FIG. 73. Squirrel.
THE SQUIRREL.
The squirrel ([fig. 73.]) is a pretty little animal, is only half wild, and from its gentleness, docility, and even innocence of manners, is almost entitled to an exemption from this class. He is neither carnivorous nor injurious, though he sometimes seizes on birds; his common food consists of fruit, almonds, nuts, beech mast, and acorns; he is handsome, lively, alert, and industrious; his eyes are full of fire, he has a good countenance, nervous body, and supple limbs; the beauty of his form is heightened by a spreading tail, resembling a plume of feathers, which he raises above his head, to form a kind of shade against the sun. The under part of his body is furnished with an apparatus to the full as remarkable, and which indicate strong generative faculties. The squirrel may be said to be less a quadruped than any other four-footed animal. He generally holds himself almost upright, using his fore feet like hands in conveying food to his mouth. Instead of hiding under the earth he is continually in the air, approaching the birds by his lightness and activity, like them he dwells upon the tops of trees, traverses the forests, by leaping from branch to branch, builds himself a nest, picks up grains and seed, drinks the dew, and does not descend to the earth but when the trees are violently agitated by the wind. He is never found in fields nor open countries; he approaches not the habitations of men, remains not among bushes and underwood, but resides among the lofty trees of the forest. He avoids the water still more than the earth; and it is even asserted, that when he wants to cross a river, or stream, he uses the bark of a tree as a boat, and makes his tail supply the place of a rudder and sails. He does not sleep, like the dormouse, during winter, but is always awake and lively, insomuch, that if only the trunk of the tree is touched, on which he may be reposing, he instantly flies to another, or conceals himself under a branch. He collects a quantity of nuts during the summer, which he deposits in the hollow part of some old tree, and has recourse to them in the winter; which even then he will endeavour to obtain by scratching off the snow as he passes along. His voice is more shrill and loud than that of the marten; he has besides a loud growl of discontent, which he makes when irritated. As his motions are too quick to walk he generally leaps, or bounds forward; and such is the sharpness of his claws, and agility of body, that he instantaneously climbs a beech tree let the bark be ever so smooth.
During the fine nights in summer the squirrels may be heard crying as they chase each other among the trees. Seemingly averse from the heat of the sun they remain all day in their holes or nests, from which they come at night to feed, copulate, exercise and divert themselves. Their nests are clean, warm, impenetrable to rain, and generally formed where the large branches fork off into small ones. They begin its formation by carrying small twigs, which they interweave with moss; this they repeatedly press and stamp upon to give it capacity and solidity to hold themselves and their young; they only leave one opening, which is near the top, and that so small as to be hardly sufficient for them to go in and out; over the opening is a kind of roof, in a conic form, which shelters the whole, and occasions the rain to run off on each side. The females usually produce three or four at a litter; they come in season in the spring, and bring forth about the end of May, or beginning of June. They change their hair at the close of winter, and the new hair is more red than that which they throw off; they comb and dress it with their fore feet and teeth, are very cleanly, have no ill smell, and their flesh is tolerably good to eat. The hair of their tail is used to make brushes for painters, but their skin is of no value to the furrier.
Several species approach that of the squirrel, though there are few varieties in the species itself. Some few are of an ash-colour, but the most of them are inclined to red. The petits-gris are a different species, and remain always grey. And, without mentioning the flying squirrels, which are very different from the others, the white squirrel of Cambaye, which is very small, that of Madagascar, called tsitsihi, which is grey, and, as Flacourt says, is neither handsome nor easily tamed, the white squirrel of Siam, the grey spotted squirrel of Bengal, the streaked squirrel of Canada, the black squirrel, the large grey squirrel of Virginia, the white striped squirrel of New Spain, the white Siberian squirrel, the variegated squirrel, or mus ponticus, the little American squirrel, those of Brasil and Barbary, the palmist, &c. which form so many separate and distinct species from those which we have been treating of, we shall find them all nearly the same.
SUPPLEMENT.
The squirrel is so very numerous in Siberia, that we may rather suppose it to be a native of the northern than temperate regions. M. Gmelin says, they take them there in traps baited with dry fish. M. Aubry, curate of St. Louis, has an entire black squirrel sent him from Martinico, and which had also little or no hair on its ears.
M. de la Borde mentions a species of squirrel at Guinea, which he says is of a red colour, lives in the woods, feeds on grain, and is about the size of a rat; is always seen alone, and is easily tamed. But I very much doubt whether this is a real squirrel, from its being found in so warm a climate. M. Kalm says there are several species in Pennsylvania, that the smallest sort are the most handsome, and that the larger kind are very destructive to the plantations of maize, and that they will come in large bodies and destroy a whole field in a single night, nay, that they are so mischievous, that a price is set upon their heads. Their flesh is esteemed by the inhabitants, but no value is put upon their skins. Their figures, modes, and manners, he describes to be similar to those of Sweden, and states them to be more numerous in Pennsylvania than formerly.