A SQUIRREL'S FERRY-BOAT.
[To TRH EDITOR OP TER "SPECTATOR."] SIB,—The facts about squirrel voyages may or may not be accepted by the scientific naturalist, but they have a reputable tradition behind them. In gathering material lately for a children's book about animals, I came across two instances of this very use of rafts. One is given on the authority of William and Mary Howitt. In occurs in a poem called " The Migration of the Grey Squirrels" (by William Howitt), in a volume of "Sketches of Natural History," edited by Mary Howitt for her children in 1834. By 1851 seven editions of the book had appeared, so that plenty of children must have heard of the "fairy-tale." In 1846 a children's magazine called The Tiny library had a prose story containing the same incident, with grey squirrels again as the ferrymen. In each case the tail was used as a sail. Judging from the usual evolution of historical and scientific anecdotes for children at that time, I should imagine the story, whatever its basis in fact, had filtered down from some large natural history book of the eighteenth century.—I am, Sir, &c., F. J.
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