he had seen a squirrel in a wild state ; 

 and Colonel Drummond Hay has never known that district 

 to be without them. 



They were introduced to Perthshire, according to the ac- 

 count of an old man still living upon the Moncrieffe property, 

 by a young nobleman of the Athole family — Lord Glenlyon — 

 who was an invalid, and who brought them from Sweden about 

 the beginning of this century. Here our informant's memory 

 is doubtless a little at fault, as we know of their earlier intro- 

 duction from the " Old Stat. Account " (ut sup). 



In a letter, signed John Eobertson, Calvine, Struan, occurs 

 the passage : " Charlie Don (a wood-forester, aged about 

 sixty) was in just now, and he says that squirrels do not 

 claim their origin in Great Britain, and that they came from 

 Norway." This is happily corroborative of the other state- 

 ment as proving their actual introduction,* and doing away in 

 great measure with the idea that they lingered in the remnant 

 of the Blackwood of Eannoch, which is entertained by some 

 of my correspondents. 



In a southerly direction from Dunkeld, they appear to have 

 come further from this centre, than from any of the other 

 centres of restoration (as will be seen further on) ; which 

 phenomenon, however, I think, can be perfectly explained by 

 the mountainous country shutting them in and retarding their 

 progress in the north and north-west, combined, to some ex- 

 tent, with the scarcity of suitable plantations for some time 

 after the date of their restoration at Dunkeld.f Increasing 

 rapidly at the centre, and at Clunie, and the population be- 

 coming too great, the pressure outwards exerted itself, in a 

 direction contrary to that exercised by the populations of 

 the southern centres ; and the consequence was, an unusually 



* In lit. to Mr James Macpherson, 24th March 1878. 



t I have elsewhere quoted a passage from Mr Brown's standard work on 

 Forestry, showing the dates of plantations on the Breadalbane property {vide 

 "The Capercaillie in Scotland," p. 33, Edinb., 1879). 



