ely uses in interpreting his feelings,
is about six inches in length. He wears dark bluish-gray over the back
and half-way down the sides, bright buff on the belly, with a stripe of
dark gray, nearly black, separating the upper and under colors; this
dividing stripe, however, is not very sharply defined. He has long black
whiskers, which gives him a rather fierce look when observed closely,
strong claws, sharp as fish-hooks, and the brightest of bright eyes,
full of telling speculation.

A King's River Indian told me that they call him "Pillillooeet," which,
rapidly pronounced with the first syllable heavily accented, is not
unlike the lusty exclamation he utters on his way up a tree when
excited. Most mountaineers in California call him the Pine Squirrel; and
when I asked an old trapper whether he knew our little forester, he
replied with brightening countenance: "Oh, yes, of course I know him;
everybody knows him. When I'm huntin' in the woods, I often find out
where the deer are by his barkin' at 'em. I call 'em Lightnin'
Squirrels, because they're so mighty quick and peert."

All the true squirrels are more or less birdlike in speech and
movements; but the Douglas is preeminently so, possessing, as he does,
every attribute peculiarly squirrelish enthusiastically concentrated. He
is the squirrel of squirrels, flashing from branch to branch of his
favorite evergreens crisp and glossy and undiseased as a sunbeam. Give
him wings and he would outfly any bird in the woods. His big gray cousin
is a looser animal, seemingly light enough to float on the wind; yet
when leaping from limb to limb, or out of one tree-top to another, he
sometimes halts to gather strength, as if making efforts concerning the
upshot of which he does not always feel exactly confident. But the
Douglas, with his denser body, leaps and glides in hidden strength,
seemingly as independent of common muscles as a mountain stream. He
threads the tasseled branches of the pines, stirring their needles like
a rustling breeze; now shooting across openings in arrowy lines; now
launching in curves, glinting deftly from side to side in sudden
zigzags, and swirling in giddy loops and spirals around the knotty
trunks; getting into what seem to be the most impossible situations
without sense of danger; now on his haunches, now on his head; yet ever
graceful, and punctuating his most irrepressible outbursts of energy
with little dots and dashes of perfect repose. He