MAMMALIA. 191 
[60.] 4. Scrurus nicer. (Linn.) Black Squirrel. 
Sciurus niger. Say, Long’s Expedition, vol. i. p. 262. 
Otchitamon. ALGONQUINS. 
So much confusion has crept into the accounts of the American squirrels, that 
great uncertainty, respecting the species alluded to by authors, must exist, until 
some resident naturalist favours the world with a good monograph of the squirrels 
of that country. The black squirrels have been considered by some to be a 
variety of the scturus cinereus, or of the sc. vulpinus, and by others have been 
referred to the sc. capistratus. M. Desmarest describes a small black squirrel, 
which is distinguished from the large black variety of the masked squirrel, by the 
softness of its fur. Pennant’s black squirrel is evidently the sc. capistratus of 
later writers. 
The squirrel, which is the subject of this article, is larger than the écureil gris 
de la Caroline of M. F, Cuvier (lesser gray squirrel, Pennant, Hist. Quad.), and 
rather smaller than the ‘‘ large gray squirrel”? of Catesby. It is not an uncommon 
inhabitant of the northern shores of Lakes Huron and Superior, where the greater . 
or smaller gray squirrels are never seen, and is by far the largest squirrel existing 
on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, to the northward of the Great Lakes. 
Tt does ‘not extend further north than the 50th parallel of latitude, but its range 
to the southward cannot be determined until the species of American squirrels are 
better known. It is probable that it is not rare in the United States. There are 
at present two pairs of American gray squirrels in the menagerie of the Zoological 
Society, which differ from each other in size, and in the smaller kind (lesser gray 
squirrel) having a tawny-coloured belly. Both these kinds have, as was pointed 
out to me by Mr. Vigors, a peculiar wideness in the posterior part of the body, 
and a fulness of the skin of the flanks, being an approach to the form of a 
pteromys. In the scwrus Hudsonius, the hind quarters are as slender and distinct 
from the flanks, as in common European squirrels; and there does not appear to 
have been any peculiar extension of the skin of the flanks, in the specimen of a 
black squirrel procured for me at Penetanguishene, by Mr. Todd, surgeon to the 
naval depot there, and from which the following description was drawn up. 
