CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 7. RODENTI A. 



567 



R is the prey of the badgers, which pursue it even to the depth of its burrows; of falcons, which 

 pounce down upon it from the air, and the arrows of the Indians, which reach it from a distance. 

 The first lessons of life, everywhere, are comprised in the proverb look e'er you leap, and how well 

 animals — beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects — learn and practice them is evinced in their sharp, 

 watchful, fearful looks on every occasion, and especially in the sly, circumspect manner in which 

 thev go forth, and the trembling alacrity with which they retreat to their hiding-places on the 

 slightest intimation of danger. A few only of the stronger and more audacious species seem insensi- 

 ble to fear; all the rest live surrounded with dangers, and obtain subsistence only in the midst 

 of perpetual apprehension. The tame animals are, for the most part, free from these mental har- 

 assments, but they pay the price in being sacrificed to man as his pleasure or his whims may 

 dictate. Man's difficulties are different in form and kind, yet are they equally dreadful and nu- 

 merous. He is exempt from fear of the claws and teeth of rapacious animals, but he is exposed 

 to the attacks of equally destructive social vultures and tigers, and even if he escape these, he is 

 supposed to be surrounded with the invisible ferae of the spiritual life. And yet, after all, savs 

 the philosophical Paley, "this is a happy world." So, indeed, it is, to bird, and beast, and creep- 

 ing thing, and to man also, despite all its dangers and all its cares — 



For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, 



This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned; 

 Left the warm precincts of the cheerful clay, 



Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind? 



PALM-SQUIRRELS. 



Gemis TAMIAS: Tamias, the Ground-Squirrels. — Most naturalists consider the Tamias — a 

 erm signifying keeper of stores — as merely a sub-genus of the squirrels ; they have, indeed, a 

 :reat resemblance to these animals, and are usually called squirrels, but as they have a more 

 ingthened cranium, with cheek-pouches, and are at least partially earth-burrowers and dwellers 

 n the ground, beside certain peculiarities in their dentition and in the formation of the ears 

 ad tail, they may fairly be regarded as constituting a genus by themselves. 



( 'ii'' of the best known is the Palm-Squirrel, Schirus palmarum of Linnaeus, and the Pal- 

 it8te of Ruffon. It has plain ears; an obscure pale yellow stripe on the middle of the back, 

 "other on each side, a third on each side of the belly; the two last at times very faint; the rest. 

 I the hair on the sides, back, and head, black and red, very closely mixed;, that on the thighs and 

 ga more red; belly pale-yellow; hair on the tail does not lie flat, but encircles it, is coarse, am! 

 f a dirty yellow, barred with black; length about thirteen inches, of which the tail measures six 

 "his. This is the description of Pennant. Mr. Bennett has figured two varieties in his "Zoo- 

 med Gardens:" one was perfectly black, and exhibited no traces of the usual stripes; the other 



