502 THE CHIPPING "SQUIRREL 



which inhabits the north of Europe and Asia, is of an ashen gray on 

 the upper, and of a snowy white on the inferior parts. 



Some species of Sciuridce seldom ascend trees, but burrow on the 

 ground, and are further distinguished by their possession of cheek- 

 pouches. They form the genus Tamias. The best known is the 

 Chipping Squirrel, Hacker, or Chipmuck (Tamias Lysteri}, which 

 abounds in the United States as far north as the fiftieth parallel, and 

 derives his name from his peculiar chipping or cheeping cry, like that 

 of a young chicken. He burrows near the roots of trees, and several 

 squirrels frequently tenant one burrow, where they lay up stores of 

 nuts and grain for winter supply. His length is fully ten inches; 

 the general colour gray, longitudinally striped with yellowish-white 

 and black. 



CHAPTER IX. 



MAN IN THE SAVANNAHS AND THE FORESTS. ANTHROPOPHAGY. 



IN the Steppes and Deserts of Sand we have seen men ignorant and 

 wild, semi-brutalized in manner and tastes, and miserable in condition : 

 some sedentary and peaceful, cultivating with laborious care an 

 ungrateful soil; others, and by far the greater number, nomadic and 

 pastoral in their habits; and others, again, living partly on the pro- 

 duct of their herds, partly on the plunder obtained by a life of piracy. 

 But between these races and civilized nations there still exist some 

 analogies of belief, of polity, of social economy. In the sacred codes 

 which fill, for them, the place of our elaborate legal and political 

 systems, lofty precepts of justice and charity, salutary rules of morality 

 and hygiene, mingle with barbarous customs and absurd or super- 

 stitious practices. Their religions, founded, like Christianity itself, on 

 the idea of a Divine unity, a God of mercy and punishment, they hold 

 in common with peoples who have left their mark on the history of 



