THE MAMMALS OF NEW JERSEY. 83 
Hair of the tail rusty gray at the base, black in the middle and 
white at the tips. 
This squirrel is a familiar feature of public parks and private 
grounds in many of our towns and cities, where, afforded proper 
protection, it becomes so tame as to feed out of one’s hand. In 
southern New Jersey as in other parts of its range, it has become 
scarce or local, owing no doubt in some degree to the fact that it 
is everywhere regarded as a game animal, and squirrel hunters 
are out in force in November in every wood that harbors these 
beautiful animals. Gray squirrels make their nest in a hollow tree 
or similar shelter, and carry in leaves and soft materials for lin- 
ing. Here the young are reared. Sometimes they build the nest 
wholly of leaves among the branches of a tree top. ‘They live on 
nuts, fruit and berries of different sorts and are not at all averse 
to robbing birds’ nests. When pursued they fairly fly from tree 
to tree running out on the slender branches and leaping to the 
limbs of an adjoining tree, or when cut off and fairly cornered 
they will ascend the main trunk and hang close to the bark, flat- 
tening out the body so as to easily escape detection. 
The gray squirrels of the Pennsylvania mountains and north- 
ward are larger and clearer gray, constituting a distinct race, the 
northern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis leucotis), which 
merges gradually into the southern form. Mr. Rhoads is of the 
opinion that the gray squirrels of the mountains of northern New 
Jersey belong rather to this race rather than true carolinensis, at 
any rate they have a tendency that way. 
Among gray squirrels, more especially the northern form, we 
find a certain number of black ones, simply melanistic individuals 
and differing no more from the grays than the occasional albino 
animals differ from the normally colored examples. Both blacks 
and grays occur in the same nest and pair promiscuously (Rhoads, 
Mammals of Penna and N. J., p. 56). 
So far as I am aware no gray squirrels occur in the pine bar- 
rens, this species being distinctly an animal of deciduous wood- 
land probably never did occur in that region. 
(a) Sciurus carolinensis Abbott, Cook’s Geol. of N. J., 1868, 
p. 756.—Abbott, A Naturalist’s Rambles, 1885, p. 450.—Rhoads, 
Mam.’ Pa:and N: J., 1903, p. 52. 
