130 HUDSON'S BAY SQUIRREL, CHICKAREE, ETC. 



observed some lads shaking a Red-Squirrel from a sapling that grew on 

 the edge of a mill-pond. It fell into the water, and swam to the oppo- 

 site shore, performing the operation of swimming moderately well, and re- 

 minding us by its movements of the meadow-mouse, when similarly 

 occupied. It was " headed" by its untiring persecutors, on the opposite 

 shore, where on being pelted with sticks, we noticed it diving two or 

 three times, not in the graceful curving manner of the mink, or musk-rat, 

 but with short and ineffectual plunges of a foot or two at a time. 



We have kept the Chickaree in cages, but found it less gentle, and 

 more difficult to be tamed, than many other species of the genus. 



Richardson informs us that in the fur countries, " the Indian boys kill 

 many with the bow and arrow, and also take them occasionally with 

 snares set round the trunks of the trees which they frequent." We have 

 observed that during winter a steel-trap baited with an ear of corn, 

 (maize,) placed near their burrows at the foot of large pine or spruce 

 trees, will secure them with the greatest ease. 



GEOGEAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 



The limits of the northern range of this species are not precisely deter- 

 mined, but all travellers who have braved the snows of our Polar regions, 

 speak of its existence as far north as their journeys extended. It has been 

 observed in the 68th or 69th parallel of latitude ; it also exists in Labra- 

 dor, Newfoundland and Canada. It is the most common species in 

 New England and New York, and is by no means rare in Pennsylvania 

 and New Jersey, especially in the hilly or mountainous portions of the 

 latter State. It is seen, in diminished numbers, in the mountains of Vir- 

 ginia, although in the alluvial parts of that State, it is scarcely known ; as 

 we proceed southwardly, it becomes more rare, but still continues to be 

 met with on the highest mountains. The most southern locality to which 

 we have traced it, is a high peak called the Black mountain, in Bun- 

 combe county, N. Carolina. The woods growing in that elevated 

 situation are in some places wholly composed of balsam-fir trees, (Abies 

 halsamea,) on the cones of which these Squirrels feed. There this little 

 animal is quite common, and has received a new English name, viz., that 

 of, " Mountain boomer." Toward the west we have traced it to the 

 mountains of Tennessee ; beyond the Rocky mountains, it does not exist. 

 In the Russian settlements on the Western coast, it is replaced by the 

 Downy Squirrel, {Sc. lanuginosus.) In the vicinity of the Columbia, and 

 for several hundred miles along the mountains South of that river, by 

 Richardson's Columbian Squirrel ; and in the mountainous regions border- 



