LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 



headlong down towards the earth, usually to save 

 himself by catching hold of one branch or another 

 on the way down. If there should chance to be 

 no branches beneath him, he spreads himself out, 

 like a flying squirrel, as he falls, to a remarkable 

 degree of flatness and strikes so lightly as to 

 escape all injury, even on hard snow crust or ice, 

 and scampers away up the tree again without 

 losing so much as a moment of the time he evi- 

 dently considers so precious. They usually open 

 the hemlock cones as fast as they gather them, 

 eating the diminutive seeds, hardly larger than a 

 pin's head, at once allowing the scales to fall as 

 they will ; and as you stand beneath looking up, 

 these come floating and twlnkhng down between 

 the branches like snowflakes on a clear day. 



The red squirrel's winter home varies accord- 

 ing to circumstances. Sometimes it is a compli- 

 cated burrow beneath a stump, with several apart- 

 ments and winding galleries ; sometimes a hollow 

 branch or woodpecker's hole ; while in the ever- 



