THE DOUGLAS SQUIRKEL 233 



ful precision, as if to his eyes the thick snow- 

 covering were glass. 



No other of the Sierra animals of my acquain 

 tance is better fed, not even the deer, amid abun 

 dance of sweet herbs and shrubs, or the mountain 

 sheep, or omnivorous bears. His food consists of 

 grass-seeds, berries, hazel-nuts, chinquapins, and 

 the nuts and seeds of all the coniferous trees 

 without exception, Pine, Fir, Spruce, Libocedrus, 

 Juniper, and Sequoia, he is fond of them all, and 

 they all agree with him, green or ripe. No cone is 

 too large for him to manage, none so small as to be 

 beneath his notice. The smaller ones, such as those 

 of the Hemlock, and the Douglas Spruce, and the 

 Two-leaved Pine, he cuts off and eats on a branch 

 of the tree, without allowing them to fall ; begin 

 ning at the bottom of the cone and cutting away 

 the scales to expose the seeds; not gnawing by 

 guess, like a bear, but turning them round and 

 round in regular order, in compliance with their 

 spiral arrangement. 



When thus employed, his location in the tree is 

 betrayed by a dribble of scales, shells, and seed- 

 wings, and, every few minutes, by the fall of the 

 stripped axis of the cone. Then of course he is 

 ready for another, and if you are watching you 

 may catch a glimpse of him as he glides silently 

 out to the end of a branch and see him examining 

 the cone-clusters until he finds one to his mind; 

 then, leaning over, pull back the springy needles 

 out of his way, grasp the cone with his paws to 

 prevent its falling, snip it off in an incredibly short 

 time, seize it with jaws grotesquely stretched, and 



