48 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



received from Orange County but adds that in northern New 

 York it is exceedingly rare, as he "only saw two pair during 

 fifteen years of close observation." Merriam (1884) called it a 

 rare or accidental straggler in the Adirondacks region and 

 mentions a specimen or two at Lake George in 1872 or 1873 as 

 the only recent instance he knew of, but there seems even 

 there to be some doubt whether or not it had been brought in 

 and escaped. In Rensselaer County he records two killed in 

 1854. At about the same time Dr. A. K. Fisher knew of its 

 having been killed in Westchester County, but adds that in 

 1896 none had been known "of late even in that wild region." 

 At the present time the fox squirrel is practically gone from 

 the State. In New Jersey it was present locally at least up to 

 about 1865 but was apparently gone by the nineties. In 

 Pennsylvania the species was formerly common in the lower 

 altitudes but is now much reduced. Rhoads (1903) says of its 

 status in the early years of this century that it was "probably 

 always rarer in Chester and Delaware counties and in southern 

 N. J. than in south central Pa. and northern N. J. Now 

 exterminated in N. J. but found occasionally in the Pa. counties 

 bordering the lower Susquehanna, also yet recorded from the 

 northwestern part of Pa." He quotes Todd that it was shot 

 "at rare intervals in some of the northern counties" of the 

 western border of Pennsylvania; and believed that it was 

 destined to extermination within the entire limits of the State 

 unless large areas of country in middle Pennsylvania "revert 

 to a wilderness condition or become game reservations under 

 state protection." Even in 1896 Bangs wrote that Dr. B. H. 

 Warren informed him that "the northern fox squirrel is 

 practically extinct in Pennsylvania except in the counties of 

 Dauphin and Cumberland" near the south-central part of the 

 State. In West Virginia, Kellogg (1937) reports that "it now 

 survives in the heavily wooded and sparsely settled higher 

 altitudes of the Allegheny Mountains" and that for many 

 years numbers were shipped to Center Market in Washington, 

 "from points in western Virginia and from eastern West 

 Virginia." Apparently in all these regions the numbers have 

 constantly and slowly dwindled in recent decades, for not only 

 is the species constantly in demand for food, but it is less 

 adaptable to the changing conditions of clearing and settle- 

 ment than its congener, the gray squirrel. It prefers primeval 



