CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 7. RODENT! A. 
367 
It is tlie prey of the badgers, wliich pursue it even to the depth of its burrows; of falcons, which 
pounce down upon it from the air, and the arrows of the Indians, which reach it from a distance. 
The first lessons of life, everywhere, are comprised in tlie proverb look e'er you leap, and how well 
animals — beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects — learn and practice them is evinced in their sharp, 
Avatchful, fearful looks on every occasion, and especially in the sly, circumspect manner in Avhich 
they go forth, and the trembling alacrity with which they retreat to their hiding-places on the 
slightest intimation of danger. A few ovl\j of the stronger and more andacions species seem insensi- 
ble to fear; all the rest live surrounded with dangers, and obtain subsistence only in the midst 
of perpetual apprehension. The tame animals are, for tlie most part, free from these mental liar- 
assments, but they pay the price in being sacrificed to man as his pleasure or his whims may 
dictate. Man's diflicnlties are different in form and kind, yet are they equally dreadful and nu- 
merous. He is exempt from fear of the claws and teeth of rapacious animals, but he is exposed 
to the attacks of equally destructive social vultures and tigers, and even if he escape these, ho is 
supposed to be surrounded with the invisible feras of the spiritual life. And yet, after all, says 
the philosophical Paley, "this is a happy world." So, indeed, it is, to bird, and beast, and creep- 
ing thing, and to man also, despite all its dangers and all its cares — 
_ For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, 
^ This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned; 
I Left the warm precincts of the cheerful cl&j, 
I If or cast one longing, lingering loolc behind? 
PALM-SQUIERELS. 
Genus T AMI AS: Tamias, the Ground- Squirrels. — Most naturalists consider the Tamias — a 
term signifying keeper of stores — as merely a sub-genus of the squirrels ; they have, indeed, a 
great resemblance to these animals, and are usually called squirrels, but as they have a more 
lengthened cranium, with cheek-pouches, and arc at least partially carth-burrowers and dwellers 
in the ground, beside certain peculiarities in their dentition and in the formation of the ears 
and tail, they may fairly be regarded as constituting a genus by themselves. 
One of the best known is the Palm-Squirrel, Sciurus palmctrum of Linnaeus, and the Pal- 
miste of BufFon. It has plain ears; an obscure pale yellow stripe on the middle of the back, 
another on each side, a third on each side of the belly; the two last at times very faint; the rest 
of the hair on the sides, back, and head, black and red, very closely mixed; that on the thighs and 
legs more red; belly pale-yellow; hair on the tail does not lie flat, but encircles it, is coarse, and 
of a dirty yellow, barred with black; length about thirteen inches, of which the tail measures six 
inches. This is the description of Pennant. Mr. Bennett has figured two varieties in his "Zoo- 
logical Gardens:" one was perfectly black, and exhibited no traces of the usual stripes; the other 
