478 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
throw it over, and plunge a knife into its heart. On approaching it one 
speculates on the amount of strength it retains, much more with regard to 
its fore legs than to its horns. And in Elk hunting I have frequently 
been cautioned as to the danger of approaching the animal when shot 
before one is quite certain that it is dead, on account of the enormous 
power of its long fore-legs, but have never heard a word about the horns. 
I cannot speak from personal experience of Elk, as I have never been 
lucky enough to get a shot at one, although I have several times been quite 
close to one.—A. H. Cocks (Great Marlow, Bucks). 
An Albino Leveret.—A short time since there was alive, and for sale, 
in the Plymouth Market, a pure white Leveret with pink eyes, apparently 
about six or seven weeks old. It had been confined in a large cage for over 
a fortnight, after which it was purchased by Mr. Robert Bayly, of Tor 
Grove, near Plymouth, in whose possession it now is. It fed well, and 
when I last saw it, seemed to be in perfect health. On inquiry I found 
that it had been sent to Plymouth from North Devon, where it was 
captured.—J. GarcomBx (Stonehouse, Devon). 
Habits of the Squirrel. — Walking through Farnborough Park, 
Warwickshire. in the afternoon of Octuber 18th last, I watched for some 
time a pair of Squirrels, which were busy gathering beech-mast and carrying 
it to their winter retreat in some thick spruce firs adjoining the beech trees. 
As the mast grows at the extreme outside of the trees, and only at the ends 
of the slender drooping twigs, and usually out of (Squirrel) reach of any of 
the thicker branches, I imagined they had to content themselves with the 
fallen nuts. But I found that they ventured boldly out into the small 
twigs, and, hanging on by their hind legs, drew the mast to them with their 
fore-paws and bit it off, when, with the exercise of the greatest agility, they 
twisted round, and with a quick jump regained the stronger branches. Of 
course, a good deal of the mast fell to the ground, and Sciwrus seemed 
occasionally to get quite out of temper with a refractory twig which refused 
to come to hand; when this happened, the angry, impatient snatches made 
by the little animals were quite amusing. No doubt they felt their position 
precarious, for the breaking of a twig or the slip of a claw meant a clear 
twenty-foot drop, with nothing to catch at; uo great matter, of course, to a 
Squirrel when it throws itself off a bough to drop, parachute-like, to the 
ground, but quite another thing when taken as an unexpected fall. With 
regard to their alleged egg-sucking propensities, I remember once, years 
ago, on visiting a Missel Thrush’s nest in an orchard joining a plantation 
inhabited by Squirrels, we found the eggs “sucked”; they were slightly 
broken and exhibited teeth-marks, such as would be made by a Squirrel’s 
incisors, very plainly. We had no doubt at the time about the robber. I 
think the light colour of the tail is—sometimes at least—an individual 
Me 
