which would lose some of their charm if their vast silences were
not sometimes broken by his petty scoldings.

As with most wild creatures, the squirrels that live in touch
with civilization are much keener witted than their wilderness
brethren. The most interesting one I ever knew lived in the trees
just outside my dormitory window, in a New England college town.
He was the patriarch of a large family, and the greatest thief
and rascal among them. I speak of the family, but, so far as I
could see, there was very little family life. Each one shifted
for himself the moment he was big enough, and stole from all the
others indiscriminately.

It was while watching these squirrels that I discovered first
that they have regular paths among the trees, as well defined as
our own highways. Not only has each squirrel his own private
paths and ways, but all the squirrels follow certain courses
along the branches in going from one tree to another. Even the
strange squirrels, which ventured at times into the grove,
followed these highways as if they had been used to them all
their lives.

On a recent visit to the old dormitory I watched the squirrels
for a while, and found that they used exactly the same paths,--up
the trunk of a big oak to a certain boss, along a branch to a
certain crook, a jump to a linden twig and so on, making use of
one of the highways that I had watched them following ten years
before. Yet this course was not the shortest between two points,
and there were a hundred other branches that they might have
used.