148 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 



Photo by W. P. Dando] [Regent's Part 



DORSAL SQJUIRREL FROM CENTRAL AMERICA 



A most beautiful sfecies. The main colour is red, but the back is French gray, and the tail 

 French gray and red mingled. 



when they first come down 

 from the trees. In a garden in 

 the country a pair of squirrels 

 had a family every summer for 

 five years, but none ever sur- 

 vived the cats' persistent at- 

 tacks. These squirrels were 

 most amusing and improvi- 

 dent. They used to hide 

 horse-chestnuts, small pota- 

 toes, kernels of stone fruit, 

 bulbs of crocuses, and other 

 treasures in all kinds of places, 

 and then forget them. After 

 deep snows they might be seen 

 scampering about looking into 

 every hole and crevice to see 

 whether that happened to be 

 the place where they had hid- 

 den something useful. Much of 

 the store was buried among the 

 roots of trees and bushes, and 

 quite hidden when the snow fell. 



THE GRAY SQUIRREL. 



In Northern Europe, and across Northern Asia and America, a large gray squirrel is found. 

 From its fur the " squirrel-cloaks " are made. These squirrels live mainly on the seeds of pines 

 in winter, and on wild fruits, shoots, and berries in summer. It has been noticed that they will 

 entirely forsake come great area of forest for a year or two, and as suddenly return to it. The 

 marten and the sable are the great enemies of the gray squirrel, but the eagle-owl and goshawk 

 also kill numbers of them. In many countries the flesh of the squirrel is eaten. 



The gray-and-black squirrel of the United states was thus described some sixty years ago : 

 " It rises with the sun, and continues industriously engaged in the search of food for four or five 

 hours every morning. During the warm weather of spring it prepares its nest on the branch of a 



tree, constructing it first of dried 

 sticks, which it breaks off, or, if these 

 are not at hand, of green twigs as 

 thick as a finger, which it gnaws off 

 from the boughs. These it lays in 

 the fork of a tree, so as to make a 

 framework. It lines this framework 

 with leaves and over these again it 

 spreads moss. In making the nest, 

 the pair is usually engaged for sev- 

 eral days, spending an hour in the 

 morning hard at work. The noise 

 they make in cutting the sticks and 



\>y A. s. Rutland & Son, carrying material is heard at some 



ASIATIC CHIPMUNKS distance." In winter they reside en- 



Small ground-squirrels -which store food for the winter tirely in the holes of trCCS, where 



