In our judgments of the respective intellectual capacities of the animals which lend themselves to human companionship, any approach to scientific accuracy in our comparative psychology demands that we should compare our subjects in their native condition. Heredity plays a part which often overtops Nature, and we have no means of ascertaining the effect of such intellectual progress in the animal as may be due to the influence of the mind of man in the process of domestication. When I was living much with hunters in the American wilderness, I have been struck with the differences between dogs of the same parentage owned by hunters of different temperaments and intellectual capacities, and it is hardly saying too much to say that the greater part of the power which is very like that of reasoning in the domestic animals is the result of human influence. In the range of my own studies of animals in a state of nature, the squirrels have given me the greatest evidence of the capacity for humanisation, and, at the same time, of such intellectual powers as are within the limited range of the creatures we call brute. In the different species of Sciurus which I know, there is a wide difference in the amenability to human influence, the vulgaris being that which wins closest to the heart of the lover of animals, nor do I know another creature of the lower orders capable of exciting so much affection in gentle souls.

The numerous expressions of pleasure at the reading of my history of two pet squirrels, printed in the Century Magazine several years ago, persuaded me that in a more permanent and convenient form it may serve still further the purpose for which it was written, and, in a more distinctly pointed appeal, find its way to a place amongst the teachings of a finer and broader humanity than that which commonly limits our sympathies. The history—for it is the simple record as faithful to the facts as my memory serves—of the little lives it deals with, was written not merely to preserve the evidence of the unsuspected intelligence and moral qualities of a humble creature, but to help in stimulating the interest of my fellow-men in the enjoyment of existence by the fellow-beings over whom we have, or assume, the lordship.

The entirely modern feeling of responsibility for the protection of the lower animals, which has given rise to the noble Associations for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, is to my mind one of the most irrefragable proofs of a definitely higher attainment of our modern civilisation, and I have little respect for the Christianity or humanity of any one who has no thought to spare the lower creatures useless pain. But the early experiences of my own life, gained in a country and under circumstances in which the killing of wild creatures was often the necessary means of obtaining food, and the recognition of the unquestionable utility of field sports as contributing to the greater health, mental and physical, of men, forbid me to join in an undiscriminating crusade against those field sports; but from having for many of my earlier years been an ardent sportsman, I have grown so tender of the suffering of my fellow-creatures of the lower ranks in creation, that nothing could now induce me to take the life of a wild creature, except the necessity of protecting another which needed protection and deserved it. I do not discuss the question; I feel for myself, and conform my own conduct to my feelings, without pretending to prescribe for others. I have derived so much real happiness from the cultivation of my love for the animals I used to kill that my opinion is an interested one, and the little story of one of my experiences is told in the hope that it may show some others the greater delight of loving over killing.

Nor should my history be taken as a plea for keeping animals caged. The cultivation of feelings of tenderness towards their kind might well repay, in the large account of profit and loss, the teaching children to make pets of wild creatures, but I cannot justify keeping any animal in a cage or in a manner which makes a normal activity impossible. The question of responsibility for keeping them in captivity I leave in others’ cases to themselves; in my own, there is more pain than pleasure in their captivity. I apprehend that we know so little about the sources of pain and pleasure in animals that we may sometimes consider that to be pain which is not so—and the animal may be no more capable of choosing its greatest happiness than are children, whom we constantly prevent from doing what they most desire to do. My Hans in his eagerness to escape would probably have gone to a speedy death—with me he had a sure protection, and if, as a result of that protection, he had his life shortened, his chance of life was on the whole increased, and, as the result showed, he found a certain advantage in it. How far the balance lay on the side of liberty or my form of captivity, no one can be entitled to decide; each case and every person may have a different standard. The general rule, it seems to me, should be that the highest apparent good must be permitted to justify the means, and in my own experience, the keeping of tamed animals of any species is for children of almost any growth the means of opening the nature to a higher attainment of human sympathy. In the young the habit of regarding their pets as objects of tenderness and sympathy is an unquestionable good, and in my acquaintance with humanity I have never found a man or woman who really loved animals who was not at heart a good man or woman.

