SQUIRRELS FEEDING SHEEP.
[To TEE EDITOR OF THE " 8PECTATOR."]
Stn,—I send the enclosed on the chance that it may have escaped the notice of English readers. The chattering which is described indicates that the squirrels in question are of the little but active red variety of North America, as the grey is not a noisy animal:—
" A Dar Harbour gentleman tells this story of how the squirrels on White Island often spend their time in feeding a flock of sheep from a certain orchard there. He says that he and his companion who were duck-shooting there last fall had stopped to rest in an old field in which there was an orchard. A flock of sheep was feeding near by. It was not long before their attention was called to the chirruping of some squirrels in a thicket, and they were surprised to see the sheep suddenly stop feeding and mani- fest great excitement. The squirrels went into the orchard, and climbing into one of the trees resumed their loud chatter, evidently calling the sheep, since the flock made at once for the apple-tree. Then the squirrels began to bite off the apples which fell among the hungry sheep, who would struggle for the fruit like so many schoolboys. The squirrels seemed to enjoy the fun, and after they had dropped a few apples from the first tree they skipped to a distant tree, for which the sheep would make in great confusion. After the squirrels had thus enjoyed an hour's fun with their fleecy neighbours, and supplied them with a suffi- cient quantity of the fruit, they scampered back to their haunts in the thicket, leaving the sheep to resume their grazing."— Lewiston (Me.) Journal.
An English lady who, like myself, is a lover of your pretty and clever sciurus vulgaris, tells me of a bright instance of its wit. She keeps nuts where the wild squirrels can get them, on a window bench, but in a rack from which they can be extricated only one at a time. A squirrel had come down and taken the last nut, and was eating it quietly on the window bench, when another regular customer came, and fnding no nut in the rack, went up to the other, quietly nibbling away, gave him a sturdy box on the ear, and then departed without attempting to take away the nut. The handsome grey squirrel so completely at home in the Central Park of New York is one of the most attractive details in that beautiful public garden, and I have seen and fed to-day a dozen, more or less, running undaunted and unmolested across the paths and " Rotten Rows," sometimes coming to take the nuts from their admi:ers' hands, the delight of old and young, to whom feeding the squirrels in Central Park is a constant amuse- ment. —I am, Sir, &c.,
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