ANIMAL LIFE OF NORTH-EAST SCOTLAND 25 
than accidental wanderers with no chance of establishing themselves : 
such as the tropical loggerhead turtle (Thalassochelys caretta), which was 
found alive and sprightly in the salmon nets at Pennan in 1861, or the 
purple heron (Ardea purpurea) shot at Donmouth in 1872, the glossy 
ibis (Plegadis falcinellus) from Fraserburgh, or the American kill-deer 
plover (Charadrius vociferus) from Peterhead, all of which may be seen 
in the Natural History Museum of Aberdeen University, and there are 
many others. The real additions are creatures which, having been 
introduced, have become or threaten to become an integral part of the 
fauna of the district. 
Some of these alien animals have been deliberately introduced and set 
free for commercial purposes or for sport. Such include the common 
rabbit, a native of south-eastern Europe, the first colony of which was 
established by the city fathers in the ‘ cunicularium de Abirdene’ on the 
links south of Donmouth and was flourishing in the sixteenth century. 
In the woods are pheasants from Asia, and, reintroduced after the native 
stock had disappeared, the red squirrel, which made its reappearance, 
from the south, in the Dee valley about 1855 and by 1875 had reached 
the north coast of Aberdeenshire, and the capercaillie, which first appeared 
on Dee in 1878 and by 1897 had reached the Deveron. The American 
musk-rat (Ondatra zibethica), a dangerous introduction, appeared on 
the banks of the Bervie in 1931, but seems since to have been exterminated 
in the district. 
Many other now well-established creatures have been brought un- 
wittingly to the district by commerce. The old black rat (Epimys rattus), 
originally brought by shipping from the East, occurred throughout 
Aberdeenshire until almost the middle of the nineteenth century (and 
occasionally individuals still crop up in the city), but even then it was 
being rapidly replaced by the brown rat (Epimys norvegicus) which reached 
Scotland in the first half of the eighteenth century, and the original 
home of which is also in Asia. Asia has given us the common cock- 
roach of our houses, America a small red house-ant (Monomorium), the 
Douglas fir chalcid (Megastigmus), which destroys a goodly proportion 
of the seed of Douglas fir on Deeside, the American blight of our apple- 
trees, and the American meal worm in our porridge. From Europe 
have come the Mediterranean flour moth (Ephestia), some of the wood 
wasps (Sirex) and timber-beetles of our woods, the Hessian fly, destroyer 
of wheat crops, and the bed-bug, a gift of commerce to new markets. 
But commerce has taken away as well as given. The sea-ports of the 
north-east of Scotland were for a time the mainstay of the whaling industry 
in Britain. Whaling companies were formed in Aberdeen before the 
close of the eighteenth century; in 1822 Peterhead with 16 whaling 
ships and Aberdeen with 14 followed Hull (40) in order of numbers, but 
by 1853 Peterhead, Fraserburgh, Banff and Aberdeen contributed 35 of 
the British whaling and sealing fleet of 55 vessels ; in 1857, 42 out of 55. 
Whale-fishing from Aberdeen reached its zenith in 1823, when the 
14 vessels captured 180 whales in the Greenland Sea and Davis Straits, 
but the captures declined and the loss of ships discouraged effort. In 
the Aberdeen Journal of October 13, 1830, we read: ‘ It is our painful 
