92 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [13:3— Mar., 1917 



of the person who feeds the squirrels? What is the reaction on 

 the community that tolerates sqmrrels within its borders? I 

 leave that to any one who has lived in such a community. I 

 know of no factor in nature-study more potent than the object 

 lesson of squirrels running through the streets and on to the porches 

 of the houses where these boys and girls are gro\\^ng up. It 

 takes several generations to get the squirrel proposition working 

 right. There are at first complaints when they take fruit from 

 the trees and n.in through the house early in the morning but there 

 comes a time when people are willing to tolerate them just to see 

 them about. Squirrels at large are so much more interesting 

 than the caged ones. They are real. The deHght of seeing the 

 young ones come out and master the trick of sitting up on their 

 hind legs for the first few times is worth waiting for. The whole 

 story of the squirrel is interesting to any one whether he is a 

 biologist, animal psychologist or an average observer. Few 

 boys that are raised with the squirrels have the heart to go out 

 and kill them in the fall. . More than that they are out of sympathy 

 with the whole slaughter movement of the hunting fraternity. If 

 every chronic hunter could have had a dose of close-up squirirel 

 acquaint ancy with a brood of young squirrels and had fed them 

 through a winter and had them eat from his shoulder or go himting 

 through his pockets for nuts there would be little need of a law 

 to protect them. 



After all our nature-study work absolutely fails if we bring up 

 the boys so that they see no more in a squirrel than a pot-pie 

 or a day's outing for his little bit of flesh. May we train him 

 awa}^ from the ancient, primeval hunter towards the man who can 

 see beauty in the living form and not hanker after the taste of 

 the blood. 



i 



