THE FLYING SQUIRRELS.
The Flying Squirrels are so called from having the skin of the sides spread out between the fore and hind legs, so as to constitute a sort of parachute, whereby there are enabled to sail through the air to some distance, and thus take prodigious leaps from tree to tree.
The Flying Squirrels are gregarious, traveling from one tree to another in companies of ten or twelve together. They will fly from sixty to eighty yards from one tree to another. They cannot rise in their flight, nor keep in a horizontal line, but descend gradually, so that in proportion to the distance the tree they intend to fly to is from them, so much the higher they mount on the tree they fly from; that they may reach some part of the tree, even the lowest part, rather than fall to the ground, which exposes them to peril. But having once recovered the trunk of a tree, no animal seems nimble enough to take them. Their food is that of other Squirrels, including nuts, acorns, pine-seeds, berries, &c.