156 PEPACTON 



squirrels 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 squir- 

 rel would do when closely pressed, I climbed the 

 tree. As I drew near he took refuge in the top- 

 most 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 led 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 throw- 

 ing the squirrel down a precipice six hundred feet 

 high. Our traveler interfered, to see that the squir- 

 rel had fair play. The prisoner was conveyed 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 sidewise, 



