The energy and unfailing variety in the performances of red squirrels always keep the attention of their human neighbors. Among other interesting activities, their pursuit of one another up and down and around the trunks of trees, over the ground, along logs, back and forth in the most reckless abandon, is most entertaining to watch. These pursuits among the young are playful and harmless, but among the males in spring are of the most deadly character. I have seen the victim go up and down tree after tree, shrieking in fear and agony and leaving a trail of blood on the snow as he tried to escape his truculent pursuer. Such scenes as this, combined with our knowledge of its bird-killing habits, appear belied by the exquisite grace and beauty of this squirrel as it sits on a branch and sends its musical cadences trilling through the primeval forest. So confirmed are red squirrels in the destruction of bird life, however, they should not be permitted to become very numerous anywhere and it may eventually become necessary to outlaw them wherever found. =THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL= (=Sciurus douglasi= and its relatives) (_For illustration, see page 546_) In all details of size, form, notes, and habits the Douglas squirrel gives testimony to its descent from the same ancestral stock as the common red squirrel (_Sciurus hudsonicus_). The typical Douglas squirrel, represented in the accompanying illustration, is one of several geographic races of a species which ranges from the Cascades and Sierra Nevada to the Pacific, and from British Columbia south to the San Pedro Martir Mountains of Lower California. The home of the Douglas squirrel is amid the wonderful coniferous forests of western Oregon, Washington, and southern British Columbia. As in other mammals of this extremely humid region, the colors of its upperparts are dark brown, in strong contrast to the much paler and grayer colors of the closely related subspecies living in the clearer and more arid climate of the Sierra Nevada in California. These squirrels are known locally by a variety of common names, including pine squirrel, redwood squirrel, and “drummer.”