Nor is there force in the objection, raised by a friend who is devoted to certain forms of humanitarian activity, that there is such need of work for the human sufferers that there is no place for keeping pets. The capacity of either human love or human charity is not diminished by the satisfaction of the thirst for something of our own on which to pour out our love. Whatever awakens in the heart a new passion increases its capacity for any and every other worthy object—

The love of animals is the primary course in the school of humanity, and a child once taught to love its pet, not because it is its personal property, but because it needs and reciprocates the love given it, and the protection our superior power and position enables him to give it, is better prepared to understand any humanitarian work. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is the logical predecessor to that for the Protection of Children; and as the sense of property is the mother of thrift, so the love of our pets is the beginning of the love of all living things. I have always been a lover of animals, but never kept one in close confinement, and perfect intimacy with a creature born in freedom can never be gained from one in a cage. The healthy enjoyment of them can only be full, therefore, when such a liberty is accorded as gives full play to their peculiarities. The squirrel, if taken young, can be made to enjoy his domestication so completely that he makes no attempt to escape, and may be trusted in the open, with due precaution from cats. My desire would be to so treat them in the free state as to educate them to entire familiarity and to breeding in that condition. That this is attainable is my conviction. I think the history of my two squirrels, and of several others I know of, proves the capacity of the species for a measure of devotion and teachableness of which few people have any conception, and should the domestication become practical, the development through heredity suggests the possibility of a race of companions to man of a most fascinating quality.

But this the life in a cage will never lead to, and I should be sorry that my little story should induce any lover of animals to condemn one of these sprightly and clever beings to prison bars, even with the solace of the wheel, which is the squirrel’s joy, and is a not uncommon fate for its kind. I question if the squirrel taken in maturity can ever be made to reconcile itself to, or live long in, any prison. For him the best result I can hope for from the reading of my little book would be the protection and kindness we owe to every one of the harmless creatures over which the order of Creation has given us the authority and power of life and death, with, as it seems to me, the duty of protection. In the desire to mitigate the suffering caused by the struggle for existence, I can only constitute myself the advocate of those creatures which seem to me to best repay it, as we do with our fellow-men. The dog has his friends and the cat hers—I give my heart amongst the dumb beasts to the squirrel, and accept the obloquy, if any, of the championship. Having found the little being’s heart, I confidently make my simple appeal to all gentle souls, that have found the companionship of a bird or beast the solace of lonely hours, to protect by all the means in their power the frolicsome spirit of the woods.

I am told that the squirrel destroys the forest, and I know that in some forests relentless war is waged against him—war with guns, which is at least semi-merciful, but also with traps, that crush and torture this, the most delicate and sensitive creature that runs on four legs, leaving him mangled, and perhaps for hours tearing his tender limbs in an exquisite torture which even a tiger should be spared. I do not deny that in times of starvation the squirrel eats the green tips of the twigs of certain trees, but they have always done so, and when Nature ruled the forest and its tenants, were the trees truncated and dwarfed? I have gone through the Black Forest, looking in vain for the truncated trees, and in the pine-forests, in England, where I have been able to investigate, I have never seen the work of the squirrels’ teeth.^[1] Yet I will not deny that when the poor little fellow, intelligent as he is, is hard pushed for food, he may eat young wood and bite into the bark of trees for the sap to quench his thirst; but instead of angering the great land-owners by taking his little tithe of what Nature has given for the universal good, he ought to induce them to provide the means of a normal subsistence for him and his kind, and to put out dishes of water to save their trees. It would cost less than killing them off. Such evidence from disinterested quarters as I have been able to collect leads to the conclusion that the damage done by the squirrel to the forest is trivial, and probably does not repay the forester for the expense of persecuting him. The following statement by an intelligent Scotch gamekeeper, Mr. James Mutch, is sent me by one of my squirrel-loving colleagues, and to me it is very conclusive, as it is not only the evidence of a woodsman, but of a clever observer and constitutional naturalist.

