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.