30 THE RING OF NATURE 



animal, leaping high up a tree trunk, and clinging 

 where it touches with the certainty of the squirrel, 

 though not having the same power of running up 

 a vertical surface. 



With back rounded in typical mouse curve, my 

 squirrel goes loping round this bush and that, re- 

 minding me far more of the kangaroo than the 

 rabbit ever does by the light way in which it 

 touches the ground with its fore-paws between the 

 hops that it takes from the hind-feet. Suddenly 

 it sits up, far up, on its hind-legs, its ears pricked, 

 and its face expressing puzzled anxiety. The first 

 sound that alarmed it was the chuckling voice and 

 the whirring wings of a pheasant down in the 

 hollow where the nut-brakes are. But now there 

 is a measured ' chunk, chunk,' like the bite of a 

 keen axe into wood. It is purely a mechanical 

 sound, and if not of human agency must be the 

 hammering of a nut-hatch on the shell of a nut 

 he has unexpectedly found. Foolish squirrel to 

 twitch and turn about so at such an innocent sound. 



The ' chunk, chunk ' continues, and now appears 

 to be nearly over my head. It cannot be a nut- 

 hatch, for it obviously moves about, whereas the 

 bird fixes his nut in a crevice of the bark and 

 hammers at it there till his meal is reached. The 

 squirrel takes three jumps, and reaches the nearest 

 tree. It pauses a moment, and lashes its tail like 

 a cat its beautiful acanthine tail thrashing to 

 and fro in angry wags. Then it clasps the tree 

 and runs up the trunk with a ' wow-wow-wow- 



