SQUIRRELS. 
287 
he played about, here and there, apparently in quest of nuts, and 
he frequently came very near us of his own accord ; once we 
might have struck him with ease, by stretching out our parasols. 
His large eyes were beautiful. This kind of squirrel eats most of 
our grains, Avheat, rye, buckwheat. He swims quite well, and is 
found as far south as the mountains of Carolina. His fur is thought 
the best among his tribe. 
Passing under a chestnut-tree by the road-side, we had farther 
occasion to observe how fearless the squirrels are in their inter- 
views with mankind. A little fellow was cutting off chestnut 
burs with his teeth, that they might drop on the ground ; he had 
already dropped perhaps a dozen bunches ; after a while he came 
down, with another large cluster of green burs in his mouth, with 
these he darted off into the woods, to his nest, no doubt. But 
he soon came back, and taking up another large cluster from the 
ground, ran off again. This movement he repeated several times, 
without being at all disturbed, though he evidently saw us stand- 
ing a few yards from him. These gray squirrels are common in 
every wood, and they say that one of them is capable of eating- 
all the nuts yielded by a large tree ; one of them had been known 
to strip a butternut-tree, near a house, leaving only a very meagre 
gleaning for the family. These little creatures sometimes under- 
take the most extraordinary journeys ; large flocks of them set out 
together upon a general migration. Some forty years since a 
great migration of this kind took place among the gray squirrels, 
in the northern part of this State, and in crossing the Hudson 
above Albany, very many of them were drowned. This was in 
the year 1808. 
