On the Introduction of the Squirrel into Ireland. 619 
impossible to support the theory of extinction on the grounds of 
starvation. Nuts, acorns, beech-mast, fir and larch cones, most 
garden fruits, oats, wheat, barley, bread and milk, hempseed, young 
shoots of trees and a number of other articles formed the food of 
some wild squirrels which I caught and had in confinement 
several years, 
CENTRE No. 1. 
Proceeding now to the present distribution, Thompson, as 1 
have had occasion to remark already, states in 1840, in his Report 
on the Vertebrate Fauna of Ireland,* that “The squirrel is not 
now a truly native animal ; it was introduced a few years since 
to the county of Wicklow where it is said to be fast increasing in 
numbers.” It is curious that nothing is said about this intro- 
duction in Thompson’s Natural History of Ireland,t and it does 
not appear that Thompson was aware of when or where it 
occurred. 
The late Mr. Francis Synge, of Glenmore Castle, Ashford, near 
the Devil’s Glen, writing to me in 1874, gives the particulars. 
He says :-— 
“ In reply to your letter relative to the introduction of squirrels by 
my grandfather, I have often heard my father say that it was my 
grandfather who introduced them into this district—that he reared them 
from one pair kept in the house, and that they soon multiplied very 
rapidly and took to the woods in all directions.” 
In a subsequent letter Mr. Synge fixes the date of introduction 
between 1815 and 1825. In 1874 Mr. George Walpole, writing 
to me from the same neighbourhood, says that the squirrel has 
increased rapidly of latter years. 
Mr. G. H. Kinahan, in a recent letter to my friend Mr. A. G. 
More, mentions that squirrels are said to have been introduced 
at Castle Howard by Mrs. Howard, at the Meeting of the Waters. 
Particulars of this introduction are wanting. 
From the Wicklow centre of introduction, at Ashford, the 
squirrel extended northwards, reaching Fassaroe, on the borders 
of Dublin and Wicklow, about the year 1861. The first specimens 
excited the greatest surprise, and were, by some, mistaken for 
* Brit. Association Report, 1840, p. 360. 
t Vol. IV, p. 14. 
