A Hobbit – Two Towers link

[Alcuin]

In Chapter 8 of The Hobbit, “Flies and Spiders”, there is a direct statement about the fauna of Mirkwood:

There were black squirrels in the wood.

In Two Towers, Chapter 6, “The Forbidden Pool”, Anborn discussing Gollum with Faramir in front of Frodo says,

I saw … something … strange. … [I]t may have been no more than a squirrel. … Yet if so, it was a black squirrel… A large squirrel, maybe. Perhaps … some of the beasts of Mirkwood are wandering hither to our woods. They have black squirrels there, ’tis said.

A direct and no doubt deliberate connection between the stories.