OCCASIONAL NOTES. 3838 
birds, but latterly they were less uneasy in its presence. Taking an interest 
in the wild creature, he began to lay out refuse food for it, including bits of 
ham, which it greedily appropriated. Getting more courageous, it ventured 
within doors. After a time it got caught in a trap set for rats underneath 
the bed. Being freed from its irksome position, it was thought that the 
Squirrel would venture no more within doors. Neither the incident of the 
trap nor confinement for some time within a cage availed to restore to it its 
original shyness. With the coming of summer its visits have been less 
regular, but occasionally it looks in still. May not a habit like this, 
affecting only one out of many, be looked upon as corresponding to a 
“sport” in the vegetable world, and shed some light on the subject of the 
domestication of animals? The Squirrel seems to have been quite a wild 
one to start with, for there is no one in the district who had been in the 
habit of keeping one as a pet.—J. Saaw (Dumfriesshire).— From ‘ Nature.’ 
Are SKALS BORN BLIND?—To this question I am able to give 
a very positive answer. On May 23rd, 1868, I purchased of a dealer in 
Liverpool four adult Seals. One of them proved to be in young, and was 
consequently placed by herself in a suitable enclosure with a small pond. 
She soon became quite tame, and fed freely. On June 8th she became 
restless, and on the following day, about twelve o’clock, she produced a 
young one, near the edge of the water. It was covered with a rather thick 
coat of hair, its eyes very bright and wide open; it turned and rolled about, 
divesting itself of the outer covering of hair, which formed a complete mat 
upon which the young animal lay. For the first hour or two after its birth 
it was very active, and within three hours after its birth was swimming and 
diving about in the water like an adult animal. It uttered a low soft “ bah,” 
or single call-note, and looked about after its mother and crawled towards 
her when she came out of the water. The mother would turn upon her 
side in order to let the young one suck. The young Seal was thirty-two 
inches long, and weighed twenty pounds at its birth. A notice written by 
me appeared in the Zoological Society’s ‘ Proceedings,’ June, 1868, recording 
the above facts. —A. D. Barriurr (Zoological Gardens, Regent’s Park). 
Birps “atine Stues.—With reference to the note on birds eating 
slugs (p. 835), Pheasants certainly do so. I have shot Pheasants in the 
Holt Forest which have had their crops completely full of a small white 
slug, and nothing else. But Pheasants are omnivorous. I have killed 
them in a wild country, far away from arable land, on the borders of 
Woolmer Forest, with the crop full of the little scale or scab which is 
found on the under sides of oak-leaves, and with which the ground is 
sometimes strewed; and again, I once saw a Pheasant shot on Frimley 
