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CHAPTER XVIII.

THE MOON'S ACCOUNT OF A FAMILY OF SQUIRRELS.

'I WILL give you to day," said the Moon, one afternoon, when she came to me early, "a history that I think will please your babes, so call upon them to attend."

They were at play upon the floor, (such little things cannot do much else than play). I took one of them upon my knee, and placed the other on a footstool at my feet, and told them to listen. They looked wonderingly and pleased into my face, as they saw the bright disk of the clear, pale Moon, and as they heard her silver voice begin its melodious notes. I signed to them to be very quiet, and so they were, while the Moon spoke as follows :—

"It is not only upon the human beings of your earth that I look, nor are the affairs of man those

only which claim my attention; I watch with interest and pleasure the proceedings of many of those creatures whom you term the 'inferior animals;' inferior indeed they are to man, who is in soul and body, a being so august, of whom the poet says―

"How complicate, how wonderful is man!

*

Dim miniature of greatness infinite!'

"But notwithstanding their inferiority to man, their instincts, their contrivances, their affections, (and I could almost say, their intelligence), are beautiful, and well deserving of note and observation.

"I wish to tell you, to-day, about a family of squirrels, that I saw a good deal of last year. It was in the pretty wooded county of Hants, which is a little province in the south of the island Britain, that this family lived. One evening, in the spring of the year, I perceived a squirrel peeping about, and leaping from branch to branch; he was a very fine fellow; he appeared to have just waked up from his winter torpor; perhaps you already

know, that during the coldest season of the year, the squirrel falls into a sort of sleep, or, more properly speaking, torpor; in which he remains until the suns of spring revive him again.

"There were other squirrels living in that wood, it was a nice secure place for them; for it formed part of the grounds of a fine old mansion, and was open only to the members of the family who dwelt in the mansion, and to their friends and servants; moreover on one side of the wood lay the shrubberies, and lower down, the flower garden that adorned the house, and delighted its inhabitants and that looked pretty enough to the squirrels' eyes also, when they occasionally took a stroll that way; on the other side of the wood was a kitchen garden flanked round by a high wall; but a wall is no obstacle to a squirrel, who can climb it with great ease. Not far off was a nutwood, and scattered all around the neighbouring lands, as well as in the wood, were oaks and beeches, so that the bushytailed inhabitants had abundance of food always at hand.

"Great respect was paid to the squirrels by the dwellers in the mansion, who delighted to see them leap from branch to branch over their heads, in the wood, or run swiftly up a tree. Since that family had lived there, no squirrel had been injured by them; the chief gardener did, indeed, sometimes grumble, and wish that his master and mistress would allow the squirrels to be shot, for they took so many nuts, and gnawed so much of his best fruit, whilst it was yet hard, that they almost provoked his patience; however, once or twice when he had hinted the wish, he had found there was so little hope of carrying his point, that he contented himself afterwards by doing what he could to preserve his fruit trees, and submitting patiently to such losses as he could not escape.

"But to return to the squirrel of which I began to speak. I saw him, as I said, peering about as if he was seeking for something. Up one tree, and down another, he went, every now and then taking a springing leap in the upper branches. He looked particularly into a hollow place in a piece of gray

rock that jutted out of the ground. He raked in it with his feet; it was not far above the ground, and did not seem to please him. There was a fragment of ruined stonewall standing at the back of the wood, where out-houses once had been, though there only remained now this ruinous remnant; in it were several hollows. He looked into them. There was one in particular, a good large hole, where a stone had fallen out at sometime; into that he looked long, and scraped in it so much with his claws, that I began to think he was going to make use of it for some purpose or other; but it would not do; it seemed that he was rather hard to please. Again he returned to the trees; there he fixed upon a fine, old elm, which had a good, round, rather deep hollow in its trunk; with this he seemed much delighted, scraping in it with his claws, and making a squeaking tone of pleasure.

"The evening was now closing in, and the squirrel retired somewhere, I know not where, for he slipped off while I was for a few moments behind a cloud. The next day, however, I saw him