218 COMMON SQUIRREL. 



That tlie Squirrel is carnivorous in its free and natural state, I most 

 emphatically deny. That they are, however, where numerous, wholesale 

 destroyers of apricots, peaches, plums, walnuts, filberts, apples, acorns, beech 

 nuts, the various cones of the fir- tribe, and the bark of old and young beech, 

 poplar, and fir trees, I must confess ; as we experienced in the year 1848, 

 during our residence at Milton Abbey, in Dorsetshire, where Squirrels 

 abounded. In the year 1847 there was an abundance of nuts, mast, acorns ; 

 but in 1848, there was a total failure of these, the natural food of the Squir- 

 rel. In the absence of nuts, &c., they commenced a wholesale destruction 

 on 3^oung oak, beech, larch, fir, and poplar trees, by gnawing the bark off the 

 bodies of the trees as eff'ectually as if it had been done by the hand of man. 

 Nor was this gnawing done in small patches, as we sometimes see it, even 

 when there is an abundance of food ; but actually in pieces of from one to 

 ten feet in length, and quite round the tree, and, in some cases, to such a 

 depth into the solid wood, that the slightest wind broke off" the tops of the 

 trees, giving them the appearance as if they had been cut off by some instru- 

 ment. The poplar and the larch trees suffered the most. 



The fact above related is also a convincing proof of the non-carnivorovis . 

 propensities of the common Squirrel. If otherwise, there was an abundance 

 of birds, large and small, quite at their service, if they had been inclined for 

 a dinner off fowl, in the plantations and woods at Milton Abbey ; yet they 

 preferred their vegetable to an animal dinner ! ! or raw eggs ! ! ! as we find, 

 at page 187 of the present volume of The Naturalist, they are accused of 

 doing, we must confess, however, by a class of men who are as ignorant, in 

 most cases, of the habits of animals and birds which are not called game by 

 their employers, as the ground on which they stand. These functionaries 

 are sure to have a finger in the pie, always ready witnesses against the ac- 

 cused or other victims, and under such a circumstance as being guilty of 

 "■sucking eggs" would rather shoot a child than spare a Squirrel! ! ! if it was 

 not for certain legal terrors. 



One word more, and we have done for the present with the Squirrel. The 

 Squirrel is easily tamed, and is frequentl}'^ kept as a pet by many people, 

 in what Sir George Head, in his " Home Tour" through the manufacturing 

 districts, justly calls " treadmills :" he says " If there is one method more 

 efficacious than another to deprive a Squirrel of liberty, it is this very con- 

 trivance, whereby, do what he will, he never can possibly be in a state of 

 rest; when, let him vary ever so little, even for a moment, from his central 

 position, everything begins tumbling about his ears. I have many times ob- 

 seiTcd the panting sides of the little animal, its breath exliausted, mthout 

 enjoying one inch of progressive motion, or one refreshing change of atti- 

 tude for minutes together, within his treadmill. A man pelted with mud 

 may believe he is hunting, or, laying on his stomach on wet grass, think he 

 is swimming, as reasonably as a poor Squirrel, in the middle of a whirling 



