SETON — MIGRATIONS OF THE GRAYSQUIRREL 
55 
These migrations are now a thing of the past, so that we can but 
piece together the accounts of the earlier naturalists, in seeking to 
explain such movements of the squirrel population. There are not 
many of these records, and those that exist are commonly deficient in 
not stating the direction or extent of the migration. The earliest I find 
is in Kahn’s ‘^Travels,” p. 316. He speaks of a squirrel migration from 
the mountains to the lowlands of eastern Pennsylvania in 1747. 
The best observations are by Dr. P. R. Hoy of Racine, Wisconsin. 
He witnessed a great migration of squirrels from Wisconsin, southwest, 
for four weeks in the early autumn of 1842, and again in 1847, 1852, 
and 1857. 
Dr. S. P. Hildreth (Pioneer History of the Ohio Valley), 1848, quotes 
from the manuscript of Col. James Baker, of the graysquirrel ‘‘coming 
in millions from the north to the south, destroying whole fields of corn 
in a few days.’^ (Mam. Ohio, H. W. Brayton, 1882.) 
Doctor Bachman states that in the autumn of 1808 or 1809 great 
hordes came from the west into northern New York and Vermont; and 
of yet another migration in 1819 on the Ohio, 100 miles below Cincin- 
nati, when for about 130 miles he saw “large numbers of Squirrels 
swimming across the river” ‘‘strewed as it were on the surface of the 
water.” This is the only available note that indicates the width of the 
migrating army. 
Robert Kennicott records a migration from Canada across the Niagara 
River into western New York. According to the Bay City Tribune 
(Michigan) February 17, 1907, there was a great squirrel migration 
there in 1866. 
A careful review of the evidence makes it very clear that these move- 
ments of the squirrels were not in any true sense migrations. That 
is, they were not seasonal or annual or periodic or balanced by a return 
movement of any kind. They were simply wholesale movements of a 
huge population from one region to another. Judging from numerous 
parallel cases, such a movement could arise only from one of five causes : 
Flood, fire, famine, pests or over-population. There is no evidence 
for the first or second; as to famine, Kennicott, who has the most com- 
plete and detailed observations of all, makes a point of it that they are 
not driven forth by want of food, for the animals are fat at the time 
and the regions they leave still abound with food. Furthermore, the 
season when they go forth is early autumn, the time of the greatest 
food abundance. The migration that Merriam reports in the Adiron- 
dacks and that Jackson describes in Wisconsin are very small affairs 
and in all respects of a different class. 
