i86 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



Their lively motions on the ground are very amusing ; 

 they visit the ground much oftener than may be gen- 

 erally supposed. Fir trees seem to attract them ; 

 where there is a plantation of firs you may be sure 

 of finding a squirrel. 



When alarmed or chased a squirrel always ascends 

 the tree on the opposite side away from you : he will 

 not run to a solitary tree if he can possibly avoid it ; 

 he likes a group, and his trick is, the moment he 

 thinks he is out of sight among the upper branches, 

 to slip quietly from one tree to the other till, while 

 you are scanning every bough, he has travelled fifty 

 yards away unnoticed. If the branches are not close 

 enough to hide him, he gets as much as possible behind 

 a large branch, and stretches himself along it; at 

 the same time his tail, which at other times is bushy, 

 seems to contract, so that he is less visible. He will 

 leap in his alarm to dead branches, and though his 

 weight is trifling, occasionally they snap under the 

 sudden impact ; but that does not distress him in 

 the least, because a bough rarely breaks clean off, but 

 hangs suspended by bark or splinters, so that he can 

 scramble to the ivy that winds round the trunk. Or 

 if he is obliged to slip down, the next branch catches 

 him ; and I have never seen a squirrel actually fall, 

 though sometimes in his frightened haste he will send 

 a number of little dead twigs rustling downwards. 

 When the tail is spread out, so to say, its texture is 

 so fine and silky that the light seems to play through 

 it. They love this particular corner because just 



