1 86 THOSE OTHER ANIMALS. 



and buds of the trees, and the woodman may therefore be 

 compelled to wage war against it, but the farmer does not 

 reckon it in the list of his enemies, and upon the whole the 

 squirrel lives its life unmolested. This is not so in the 

 Western States of America, where the squirrel is among 

 the most troublesome of the farmer's foes, causing terrible 

 depredations among his crops. The variety there is not 

 attired in the warm brown coat of its British cousin, but is 

 striped black and grey like a tabby cat, and is a good deal 

 larger than the English variety, with a magnificently large 

 and bushy tail. So numerous are they in some parts, that 

 upwards of a hundred thousand have been killed in the 

 course of a year on a single estate. 



Nature has been extremely bountiful to the squirrel in 

 the matter of his allowance of tail, no other quadruped 

 approaching him in this respect. The tail of the kangaroo 

 may be as long in proportion, but from the hair being short 

 and smooth it makes but little show, and is altogether lack- 

 ing in the dignity of that of the squirrel ; it is, too, 

 extremely deficient in grace, being held out stiffly in rear, 

 while the squirrel manages his as gracefully as a grand 

 dame of the court of Louis XIV. managed her train. It is 

 greatly to the credit of the squirrel that, adorned as he is by 

 this exceptionally fine and bushy appendage, he does not, 

 like the peacock, the turkey, and the bird of paradise, put 

 on side in consequence ; but except for the pains he takes 

 in cleaning it and keeping it in the best possible condition, 

 he seems to place no store on this his chief personal 

 adornment. It is not quite clear what was the object of 

 nature in thus endowing the squirrel, as we have been 

 taught every organ has its special functions, and if one is ab- 



