80 RAMBLES ABOUT HOME. 



warm toward the end of February, as it is now in March, 

 or in the beginning of April" 



It can scarcely be said that any change has taken place 

 during the one hundred and thirty years since the above 

 was written, except that the snow-fall has much decreased. 

 This has not arisen from a warmer temperature, and a 

 consequent change to rain-fall instead of snow, but is an 

 absolute decrease in precipitation. There is certainly con- 

 siderable evidence to show that this corner of the world is 

 slowly drying up, even if the globe, as a whole, is not. 



Let us now turn to what the same writer says of the 

 gray squirrels. He writes : " The squirrels gather great 

 stores for winter, which they lay up in holes dug by them 

 for that purpose ; they likewise carry a great quantity of 

 them into their nests. 



" As soon as winter comes, the snow and cold confine 

 them to their holes for several days, especially when the 

 weather is very rough. During this time they consume 

 the little store which they have brought to their nests ; 

 as soon, therefore, as the weather grows milder, they creep 

 out, and dig out part of the store which they have laid up 

 in the ground ; of this they eat some on the spot and 

 carry the rest into their nests on the trees. We fre- 

 quently observed that in winter, at the eve of a great 

 frost, when there had been some temperate weather, the 

 squirrels, a day or two before the frost, ran about the 

 woods in greater numbers than common, partly in order 

 to eat their fill, and partly to store their nests with a new 

 provision for the ensuing great cold, during which they 

 did not venture to come out, but lay snug in their nests 5 

 therefore, seeing them run in the woods in greater num- 

 bers than ordinary, was a safe prognostic of an ensuing 

 cold." 



Here we have plainly attributed to the gray squirrel a 



