THE BRITISH OR LIGHT-TAILED SQUIRREL 699 
They continue to grow until January, at which time they have attained 
a length of about 35 mm. They afterwards become white and thin, 
and, if they persist after July, are rendered conspicuous by their light 
colour. 
The palms and soles are naked from April to November, but during 
the latter month acquire a coat of short woolly hairs, thicker on the 
soles than on the palms, which are sometimes more or less unclothed 
even in winter. 
The remarkable cycle of moult and colour-changes indicated above, 
although considered by Thomas, who first described them in detail 
(Zoologist, 1896, 401), as “both in effect and complexity, quite 
unparalleled throughout the mammals of the world,’ had previously 
been neglected or misunderstood. Blyth! probably came nearer to an 
understanding of them than any other writer, and Macgillivray and 
Alston (2x Sell) had a rough notion of a regular sequence, but the 
majority of naturalists were content to regard the cream or whitish tail 
as an “accidental variety.” Thomas’s work was based on the study of 
a series of Squirrels killed all the year round in a single wood at What- 
combe, near Blandford, Dorsetshire, by Mansell-Pleydell ; and although 
typical enough for British Squirrels generally, Thomas’s calendar of 
the changes must not be regarded as absolutely binding for those taken 
in other parts of the country. A series procured for Barrett-Hamilton 
at Saffron Walden, Essex, exhibits a greyer coloration in winter. 
Blyth (¢oc. cz¢.) states that in the case of the young of the first litters 
the first pelage is that of winter, and this is corroborated by A. H. 
Macpherson (Zoologzst, 1886, 67), who twice found young in the nest 
with bleached tails and ear-tufts,and by Aplin (Zoologist, 1885, 479). 
According to Blyth, the pelage of young of the second litter is that of 
summer, ear-tufts being absent. 
The immature are often redder than are adults. The tails, never 
rufous in adult S. /euwcourus, are frequently so in young specimens, 
which thus resemble adult S. vadgarzs rather than their own parents— 
a circumstance which, as Thomas remarks, “ would’ tend to show that 
. .. the British Squirrels were formerly red-tailed when adult.” 
Eagle Clarke, writing of three males and three females sent from 
Ballindalloch, Spey, Scotland, on the 3rd March, states that the males 
were greyer, the females slightly more rufous, especially on the flanks ; 
but there is yet no evidence available indicating that this is the 
case generally in S. /eucourus, although Gray (Aun. Mag. Nat. Hist, 
November 1867, 325) states that this is true of certain South African 
Squirrels. 
Collett (Worges Pattedyr, 1911, 217) has proved (from the examina- 
tion of a long series collected in southern, central, and northern 
1 Ed. White’s Se/borne, London, 1836, 280, 281, note. 
