148 The Gray Squirrel 



too cold or stormy. This step taken, it is easy to 

 become quite intimately acquainted with our little 

 friends in fur. Out of a company of five grays that 

 were accustomed to visit a certain tree, where food 

 was placed for them, there was one larger than any 

 of the others, and supporting a most magnificent 

 tail. He became very tame, and appeared to be so 

 vain over his fine appearance that I photographed 

 him one morning while he was having breakfast. 



For the protection of these beautiful mammals we 

 have laws ; but all the laws in Christendom, however 

 well enforced, cannot prevent animals that naturally 

 make their homes among the larger timber from 

 leaving when the forests are destroyed. It is a pity 

 that, with our boasted civilization, there seems to be 

 such a wanton destruction of our trees. It may be 

 the heredity of habit that drives us madly on to denude 

 the hills and mountains, thus leaving them bare, un- 

 sightly, and untenanted. The result is invariably 

 the same, to dry up our springs and streams and to 

 drive from us the gray squirrels and other animals. 

 If this continues for another twenty years, as it has 

 for the past twenty, the gray squirrels will be counted 

 among our rare animals. In Central New York 

 I have seen but one black squirrel in the last ten 



