he played about, here and there, apparently in quest of nuts, and he frequently came very near us of his own accord; once we might have struck him with ease, by stretching out our parasols. His large eyes were beautiful. This kind of squirrel eats most of our grains, wheat, rye, buckwheat. He swims quite well, and is found as far south as the mountains of Carolina. His fur is thought the best among his tribe.
Passing under a chestnut-tree by the road-side, we had farther occasion to observe how fearless the squirrels are in their interviews with mankind. A little fellow was cutting off chestnut burs with his teeth, that they might drop on the ground; he had already dropped perhaps a dozen bunches; after a while he came down, with another large cluster of green burs in his mouth, with these he darted off into the woods, to his nest, no doubt. But he soon came back, and taking up another large cluster from the ground, ran off again. This movement he repeated several times, without being at all disturbed, though he evidently saw us standing a few yards from him. These gray squirrels are common in every wood, and they say that one of them is capable of eating all the nuts yielded by a large tree; one of them had been known to strip a butternut-tree, near a house, leaving only a very meagre gleaning for the family. These little creatures sometimes undertake the most extraordinary journeys; large flocks of them set out together upon a general migration. Some forty years since a great migration of this kind took place among the gray squirrels, in the northern part of this State, and in crossing the Hudson above Albany, very many of them were drowned. This was in the year 1808.
