Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
trunk, making a curious gobbling noise, no doubt scolding 
us. Some people abuse squirrels as mischievous, alleging 
they eat birds’ eggs and are very destructive to trees and 
shrubs, but I should be very sorry to be without them. 
But they never let us get very close to them, tame as they 
are. Thoreau had such an attraction for wild squirrels, 
and indeed for all wild animals, that I have heard the 
squirrels used to come and nestle to him. He is said 
to have been the original of Hawthorne’s Donatello. 
Thoreau’s knowledge of Nature was such that R. L. Steven- 
son says he could have told the time of year within a day 
or two by the look of the plants. 
There is an old saying you should think twice before you 
introduce one friend to another ; surely you should think 
twice before introducing a new animal or plant to another 
country. Squirrels, once unknown here, now overrun the 
Border, and Scotch settlers, it is said, introduced their 
beloved Thistle into Tasmania, and have been only sorry 
once. Likewise with those who made the Rabbit acquainted 
with Australia, and the Indian Mongoose a denizen of 
Jamaica. As to the Hanoverian Rat, he has long been the 
curse of Britain. I remember, too, it has been said that the 
dwellers on the banks of the River Exe suffer in summer 
time from Mosquitoes introduced unbeknownst by Spanish 
onion-ships which came a-trading to the little Devon sea- 
port of Topsham, once, by the way, a rival port to London ! 
sending a greater number of ships to combat the Armada. 
I will not vouch for the mosquitoes, I have not seen them, 
but I have seen picturesque black-eyed lads ashore from 
the onion-ships with strings of big Spanish onions for sale ! 
It is curious to think that some of our long-established 
plants have first, it is said, been found on ballast-hills, 
having come amongst the stones and rubbish brought from 
outland ports by ships unfreighted. One alien seems so 
far to be a success ; the little creeping yellow Broom from 
the Highlands of Auvergne, trained up a wall here, has 
taken kindly to its new home in the Scotch kailyard and 
has burst out into a mass of golden bloom ; the French 
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