302 



'ERSE. 



Whilst the formidable buffaloes overturn everything that 

 lies in their way, colonies of squirrels, timid and silent, run 

 a thousand risks in order to establish themselves far from 

 their natal soil. Travellers assure us that in America and 

 Lapland, when a river checks their passage, each member 

 of the wandering family transforms some fragment of wood 



143. Nycteris of Upper Egypt: Nycteris Geoffroyi (Desmarest). 



or bark into a raft, displays its large tail to the wind, by 

 way of sail, and the little living flotilla, carried by the 

 breath of the zephyr, thus reaches the opposite bank. 1 



1 Linnaeus himself seems to believe in this remarkable migration of squirrels. 

 Regnard observed the fact during his travels in Lapland. " When it is neces- 

 sary," he says, " to pass some lake or river, as happens at every step in Lap- 

 land, these little animals take the bark of a pine or birch-tree, which they drag 

 to the brink of the water ; they then set themselves upon it, and abandon them- 

 selves to the mercy of the wind, erecting their tails like sails. Sometimes the 



