CHILDREN’S COLUMN. 
169 
so far as I am aware, to the peculiar circumstances under which 
I have detailed their occurrence. Do these facts point to 
atavism far remote, or are they evidences of a process of 
reasoning developed under peculiar conditions ? I incline to the 
latter explanation. 
Ealing. W. H. Harris. 
CHILDREN’S COLUMN. 
Squirrels. 
DON’T think you could guess what I have been doing 
this evening. I have been cutting a squirrel’s nails ! 
It was not altogether easy work, for the poor thing was 
afraid, and turned and twisted and plunged, and tried to scratch 
and bite. In his fright he did bite the hand that held him, and 
he got hold of my thumb and made it bleed also. Then he looked 
about with bright eyes, on the alert to get away if only he could 
manage it. I thought all the time what a beautiful, wild, un- 
tamed, and untameable creature he was, and what a shame to 
keep him away from his free woods. He was, fortunately, taken 
from his mother’s nest when he was only a baby, and so is used 
to living in prison ; but, if he were my own, I think I would take 
him into some thick wood some day in the summer time, and 
let him go and find other squirrels and live his own life. I am 
told, however, that this would not be really kind, because he 
has been taken care of in a cage nearly all his days, and is not 
fit now for rough out-door life. Still, I feel so much about it that 
I wish no other squirrel might ever be caught, and I want to 
beg you boys not to make prisoners of happy little wild creatures 
like this. Keeping a rabbit is different, because you can let it 
out in the garden and on the lawn for air and exercise ; but if 
you were to let a squirrel out it would be over the wall or up a 
tree in a minute, and you might never see it again. 
Have you ever seen a squirrel ? It is a very pretty, grace- 
ful, little animal, bright reddish-brown in colour except on the 
breast and under the body, where it is white. It is eight inches 
long without its tail. Measure this length with a yard-measure, 
and you will see what a small creature it is. Its soft, bushy, 
brown tail is more than six inches long — nearly as long as its 
whole self. When it runs over the ground this brush trails 
behind it. When it sleeps it curls itself up like a cat, but uses 
its tail as a blanket to cover its back ; when it eats a nut it sits 
up on its hind-legs, holding the nut in its fore-paws, and letting 
its tail stand up behind it and curl forward over its head as a 
sort of umbrella. It looks very pretty like this, and many 
