SQUIRRELS.
[To TEE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—It has been a subject of curiosity to me, summering in the much-wooded parts of Surrey, which are as attractive to me, that squirrels are so rare even where, as here, the large. hearted landlord protects them. In woods extremely favour- able to them, and where they are not molested by the keepers, I have sometimes, after many days' search, not been able to see a single squirrel. Inquiry into the customs of the country informs me that their destruction is due to the boys, who organise hunting parties and drive the poor little creatures from tree to tree with much throwing of stones, until, worn out by fatigue and fright, or crippled by a chance hit, they succumb to the juvenile brutality, sometimes "with every bone in their bodies broken," as one informant pats it.
It is a custom in one part of Surrey at least, to organise "Sunday squirrel hunts," for which the boys of the neigh- bourhood gather for their barbarous pastime. Probably there are no Sunday-schools there! This may be a survival of the days of badger and bear baiting, bull and bulldog fights, and the Tarrida, but it seems to me a practice which ought to follow them into desuetude. Leaving the question of the damage done by the beautiful little British quadruped to the larch-growing landlord and its extermination by gunshot un- prejudiced, as a comparatively humane remedy for a largely imaginary evil, this squirrel-baiting seems to me a matter within the scope of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and, I should think, of the Sunday-school and parochial authorities, as a brutalising and immoral sport. Even the landlords who order their keepers to shoot the squirrels would consult their own interests by prohibiting the stoning parties on their property and punishing trespass for such purposes. The squirrel-stoners can hardly be other than, circumstances favouring, incipient poachers. To one who, like myself, lives in daily and intimate familiarity with the little quadruped, and knows its intelligence, the sensitive- ness of its nervous organisation, and its timidity, this " sport " is a horrible barbarism unworthy a day's toleration under any pretext whatever, a disgrace to English humani- ta,rianism.—I am, Sir, Ste.,
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