2l8 



AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



very beautifully of the squirrels; Mr. Ernest Ingersoll 

 has shown himself a true lover of them, and has made 

 them a delightful study; Mr. John Muir has told some 

 interesting facts about the Western Douglas squirrel in 

 his book on "The Mountains of California;" there is 

 a good imitation of the gray squirrel's bark in Mrs. 

 Olive Thorne Miller's "Little Brothers of the Air;" 

 and do you remember the squirrels which delighted 

 Mr. Jenkin Lloyd Jones when, with his Jess, he rested 

 in the park of a small Western town? 



In a recent novel, too, Mr. Irving Bacheller's 

 "Eben Holden," old Uncle Eben trees a squirrel with 

 the help of his dog, and then brings him "down out 

 of the tree by hurling stones at him" — a method which 

 some others of us have tried, but have not always been 

 able to make successful. There is also a quaint story 

 by Uncle Eben of Squirreltown and Frog Harbor; and 

 the wild man of the woods used to trap squirrels for 

 his food. One of Frank Stockton's stories is "The 

 Squirrel Inn." 



In England Edward Jesse has written of the squir- 

 rel with much appreciation in his "Scenes and Occu- 

 pations of Country Life" and "Gleanings in Natural 

 History." Richard Jefferies also speaks of the squirrel 

 more than once in his novels, as in "After London" 

 and "Wood-Magic," and has this passage in his essay 

 on "Marlborough Forest:" 



"High over head in the beech-tree the squirrel peeps down 

 from behind a bough — his long, bushy tail curved up over his 

 back, and his bright eyes full of mischievous cunning." 



But perhaps it will pay us to turn from these 

 modern writers on the squirrel and see what has been 



