24 ON THE DISPERSAL OF SEEDS BY MAMMALS. 



destructive especially to cocoa [Theobroma cacod) and to 

 coco-nuts, destroying the latter by biting round holes into the 

 fruit and eating the interior, so that trees near jungle, if un- 

 protected, lose all their fruits. 



But it is on the fruits of oaks and chestnuts that these 

 animals chiefly live. These trees fruit very heavily, more so 

 than any class of tree here, and the ground beneath an oak 

 in fruit is often covered with acorns. The chestnuts {Casta- 

 7iopsis) nearly all have their fruit arranged in close spikes and 

 usually covered v^'itb a prickly involucre. The whole spike 

 readily breaks off the tree, but it is difficult to separate the 

 individual chestnuts. A squirrel seizes a spike and breaks it 

 off, and holding it in its paws attempts to nibble through the 

 prickly husk to eat the fruit and it often happens that owing 

 to the prickles being too sharp for it, it drops the whole spike 

 before it has succeeded in eating more than one nut. 



The squirrels invariably, if possible, when they have gathered 

 one of these fruits run to a short distance to eat it conveniently, 

 so that the nut or acorn may be carried to some distance 

 before it is dropped. The big Sciurus bicolor is an entirely 

 arboreal squirrel living in very dense jungle and very rarely 

 if ever coming down to the ground, and when it takes a fruit 

 it runs to a suitable spot to devour it. It sits transversely 

 on the bough, holding on with its hind feet, its head and fore- 

 arms hanging down over the bough on one side and its tail on 

 the other. In this position it is very likely to drop a nut 

 either too prickly or too smooth for it to hold fast. The 

 smaller squirrels {Sc. notatus and Sc ienuis) when they descend 

 the trees to pick up the fallen acorns or chestnuts, which 

 Sc. bicolor never does, always run up an adjacent tree to 

 eat them, and I have frequently seen one carry an acorn in its 

 mouth for some distance before eating it. I recently saw a 

 small red-bellied squirrel {Sc. jwtatns) eating the fruits of 

 an Elceocarpiis. When it took a fruit, it hung head down- 

 ward from a bough by its hind feet only. Sc. tenuis too 

 usually hangs from the trunk of a tree by its hind feet head 

 downwards when eating acorns. As there is no season 

 here when a squirrel cannot get food, it never stores up 



