394 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



toys in the shape of mice or little bears which are wound 

 up and run around on wheels. When we put our rackets 

 before him he uttered little, shrill, long-continued squeals 

 of irritation. We let him go off in the grass, and this 

 time he did not reappear for the day; but next afternoon 

 he repeated the feat. 



My boys have at intervals displayed a liking for natu- 

 ral history, and one of them during some years took to 

 trapping small mammals, discovering species that I had 

 no idea existed in certain places; near Washington, but 

 on the other side of the Potomac, he trapped several of 

 those very dainty little creatures, the harvest mice. 1 One 

 of my other boys the special friend of Josiah the badger 

 discovered a flying-squirrel's nest, in connection with 

 which a rather curious incident occurred. The little 

 boy had climbed a tree which is hollow at the top ; and 

 in this hollow he discovered a flying-squirrel mother with 

 six young ones. She seemed so tame and friendly that the 

 little boy for a moment hardly realized that she was a 

 wild thing, and called down that he had " found a guinea 

 pig up the tree." Finally, the mother made up her mind 

 to remove her family. She took each one in turn in her 

 mouth and flew or sailed down from the top of the tree 

 to the foot of another tree near by; ran up this, holding 

 the little squirrel in her mouth; and again sailed down 

 to the foot of another tree some distance off. Here she 

 deposited her young one on the grass, and then, reversing 



1 A visit of this same small boy, when eleven years old, to John Burroughs, 

 is described by the latter in " Far and Near," in the chapter called " Babes in 

 the Woods." 



