148 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



Colonel Dmmmond Hay writes to me that he can recollect 

 when the first squirrel that had been seen in the Carse of 

 Gowrie was killed at Megginch, in the autumn of 1822, or at 

 latest, the following year. They were present in the woods 

 of Dunsinane in 1836, but had not then become plentiful in 

 the low carse. Soon after this, however, there must have 

 been a large irruption of them. They have been numerous 

 for the last twenty years (1859-79). Every one speaks as 

 to its marvellous increase in all parts where it existed, within 

 the last fifty or sixty years. ^ 



Our next available date is 1838 in Bendochy parish, in the 

 east of the county, where one was found " plundering a 

 spotted flycatcher's nest."f 



This leads us up to the Forfarshire march. 



Forfarshire. 



In 1813, Don makes no mention of the species as occurring 

 in the county. \ 



In 1817, Captain Mackenzie, of Arbroath, remembers that 

 some of his crew brought over eight or nine squirrels from 

 Kiga in small cages, and he is sure that some of these were 

 let away or escaped into the woods about Arbroath. Another 

 correspondent tells me that — " about fifty years ago, a brother 

 of my wife remembers them coming in boxes from Eiga to 

 Arbroath. He and others attempted to catch some which 

 had escaped in Guymel plantation." § 



* In lit. t "New Stat. Acct.," Perthshire, p. 1183. 



X "Fauna of Forfar, "in Headrick's "Yiew of the Agriculture of For- 

 far." "George Don died at Forfar on the 15th January 1814, of a sore 

 throat" {vide Farmer's Magazine, 1814, vol. xv., p. 131). 



§ There appears to have been a demand about this time for squirrels as 

 pets, as we are told that there was a great sale of them in London : "As 

 many as 20,000 being annually sold for the menus plaisirs of cockneys, a 

 great part of which are brought in by labourers to Newgate and Leadenhall 

 Markets, where any morning during the season 400 or 500 may be bought. 

 Once in seven years the breed of squirrels entirely fails" (Hon. and Rev. 

 W. Herbert in White's " Selbourne, " 8vo, London, 1832— quoted in Rennie's 

 "Field Naturalist," 1833, p. 129). My friend— Mr Howard Saunders— 

 however, consulted Messrs Jamrach and Castang, well-known importers of 

 live animals, and they assure him that no such immense sales of squirrels ever 

 took place in London as the quoted account says. 



