HOW WE FOUND THE FLVIXC. SOllRRELS 



345 



out of the shell. The friendship now- 

 progressed rapidly. Our Babies came 

 earlier and we kept getting nearer and 

 nearer the boards, when they were 

 there. One evening one ran across my 

 shoe to reach his supper. Then we 

 tried to get them to take a nut from 

 our hand. This we did by sitting per- 

 fectly still, the hand resting on the 

 board with nuts in the palm. In a few 

 evenings they were eating out of our 

 hands. They came in broad daylight 

 and soon took the nuts from between 

 our fingers. From this on it was easy, 

 by leaving the boards empty and with 

 the nuts on the open hand, to coax 

 them to run over our person. One 

 evening one mistook my head for the 

 trunk of a tree and landed full and 

 square on the place Avhere "only the 

 hair ought to grow." Now. after 

 three years of patient effort, our Ba- 

 bies were fully tamed. There are four 

 of them. 



There is nothing more charming 

 than to see these gentle creatures cast 

 themselves into space and in a long 

 curve sail hundreds of yards through 

 the air. When desiring to land, they 

 suddenly flip up the head, drop the 

 tail, and with a quick, graceful, upward 

 movement perch head upward on the 

 trunk of a tree. They are full of tricks 

 and play together much like puppies 

 or kittens, scratching and squealing 

 and chasing one another. Often one 

 steals the nut from the other's mouth. 

 One evening before sunset we heard a 

 great squealing outside the Kamp. 

 With the exclamation, "Something has 

 got the Baby!" we rushed out. only to 

 find his highness perched on his board 

 and calling for his supper. Another 

 evening, when all but the last nut had 

 been taken oft' the board, I saw one of 

 our Babies come down, get the nut and 

 run away. Suddenly he reappeared 

 and tried with all his might to push the 

 nut between the edge of the board and 

 the tree. His action was so unusual 

 that I examined the nut and found it 

 to be a pignut. The rascal evidently 

 desired to express his disapproval of 

 such food by promptly returning i^. 

 The accompanying flash-light photo- 

 graphs will show how tame our Babies 

 are. We can scarcely await the time 

 when we shall once more see them 

 poke their little heads out of the open- 

 ing of their houses at the shaking of a 

 handful of nuts. 



TWO AT ONCE— GETTING WE[.L ACOUAINTHD. 



Some Local Geology. 



BY W. C. BANKS, STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT. 



To trace the origin of our present land 

 surfaces, and the causes to which they are 

 due. is an interesting study. The expres- 

 sion, "the everlasting hills," is a convinc- 

 ing figure of speech, only, unfortunately, 

 it is far from being true. All our present 

 surface features are the result of a long 

 series of changes, reaching back in time 

 to an original molten state of the rocks. 

 However, we need not go quite so far 

 back, but accepting the present rock 

 masses as an origin, we will try to deter- 

 mine through what causes and processes 

 of sculpturing our landscape has attained 

 its present aspect. Its most noticeable 

 feature is the strongly marked north and 

 south trend of our hills and valleys. This 

 is due to the fact that during the Glacial 

 Period the course of the continental ice 

 sheet was northwest and southeast ; the 

 drainage too before this time was approx- 

 imately in the same direction, toward the 

 ocean, so that the hills and valleys have, 

 in general, the same trend. The result 

 was that the ice ploughed out the preex- 

 isting valleys, and filled and rounded the 

 irregularities of the hills in the same gen- 



