688 SCIURID^— SCIURUS 



THE BRITISH OR LIGHT-TAILED SQUIRREL. 



SCWRUS LEUCOURUS (Kerr). 



1769. SciURUS VULGARIS, John Berkenhout, Outlines Nat. Hist. Great Britain and 



Ireland, i., 6 ; and of most subsequent writers up to and including Thomas, 



Zoologist, 1898, 100, but not S. vulgaris of Linnasus. 

 1792. SciURUS VULGARIS LEUCOURUS, Robert Kerr, Animal Kingdom, 256; 



described from England ; Miller, Catalogue Mamm. West. Europe, 907. 

 1899. SciURUS LEUCURUS, G. E. H. Barrett-Hamilton, Proc. Zool. Soc, London, 



17th January 1899, 3 ; Millais j Trouessart (sub-species oi vulgaris). 



L'^cureuil of the French ; das Eichhornchen of the Germans ; these, 

 with, no doubt, many local names in each language, strictly refer to the 

 nearly allied continental species 6'. vulgaris, and not to the present 

 animal at all. 



The quite simple synonymy of this animal is due to its differentia- 

 tion from the Common Squirrel of continental Europe, 5. vulgaris of 

 Linnaeus, an animal which, through its numerous sub-species, has 

 accumulated a host of technical names. 



Terminology : — " Squirrel," with many variations in spelling, has 

 been the general name of this animal from the Norman Conquest. 

 The Middle English form is " squirel " or " scurel " ; e.g., Wright's Vocab- 

 ulary, 759, 29 : — " Hie scurellus, a scurelle." (Chaucer Rom. of the 

 Rose, 1 471) has — "There might menne does and roes ysee, And of 

 squirrels full great plentee. From bough to bough alway leping"; and 

 again {Pari. Foules, 196) he speaks of "Squirrels, and beastes small of 

 gentle kind." The word appears to have been derived from the Norman 

 French esquirel ; this and the Old French escurel, escuirel and escuireul 

 (in thirteenth century, MS., Cocks) came from the late Latin scurellus 

 or scuriolus, diminutives of the Latin sciurus. The latter is derived 

 from the Greek a-Kiovpoi, the literal meaning of which is said to be 

 " shadow-tail " — though this is probably due to popular etymology, the 

 real origin of the name not having been certainly found. 



According to Somner (Did. Saxonico-Lat.-Angl., 1659 ; quoted by 

 Bos worth, Anglo-Saxon and Engl. Diet., 1868, 20), the Anglo-Saxon 

 name for the Squirrel is Acwern ; Bosworth {pp. cit, 251) also gives 

 wern, without the prefix ac. Acwern appears to be the equivalent of 

 the German Eichhorn, the Danish Egern, and the similar names in other 

 Teutonic languages. In each of these cases the prefix means oak-tree ; 

 but, as Keller {Die Antike Tierwelt, 181) points out, the animal has no 

 particular love for the oak, and the real etymology is unknown. As 

 regards acwern, if ac may once have signified " tree " in general,^ rather 

 than oak in particular ; and if wern can be derived from the Anglo- 



' For a discussion of the changes in meaning of the names " fir," " oak,'' and 

 "beech " in various languages, see Max Miiller, Led. on Science of Language, ser. 2, 

 1864, 216, 219, and 222. 