“I received your letter regarding the squirrel. You are quite right in supposing it was an exaggerated idea that they did a lot of damage to trees. I have often been told the same by foresters, and requested to shoot them. But as I never shoot wantonly, I have often studied the habits of the beautiful animal. There are a great many of them here. They used to shoot them before I came, but after I explained to Colonel F—— they were not disturbed. The food of the squirrel is cones or seed of mostly all kinds of trees—the trees we have here—spruce-pine, Scotch fir or pine, larch, oak, hazel, beech, elm. I have never seen a squirrel eating or destroying the young shoots of forest trees, and there are thousands of young trees here, Scotch fir or pine, the kind they are blamed for destroying, and I am safe to say that I could not point out one tree damaged by a squirrel. The squirrel also eats fungi of some sorts, particularly the red kind. The only thing that vexes me with him is that he will rob a nest sometimes, and it is always the nest of the chaffinch. Why I think it does that, is because the chaffinch makes such a noise when it sees it at that season. The squirrel wants to get it away from the vicinity of his own nest, so as not to be betrayed itself, as it is not for food, because it only breaks eggs or kills the young; it does not eat them.^[2] There is no doubt it is for a purpose, and Nature has given it that great instinct. I regret to say there are so many pretty animals and birds destroyed (from mere fanciful whims), that do no one damage. The poor heron used to be shot here too, but now we have a nice colony of them, and they are so pretty and amusing when they have their nests....”

Another letter from a clergyman, Rev. Mr. Stevenson, also resident in the country where the complaints of the damage done by Sciurus are loudest, says:

“I will duly investigate as to the squirlies. My own observation of their tree-cutting propensities would limit these almost exclusively to the common spruce and some other species of fir. Of these, at certain seasons, they nibble off lots of the tips of the small branches, for the sake apparently of some edible bit—but I never saw a leading branch damaged, and so never knew the tree to be much the worse of them.

“Lots of tips of the smaller branches (chiefly the smaller ones, but not exclusively) of the Scotch fir come tumbling down at certain seasons. But this is not done by squirrels. It is done by the caterpillar of an insect.^[3] The insect pierces the soft young part of the branch near the tip, and lays its egg near its centre. The caterpillar bores away the pith, eating it. This enfeebles the stem, which breaks off on the slightest provocation, as of wind. I have seen the ground covered with such, but every one on examination I found to be tunnelled by the caterpillar, the insect form of which I forget the name of. Once I remember I saw a squirrel eating the buds of the sycamore, in the spring.”

Other testimony of the highest authority shows that the squirrels, while undoubtedly eating the young wood when nothing better offers, take really a very small tithe of the realm which was once all their own. Whether stern capital can afford this small taxation on its interest, it is not for me to decide. At least, we have a right to hope that where forestry is not a speculation, the squirrel may be protected when his nature is understood. And since this book was published I have had an experience in my own woodland, showing that when food of any kind and water is provided for them the squirrels harm nothing.

In the large parks in the American cities—New York, Richmond, Philadelphia, Baltimore (in Cambridge, even in the private grounds they are protected,)—the American grey squirrel is acclimatised, and grows very familiar, so much so, that to people with whom they become acquainted, they will come to be fed, and search for their food in the pockets of the friend they recognise. Nothing prevents this charming sight from being common in the English parks (where indeed many proprietors already forbid the destruction of the squirrel), but the want of protection of the little creature, for he is already far more advanced on the road to friendly relations than the American varieties, which are generally shot when seen in their native resorts, the grey squirrel especially, it being large enough to become an article of food.

For the Sciurus vulgaris there is also the classical association to entitle him to our sympathy, for there is no doubt that the pointed ear of the Faun is derived from the pretty tufted ear of this spirit of the woods, whose quaint and weird ways in the forest could not have escaped the acute observation of the Greek, though he was no great lover of the forest. Before the use of the easy methods of destruction, and when the passion of killing harmless creatures for the killing’s sake did not exist, the squirrel was probably a much more familiar animal than it is now with us, and with its intense vivacity and curious audacity, could not have failed to interest greatly the subtle Greek mind. Where everything out of the range of proper human cognisance was preternatural, the ways of the predecessors of Billy and Hans could hardly escape the suspicion of so much kinship with the lower gods, as to induce the nature-loving Greek to make Sciurus (s???????—“Shadow-Tail”) cousin of the forest deities, perhaps in the fancy of some unrecorded Darwin, the progenitor of Faunus himself.