Omitting mention of several other red or reddish races of the species met with in various parts of the Continent, reference may be made to the Grecian squirrel (_S. v. lilæus_), in which the tendency to blackness is general if not universal; the general colour being brown, passing into blackish on the hind half of the back and the outer sides of the limbs. This, however, by no means exhausts the colour range of this extremely variable species, for in northern Russia and Siberia we find squirrels (_S. v. argenteus_ and _S. v. sibiricus_) in which the general colour of the winter coat is light French grey, with the long ear-tufts black. It is these grey squirrels which are used in such numbers to form the linings of ladies’ cheap cloaks; but perfect skins, to say nothing of the living animal, are scarcely ever seen in England. For the reception of their young, squirrels build a well-constructed nest, or “drey,” which is oval in shape, and made of fibres and leaves with a lining of moss; its usual position being the fork of a large tree or a hole in the trunk. The fibres are neatly and intricately interwoven; and when the nest is placed in a fork, the entrance is usually made to open near to one of the branches, with the colour of which it agrees very closely. In this comfortable home the female brings forth three or four young, usually in June, which are tended by both parents, with whom they remain till the following year. Although squirrels are stated to make an occasional meal of birds’ eggs, they are in the main strict vegetarians, feeding chiefly upon pine-cones, nuts, beech-mast, bark, buds, and young shoots. Where they are unusually numerous, as in certain parts of Scotland, they are stated to inflict considerable damage on young larch-plantations. When feeding, squirrels sit up and grasp the food in their fore-paws, with which they hold nuts while these are pierced by the chisel-like front teeth. Long flying leaps from tree to tree are frequently taken by these active rodents. THE ROE-DEER (_Capreolus caprea_) The roe-deer, or roebuck, as it is commonly called, is the smallest European representative of the deer family, or _Cervidæ_, and belongs to a small group confined to Europe and northern Asia. So far as external characters are concerned, roe-deer differ from more typical _Cervidæ_, such as the red deer and the fallow deer, by the simpler structure of the relatively small antlers of the bucks, which rise nearly vertically from the head, and carry only three points; the basal, or brow, tines of the red deer being absent. As a distinctive character, common to both sexes, may be mentioned the absence of a tail.