A RED SQtIRREL COLONY.
We hear so much of the numbers and range of the grey squirrel (which is said, I think falsely, to attack the smaller squirrel) that it is particularly pleasing to hear of spots where the red is flourishing. One of our greatest authorities on birds journeyed not long since to visit a small East Anglian sanctuary, and found nearly as many squirrels as birds. She counted exactly fourteen from her bedroom window. There are a good many in Huntingdonshire as in Cambridgeshire ; and they used to abound on the borders of Huntingdon and Northampton in the district where first the little owl was released. But the grey have arrived there, and the two seldom flourish together, though there is little or no evidence of direct eviction by the stronger of the weaker. So it is with the weasel and the rat. We have been forced to give up the theory that the weasel—which after all is very small— attacks the rat ; but it remains that the greater the number of weasels—and, indeed, stoats—the fewer the rats.
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