SQUIRRELS FEEDING SHEEP. [To TER EDITOR. or THY ' Srsorazos.1
Sin,—The explanation of Mr. Pownal in the Spectator of December 3rd as to the squirrel and sheep incident does not explain satisfactorily to me. Knowing the habits of the squirrel, I know that they only eat apples under a pressure of hunger. I have five species of squirrels, and not one of them will ordinarily taste an apple, though they will all eat a little bit of a ripe pear. They are pampered, no doubt, bat even when purposely kept hungry they will only eat a piece of raw apple as large as half a hazel-nut. They would not, therefore, go from tree to tree to feed themselves, and if they were so hungry as to be willing to eat apples at all, a very small piece of one would satisfy them. Trusting, therefore, that the story from the American paper is true, which I do not vouch for, there is something more than individual appetite in it. Squirrels will only occasionally eat either fruit or animal food, the latter under press of hunger. There is a stupid superstition amongst keepers that they break up pheasants' nests—I think only a pretext to justify shooting them—but I have put their eggs in the cages of three kinds of my squirrels, the largest and most general feeders, and not one would touch an egg, or even taste it when broken for them. My English squirrels, which have access to the grounds and open air of the garden, were once noticed to taste an earth-worm, and often eat the little insects that live
on the fir-trees, but no other form of animal food have they ever accepted, save now and then a taste of bacon, which seems to excite curiosity through the salt. A single roasted apple (the only form in which they will eat it) lasts my pair of English squirrels a week, and is rarely finished. And while speaking of squirrels, I remember that several observations on their habit of hiding their nuts in the ground have been made, and wonder expressed as to their faculty of finding them. I noticed one of mine (an American grey) one day go and dig at a bit of trampled ground in their enclosure where no external sign indicated a hiding-place, and after uncovering a nut, with the greatest precision cover it up carefully again and pat the earth as smooth as before. As all the squirrels, eight in number, were constantly trampling this piece of ground, he could have had no private mark on it, and must have traced
it by the smelL—I am, Sir, Ste., W. J. STILLMAN.
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