LONG-EARED SQUIRREL. 597 
During the few last weeks of autumn, the Squirrel is quite in its element, paying 
daily visits to the nut-trees, and examining their fruit with a critical eye. Detecting 
intuitively every worm-eaten or defective nut, the Squirrel makes deliberate choice of the 
soundest fruit, and conveys it to the secret storehouse. Feeding abundantly on the rich 
products of a fruitful autumn, the Squirrel becomes very fat before the commencement of 
winter, and is then in its highest beauty, the new fur having settled upon the body, and 
the new hair having covered the tail with its plumy fringe. 
The manner in which a Squirrel eats a nut is very curious. The little animal takes it 
daintily in his fore-paws, seats himself deliberately, and then carrying the nut to his 
mouth, cuts off the tip with his chisel-edged incisor teeth. He then rapidly breaks away 
the shell, and after carefully peeling the dry brown husk away from the kernel, eats it as 
if he had earned his little feast. Sometimes the food of the Squirrel is not limited to 
vegetable substances, as the animal possesses something of the carnivorous nature, and 
has been often found guilty of killing and eating sundry animated beings. Young birds, 
eggs, and various insects are eaten by the Squirrel, who has been detected in the very act 
of plundering a nest, and carrying off one of the young birds. 
Although it is a most pretty and interesting animal, it is sometimes a very unpleasant 
neighbour, especially where there are plantations of young trees near the spot on which it 
has taken up its residence. It has a habit of nibbling the green and tender shoots as 
they sprout upon the topmost boughs, and often succeeds in stunting many a promising 
tree by its inveterate habit of exercising its teeth upon young wood. 
The usual colour of the Squirrel’s fur is a ruddy brown upon the back, and a greyish- 
white on the under portions of the body. It is, however, a most variable animal in point 
of colour, the tint of its fur changing according to the country which it inhabits. Even 
in England the ruddy fur is sometimes changed to grey during a severe winter, and in 
Siberia, it is generally of a bluish-grey. The feathery tufts of hair which fringe 
the ears are liable to great modifications, being very long and full in winter and in 
cold climates, and almost entirely lost during the hotter summer months of our own 
country. 
It is easily tamed, and is in great request as a domestic pet. Let me here, however, 
warn the reader against purchasing the so-called tame Squirrels which are offered for 
sale in the streets. They appear at first sight to be very gentle, for they will permit 
themselves to be handled freely without displaying any signs of anger, and possess much 
of the quiet demeanour of a truly tame animal. But this quietude is almost invariably 
produced by a gentle dose of strychnine, which has the effect of reducing the poor 
creature to a state of non-resistance, and which, although it is always fatal in the end, is 
often sutticiently tardy in its operation to aid the vendor in completing his iniquitous 
sale. Those who desire to purchase a really tame Squirrel should also be careful to 
examine its mouth, for in some instances the incisor teeth are drawn, so that the poor 
animal is physically incapable of biting; and in other cases, an old, yellow-toothed 
Squirrel is palmed off upon an incautious purchaser for a young animal. 
THERE are so many species of the Squirrel tribe, that even a cursory notice of each 
animal would be wholly impracticable in a work of the present dimensions, and we must 
content ourselves with a brief description of those species which stand out more boldly 
from the rest, by reason of form, colour, or peculiar habits. 
One of the most striking forms among the members of the genus Scitirus is seen in 
the LONG-EARED SQUIRREL. This remarkable species is found in Borneo, and there is 
a tolerably good specimen in the collection of the British Museum. Although it is 
called the Long-eared Squirrel, its title is not due to the length of the ears, which are in 
reality hardly longer than those of an ordinary Squirrel, but to the very long hair-tufts 
with which those organs are decorated. The fringe of hair which adorns the ears is 
about two inches in length, of a glossy blackish-brown colour, and stiff in texture. The 
colour of the back and exterior of the limbs is a rich chestnut-brown, which fades into 
paler fawn along the flanks, and is marked by a single dark longitudinal stripe, extending 
from the fore to the hinder limbs. This dark band is narrow at each end, but of some 
