LONG-EARED SQUIRREL. 597 



During the few last weeks of autumn, the Squirrel is quite in its element, paying 

 daily visits to the nut-trees, and examining their fruit with a critical eye. Detecting 

 intuitively every worm-eaten or defective nut, the Squirrel makes deliberate choice of 

 the soundest fruit, and conveys it to the secret storehouse. Feeding abundantly on the 

 rich products of a fruitful autumn, the Squirrel becomes very fat before the commence- 

 ment of winter, and is then in its highest beauty, the new fur having settled upon the 

 body, and the new hair having covered the tail with its plumy fringe. 



The manner in which a Squirrel eats a nut is very curious. The little animal takes 

 it daintily in his fore-paws, seats himself deliberately, and then carrying the nut to his 

 mouth, cuts off the tip with his chisel-edged incisor teeth. He then rapidly breaks 

 away the shell, and after carefully peeling the dry brown husk away from the kernel, 

 eats it complacently as if he had earned his little feast. Sometimes the food of the 

 Squirrel is not limited to vegetable substances, as the animal possesses something of 

 the carnivorous nature, and has been often found guilty of killing and eating sundry 

 animated beings. Young birds, eggs, and various insects are eaten by the Squirrel, 

 who has been detected in the very act of plundering a nest, and carrying off one of the 

 young birds. 



Although it is a most pretty and interesting animal, it is sometimes a very unpleasant 

 neighbor, especially where there are plantations of young trees near the spot on which 

 it has taken up its residence. It has a habit of nibbling the green and tender shoots 

 as they sprout upon the topmost boughs, and often succeeds in stunting many a prom- 

 ising tree by its inveterate habit of exercising its teeth upon young wood. 



The usual color of the Squirrel's fur is a ruddy brown upon the back, and a grayish- 

 white on the under portions of the body. It is, however, a most variable animal in 

 point of color, the tint of its fur changing according to the country which it inhabits. 

 Even in England the ruddy fur is sometimes changed to gray during a severe winter, 

 and in Siberia, it is generally of a bluish-gray. The feathery tufts of hair which fringe 

 the ears are liable to great modifications, being very long and full in winter and in cold 

 climates, and almost entirely lost during the hotter summer months of our own 

 country. 



It is easily tamed, and is in great request as a domestic pet. Let me here, however, 

 warn the reader against purchasing the so-called tame Squirrels which are offered for 

 sale in the streets. They appear at first sight to be very gentle, for they will permit 

 themselves to be handled freely without displaying any signs of anger, and possess 

 much of the quiet demeanor of a truly tame animal. But this quietude is almost 

 invariably produced by a gentle dose of strychnine, which has the effect of reducing 

 the poor creature to a state of non-resistance, and which, although it is always fatal in 

 the end, is often sufficiently tardy in its operation to aid the vendor in completing his 

 iniquitous sale. Those who desire to purchase a really tame Squirrel should also be 

 careful to examine its mouth, for in some instances the incisor teeth are drawn, so that 

 the poor animal is physically incapable of biting; and in other cases, an old, yellow- 

 toothed Squirrel is palmed off upon an incautious purchaser for a young animal. 



THERE are so many species of the Squirrel tribe, that even a cursory notice of each 

 animal would be wholly impracticable in a work of the present dimensions, and we must 

 content ourselves with a brief description of those species which stand out more boldly 

 from the rest, by reason of form, color, or peculiar habits. 



One of the most striking forms among the members of the genus Sciurus is seen in 

 the LONG-EARED SQUIRREL. This remarkable species is found in Borneo, and there is 

 a tolerably good specimen in the collection of the British Museum. Although it is 

 called the Long-eared Squirrel, its title is not due to the length of the ears, which are in 

 reality hardly longer than those of an ordinary Squirrel, but to the very longhair-tufts 

 with which those organs are decorated. The fringe of hair which adorns the ears is 

 about two inches in length, of a glossy blackish-brown color, and stiff in texture. The 

 color of the back and exterior of the limbs is a rich chestnut-brown, which fades into 

 paler fawn along the flanks, and is marked by a single dark longitudinal stripe, extend- 

 ing from the fore to the hinder limbs. This dark band is narrow at each end, but of some 



