140 SQUIRREL TRIBE. 



of His power to nourish and sustain the creatures 

 of his hand. A small Squirrel of a dark colour, 

 inclining to brown, with a round head and erect 

 ears, in habits and appearance much resembling the 

 prairie-dogs, and living like them in burrows, under 

 the projection of a rock, was observed by Dr. James 

 and his companions, when ascending towards the 

 highest peak of the Rocky Mountains. They had 

 proceeded beyond the point where the red cedar 

 and the flexile pine disappear, and entered a region 

 of astonishing beauty and great interest, on account of 

 the brilliantly flowering alpine plants with which 

 the soil was covered, and which, were, generally, of a 

 rich blue. Far beneath, masses of primeval granite 

 and unscaleable and naked rocks, started forth; and 

 here and there an aged tree, with curved and inflexible 

 branches, proclaimed the storms it had withstood, 

 and the centuries during which it had vegetated. 

 Further still, appeared immense blocks of ice, with 

 innumerable mountains capped with snow; and in 

 some of the more distant, it seemed to extend like 

 a wide-spread mantle, even to their base. Amid 

 such a scene of grandeur and desolation, how cheer- 

 ing was the appearance of beautiful alpine plants, 

 and those little joyous Squirrels ; how cheering, too, 

 seemed the instinct which inclined them to watch 

 the travellers' approach, and then to utter their 

 shrill cries, that their companions might hasten 

 home. 



A remarkable geographical distribution is obvious 

 in the Squirrel tribe. Its members are spread 

 throughout the north-eastern portions of Europe, 

 the north of Asia and America, and the islands of 



