THE SQUIRREL 35 



of the year does not some boletus, morel, puff- 

 ball, or agaric produce its fleshy fruit ? 



The fungus-eating squirrel was, of course, im- 

 mensely indignant when he looked up and found 

 me watching him at his meal. He popped a large 

 piece in his mouth, and ran up the trunk of an oak 

 that bristled with tiny shoots. This ' brushwood 

 sheaf ' he hurriedly probed with his nose, at last 

 finding a cupboard in which he might dare leave 

 his treasure, and when his mouth was free to tell 

 me what he thought of my impertinence, he let 

 me have it with all the force of his vocabulary. 



By May, our little grey squirrel will be in his 

 summer red, and his ears close cropped by com- 

 parison with the tufts he wears now. His mate 

 will by then be a mother. Their nest is usually 

 stored in a hollow tree where such sites are common ; 

 but in our wood they build the great domes of 

 sticks familiarly called dreys high in the branches 

 of beech or pine. At the age of six weeks the 

 young squirrels are fully active and charming 

 miniatures in every respect of their parents, whom 

 they accompany in their frolics till near the end 

 of the year. 



When the trees are fully leaved we naturally see 

 less of our arboreal friends. But taking full ad- 

 vantage of their cover, they do not trouble to 

 absent themselves when man comes into the wood. 

 One of the most delightful incidents of a solitary 

 lunch in the wood, or of an artist's seance there, is 

 the way in which the squirrels peep at one from 



