THE BRITISH OR LIGHT-TAILED SQUIRREL 691 



Falmouth district, it seems to be absent from the west and south-west, 

 as well as from many parts of the east and north (Clark). In Lakeland, 

 Macpherson seems to suggest that it may not be indigenous, and Tate 

 says that it is of comparatively modern reintroduction in many parts 

 of the north of England {Proc. Berwickshire Field Club, i., 440). But 

 Macpherson admits that a little more than a hundred years ago it was 

 certainly well established in Lakeland, that it is represented in 

 armorial bearings of the county families, as well as on the Runic 

 Bewcastle Cross, and that its skin was known in commerce at Berwick 

 in 1377; the skins, however, may have been imported. It is common 

 in plantations in Anglesey and Wight. 



Its distribution in Scotland has been investigated by Harvie-Brown, 

 whose lengthy and erudite paper ^ on the subject is difficult to 

 summarise. According to this writer there is no record of its existence 

 as an indigenous animal south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, 

 other than two vague allusions in the New Statistical Accounts of 

 Berwickshire (p. 299, 1841) 3.nd Roxburghshire {p. 4, 1841). To these 

 must be added the statement of Sibbald in 1684 {Scotia Illustrata, 

 2, ii. 11), that it occurred in meridionalis Plagce ScoticB Sylvis, a 

 statement which Harvie-Brown appears to consider as in itself of little 

 or no value. Even, however, if Sibbald's statement be accepted, as it is 

 by W. Evans, the animal must have practically disappeared in the low- 

 lands soon after Sibbald's time, retiring to or lingering in the shelter 

 of the forests north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde. North of these 

 Firths, as shown by the records, it appears to have been widely spread 

 in the Middle Ages, and was found by Sir Robert Gordon in 1630 even 

 in Sutherland (//^zj^orf of Earldom of Sutherland, 1630, not printed from 

 MSS. until 181 3). Subsequently, .however, it became very rare, if not 

 extinct, in the greater part of the country, succumbing to the universal 

 destruction of forests, which banished also the roe- deer and caper- 

 cailzie. But there is every reason to beheve that it lingered on in one 

 or two favoured localities, as in Ross-shire, to the end of the eighteenth 

 century, and in Ayrshire to about 1839 or 1840. In the great old 

 forest of Rothiemurchus it probably never became entirely extinct, so 

 that a remnant of the true ancient Scottish race issued thence to 

 colonise the new woods and plantations. Finally, in the eighteenth and 

 nineteenth centuries, it was reintroduced from England in many centres, 

 as notably at Dalkeith, Midlothian, about 1772, by Elizabeth, Duchess 

 of Buccleuch ( W. Evans) ; and with the growth of plantations has now 

 gradually spread over the whole mainland, having re-entered Sutherland 

 about 1869 (Alston and Harvie-Brown, Proc. Nat. Hist. Soc, Glasgow, 

 ii., 144) and South Ayrshire in 1877 (see Alston ; Harvie-Brown, vi., 35 ; 



' J. A. Harvie-Brown, Proc. Roy. Phys. Soc, Edinburgh, v., 343 ; vi., 31 

 and 115. 



