SCIURUS HUDSONIUS. 
I I I 
SCIURUS HUDSONIUS Pallas. 
Red Squirrel ; Chickaree. 
The Red Squirrel is one of the commonest and best known of the 
mammalian inhabitants of the Adirondacks, being found in all parts 
of the Wilderness at all seasons of the year. 
His diet is more varied than that of our other squirrels. In addi- 
tion to nuts and acorns he feeds upon a variety of seeds and roots, 
the buds and leaf-stems of certain trees, several species of “ toad- 
stools” and other fungi, seeds from the cones of pines and spruces, 
fruits and berries of many kinds, beetles, birds’ eggs, and even young 
birds. And in winter he does not look with disdain upon scraps ot 
meat or fish that may have been left within his reach. 
He is the most hilarious of the pre-eminently merry and frolicsome 
family to which he belongs, and his joyous and jubilant nature 
enables him to triumph over the sense of gloom that pervades the 
sombre coniferous forests of the North, rendering him cheerful and 
contented in the darkest and most impenetrable of our evergreen 
thickets. Indeed, it is this happy faculty of adapting himself and 
his modes of life to a diversity of surroundings that has permitted 
his wide dispersion, the present boundaries of his habitat being co- 
extensive with those of the wooded portions of the northern part of 
our continent.* 
The Chickaree combines qualities so wholly at variance, so unique, 
so incomprehensible, and so characteristic withal, that one scarcely 
knows in what light to regard him. His inquisitiveness, audacity, 
inordinate assurance, and exasperating insolence, together with his 
insatiable love of mischief and shameless disregard of all the ordinary 
customs and civilities of life, would lead one to suppose that he was 
little entitled to respect; and yet his intelligence, his untiring perse- 
verance, and genuine industry, the cunning cleverness displayed in 
many of his actions, and the irresistible humor with which he does 
* The species and its several geographical races are here spoken of collectively. 
