362 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
Hear what Mr Waterton says in reply to a published 
account of a tame squirrel eating flesh in confinement: — 
Had the squirrel been wild in the wild woods at the 
time that Mr Wigton saw it eat birds, I should not hesitate 
to pronounce that individual squirrel to be carnivorous, 
because I believe that Mr Wigton would only state what he 
conceived to be correct. I gather from Mr Wigton's com- 
munication that his squirrel was in captivity when it 
partook of a carnal feast. This single fact at once precludes 
the possibility of the Squirrel family being raised to the 
rank of carnivorous animals. The incarceration only of a 
few days might have injured the prisoner seriously, either 
in his nervous system, or in his gastric powers, or in his 
olfactory sensibilities/' — Now for my facts : — 
A few years ago, during the month of May, Mr James 
Hunter, a respectable merchant in Bathgate, upon whose 
veracity I can place perfect reliance, informed me that 
whilst walking through the plantations of Andrew Gillon, 
Esq. of Wallhouse, he observed a squirrel sitting upon the 
branch of a tall larch. Being near to the farm- steading of 
Broom Park, and anxious to get it for a specimen, he 
brought out the son of the farmer, w^ho immediately shot it. 
To their astonishment they found a small bird firmly clutched 
in its claws, with its skull laid open, and the brains taken 
out. 
James Bell, another observer, told me that when walking 
through a plantation on his father's farm of Carriber, near 
Linlithgow, he observed a squirrel in the act of sucking 
eggs which were deposited in a bird's nest, and that when 
he approached it scampered off with one of them in its claws. 
Mr George Heatlie informed me that, in July last, when 
resting at his meal hour in a plantation near Bowhill House, 
a seat of the Duke of Buccleuch, in the neighbourhood of 
Selkirk, his attention was attracted by the lively gambols of 
a squirrel among the trees. In the course of its movements 
it happened to come upon the nest of a thrush containing 
several newly-hatched birds. Seating itself beside the nest, 
it took a short but deliberate survey of its contents, and 
then lifted one of the birds, which it held between its fore 
