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 (Sciuriis 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 

 flnd 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. 



