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.