THE MAMMALIA OP DORSETSHIRE. 27 



Family VUOCID/E. 

 Genus PHOCA. 



Common Seal, Phoca vUulina. 



Casual visitor, of uncommon occurrence along the coast and 

 in Poole Harbour. A fine one was caught off Portland in a net 

 by some fishermen on December 27th, 1834. It weighed nearly 

 8olb., was 3ft. 6in. from mouth to tail, and its body was 26in. in 

 circumference. 



Order RODENTIA. 



Family SCIURIDiE. 

 Squirrel, Sciiirus vulgaris. 



The form and habits of this elegant and active little creature 

 combine to render it one of the most beautiful and entertaining 

 of our native animals. Its movements are agile, its conformation 

 and colour elegant and pleasing, its disposition, when early 

 domesticated, gentle, playful, and familiar. INIy mother kept a 

 tame couple for two or three years, and they were constantly 

 loose about the house. It used to be very amusing to see one 

 of them sitting on Mr. Wollaston's bald head cracking his nuts. 

 One of them got loose one day and ran up a fir-tree. When a 

 man climbed up to catch him, he did not succeed, although the 

 squirrel would run over his back. At last he was caught by his 

 cage being hung up in the tree with string attached to the door. 

 The nuts in the cage were too great an attraction to be resisted. 

 One used to play tricks with them by cracking a nut, abstracting 

 the kernel, and sticking the shells together again. The squirrel, 

 after finding it empty, would throw it down and stamp his foot. 

 Yet give him a bad one, and he would not trouble to crack it. 

 Even Bell states that the squirrel remains the greater part of the 

 winter in a state of almost complete torpidity. Such is certainly 

 not the case in Dorsetshire, for I have often seen them running 

 about over the snow. I have often mistaken a squirrel for a fox. 

 In this wise. In front of my house, and about twenty yards 

 from it, arc some iron railings. A squirrel running along the 



