It is curious that three pleas for the grey squirrel
have reached me within the week. They are perhaps the result of a stiffening of the campaign of extermination. The editor of the Field and others have formed a committee to organize a concerted attack against an animal that they regard as a peculiarly vicious sort of rat. It is not, of course, all evil, even in England, certainly not in its native haunts. One correspondent sends me very interesting evidence of its value in the distribution of seed. It is argued, and with much plausibility, that its destruction involved also the diminution of that lovely American tree, the white oak, which it is said to have planted, just as rooks plant oaks in England. I hope, a little later, to give some further account of American Opinion. My own chief recollection of this squirrel in America is the lines of bodies hung up in front of the butchers' shops in Albany. I saw one live squirrel with a sparrow in its mouth in the Bronx Zoo ; but Mr. Beebe, who was with me, was quite sure it did little harm in the general ; and there is nobody who knows more about birds or is a fonder protector of them than he. Mr. Middleton, the most active spirit in the little group of Oxford biologists, who have just brought out a monograph, holds the balance between the friends and enemies of the squirrel.
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