CHAF. IV. CRUELTY OF SHOOTING SQUIRRELS. 107 



prehensile faculty ; and this is given to several of the 

 American monkeys in an extraordinary degree : their 

 long tails are used as a fifth hand; and are twined 

 round the branches of trees, when they are climbing, 

 with such tenacity, that, on the animal being shot, it 

 will hang by its tail, long after it has lost the power of 

 grasping with its hands. Several other genera possess 

 the scansorial or climbing faculty in a greater or less 

 degree, but all are inferior to the monkeys. The form 

 of the bear, for instance, is heavy and clumsy to a 

 proverb ; and yet these animals, however awkward they 

 shuffle along on the ground, are well known to climb 

 with no inconsiderable degree of activity. Some of the 

 American porcupines do the same ; and these are the 

 only animals, besides the monkeys of the same conti- 

 nent, that are also furnished with long prehensile 

 tails adapted for this purpose. The only indigenous 

 quadruped, which possesses this faculty to any extra- 

 ordinary degree, and whose life may be said to be 

 spent upon trees, is the squirrel. A more beautiful 

 and interesting little animal does not exist ; but, be- 

 cause they feed upon the nuts of our wealthy pro- 

 prietors, either they, or their gamekeepers, equally 

 ignorant, denominate them vermin ; and it is, unfor- 

 tunately, a common practice to shoot them, with the 

 same determination of extirpating the race, as is pur- 

 sued against weazels, stoats, and rats. If this unfeeling 

 and barbarous custom goes on much longer, the most 

 beautiful of our indigenous quadrupeds will become 

 in another century extinct. Several of the species 

 found in North America, have, in some degree, the 

 power of flying, in addition to that of climbing : hence 

 their common appellation of flying squirrels. This 

 term, however, must be understood in a very limited 

 sense : their flight, in fact, is nothing more than a leap ; 

 but, owing to the expansive skin which partly connects 

 the fore and the hind feet, sufficient resistance is offered 

 by the air to support the animal, and an additional im- 

 petus is thus given to its leap, which is often made 



