1908] Grinnell—Biota of the San Bernardino Mountains. 137 
cones landed with a thud on the bedding exactly where one of 
us had been reclining a few minutes before. It was not an easy 
matter to locate the perpetrator, and it took a lot of neck-eraning 
as well as patient waiting before the squirrel was brought to the 
ground. I was several times subsequently startled when hunting 
in the woods by the falling of heavy cones close to me. It seemed 
that any alarm, such as when I fired the gun in collecting birds, 
was often sufficient to cause the release of a cone that may have 
been hanging by a mere fiber. For of course the squirrel could 
not have been expected to have been supporting and at the same 
time shelling out so heavy an object. 
The gray squirrel fed on the ground also a good deal, and was 
often seen dissecting the cones which they, perhaps, had purposely 
detached from above. Many little heaps of ‘‘kitchen middens”’ 
marked sites of these feasts. It was solely the soft, unripe seeds 
they were after. 
Gray squirrels were common in the black oak belt on the flat 
(Hathaway or Barton Flat) which extends alone the upper 
Santa Ana south to the base of the high San Bernardino ridge, 
5900 to 7000 feet altitude. Around Bluff lake and in Bear valley 
the species appeared to be searce, or wanting. We saw but three 
individuals in the vicinity of Bluff lake. Probably the large 
number of campers who visit that section of the mountains each 
summer and fall have to do with this scarcity. I saw one ex- 
ample in Holeomb valley, August 26, 1905, and several on the 
north side and base of Sugarloaf, August 19 to 24. The six ex- 
amples taken of this squirrel show the following measurements: 
No. Sex Total length Tail vertebrae Hind foot 
999 © ad. 497 191* 78 
1136 9 ad. 574 278 77 
1089 ° ad. 558 270 80 
1159 ° ad. 541 262 79 
1650 ° ad. 574 274 80 
1566 6 jv. 477 258 75 
In recognizing the southern California subspecies anthonyi, 
I am following the latest study of the case, as presented in 
Mearns’ “‘Mammals of the Mexican Boundary,’’ Part I, 1907, 
pp. 264-267. 
* Tail probably injured at some time. 
