148 The Gray Squirrel 
too cold or stormy. This step taken, it is easy to 
become quite intimately acquainted with our little 
friends in fur. Out of a company of five grays that 
were accustomed to visit a certain tree, where food 
was placed for them, there was one larger than any 
of the others, and supporting a most magnificent 
tail. He became very tame, and appeared to be so 
vain over his fine appearance that I photographed 
him one morning while he was having breakfast. 
For the protection of these beautiful mammals we 
have laws; but all the laws in Christendom, however 
well enforced, cannot prevent animals that naturally 
make their homes among the larger timber from 
leaving when the forests are destroyed. It is a pity 
that, with our boasted civilization, there seems to be 
such a wanton destruction of our trees. It may be 
the heredity of habit that drives us madly on to denude 
the hills and mountains, thus leaving them bare, un- 
sightly, and untenanted. The result is invariably 
the same, to dry up our springs and streams and to 
drive from us the gray squirrels and other animals. 
If this continues for another twenty years, as it has 
for the past twenty, the gray squirrels will be counted 
among our rare animals. In Central New York 
I have seen but one black squirrel in the last ten 
