12 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [14:1— Jan., 1918 



what was given him. And for a whole semester he assisted in a 

 laboratory, sometimes in one and sometimes in the other of his 

 pockets, making the transit so tactfully that never a pair of eyes 

 except my own saw him until one day, — searching in my pocket for 

 some acorns for a demonstration, forgetful of him, I woke him from 

 a nap to the belief that his storehouse was being robbed : No class 

 could be expected to be oblivious to the alarmclock protest that 

 issued from the pocket under those circumstances, nor to the 

 whiskers, the bead-like eyes, and the little round ears that came 

 into evidence at the mouth of the pocket. And in this way 

 Mercury came into recognition as a regular attendant at a great 

 University, — -always mannerly except once when he found a senate 

 meeting tiresome and had to be taken to the bur oak trees for 

 consolations. 



Have you admired the graceful little adjuncts chained to the 

 subjects of Copley's portraits? Mercury never wore a chain. 

 Yet I've not doubt that he would have been happier in a squirrel 

 way if he had never left the woods. 



Is such a surprise worth a trip to the woods — many trips to the 

 woods — carefully planned trips to the woods? 



"A flying squirrel's nest and young on Emerson's hatchet path, south of 

 Walden, on hilltop, in a covered hollow in a small old stump, covered with 

 fallen leaves and a portion of the stump; nest apparently of dry grass. Saw 

 three young run out after the mother and up a slender oak. The young half- 

 grown, very tender looking and weak-tailed, yet one climbed quite to the top of 

 the oak twenty-five feet high, though feebly, claws must be very sharp and 

 early developed. The mother rested quite near, on a small projecting stub 

 big as a pipe-stem, curled crosswise on it. They have a more rounded head 

 and snout than our other squirrels. The young in danger of being picked off 

 by hawks." — Thoreau's Journal. 



