NOTES BY THE WAY. 175 



know the same trick, only their coat-skirts are not 

 so broad. One day my dog treed a red squirrel, in a 

 tall hickory that stood in a meadow on the side of a 

 steep hill. To see what the squirrel would do when 

 closely pressed, I climbed the tree. As I drew near 

 he took refuge in the topmost branch, and then, as I 

 came on, he boldly leaped into the air, spread himself 

 out upon it, and, with a quick, tremulous motion of 

 his tail and legs, descended quite slowly and landed 

 upon the ground thirty feet below me, apparently 

 none the worse for the leap, for he ran with great 

 speed and escaped the dog in another tree. 



A recent American traveler in Mexico gives a still 

 more striking instance of this power of squirrels par- 

 tially to neutralize the force of gravity when leaping 

 or falling through the air. Some boys had caught 

 a Mexican black squirrel, nearly as large as a cat. 

 It had escaped from them once, and, when pursued, 

 had taken a leap of sixty feet, from the top of a pine- 

 tree down upon the roof of a house, without injury. 

 This feat had lead the grandmother of one of the 

 boys to declare that the squirrel was bewitched, and 

 the boys proposed to put the matter to further test 

 by throwing the squirrel down a precipice six hun- 

 dred feet high. Our traveler interfered, to see that 

 the squirrel had fair play. The prisoner was con- 

 veyed in a pillow-slip to the edge of the cliff, and 

 the slip opened, so that he might have his choice, 

 whether to remain a captive or to take the leap. He 

 looked down the awful abyss, and then back and 



