196 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



to see what their nests were made of, and how they 

 curled themselves up in them. 



Wilson Flagg rightly placed the squirrel among the 

 picturesque animals in a scene; for, surely, with the 

 exception of an antlered stag, a large gray or fox squir- 

 rel is the most picturesque feature to be found in any 

 woods, so graceful is he, so alert, so associated with all 

 wildness and with nutting-time. I like to be with them, 

 and to observe them in their arboreal habits. Watch 

 a sleek gray squirrel when the hickory nuts first ripen, 

 as he twines around among the thick foliage in search 

 of a nut, finally to pluck one off, and then to run back 

 to a favorite crotch or branch, and curl his tail over 

 him and begin work. The green hulls fall in bits all 

 around you, and soon also pieces of the inside shells, 

 as he digs in with his long teeth after the rich kernel; 

 or perhaps the whole nut may slip from his grasp, and 

 fall through the leaves with a loud plunge to the 

 ground. He has many such losses, however, and ac- 

 cepts them philosophically, as not to be too deeply in- 

 quired into. He is "content with the quia," as Dante 

 advised the human race to be; and forthwith, after a 

 little pause of bewilderment, runs out to another twig 

 and finds another nut. There does not seem to be much 

 method in the way squirrels pick the nuts, running up 

 and down at random, everywhere and anywhere, as 

 they do; but they generally manage to strip the tree. 



The squirrel is the symbol of autumn. The way 

 to tell a squirrel's presence in the fall is simply to wait 

 for the patter and splash of the nutshells falling among 

 the leaves. You will frequently be aided also in de- 

 termining their local habitation by the new scratches 



