Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstra25271894roya).pdf/58

 destructive especially to cocoa (Theobroma cacoa) and to coco-nuts, destroying the latter by biting round holes into the fruit and eating the interior, so that trees near jungle, if unprotected, lose all their fruits.

But it is on the fruits of oaks and chestnuts that these animals chiefly live. These trees fruit very heavily, more so than any class of tree here, and the ground beneath an oak in fruit is often covered with acorns. The chestnuts (Castanopsis) nearly all have their fruit arranged in close spikes and usually covered with a prickly involucre. The whole spike readily breaks off the tree, but it is difficult to separate the individual chestnuts. A squirrel seizes a spike and breaks it off, and holding it in its paws attempts to nibble through the prickly husk to eat the fruit and it often happens that owing to the prickles being too sharp for it, it drops the whole spike before it has succeeded in eating more than one nut.

The squirrels invariably, if possible, when they have gathered one of these fruits run to a short distance to eat it conveniently, so that the nut or acorn may be carried to some distance before it is dropped. The big Sciurus bicolor is an entirely arboreal squirrel living in very dense jungle and very rarely if ever coming down to the ground, and when it takes a fruit it runs to a suitable spot to devour it. It sits transversely on the bough, holding on with its hind feet, its head and forearms hanging down over the bough on one side and its tail on the other. In this position it is very likely to drop a nut either too prickly or too smooth for it to hold fast. The smaller squirrels (Sc. notatus and Sc. tenuis) when they descend the trees to pick up the fallen acorns or chestnuts, which ''Sc. bicolor'' never does, always run up an adjacent tree to eat them, and I have frequently scen one carry an acorn in its mouth for some distance before eating it. I recently saw a small red-bellied squirrel (Sc. notatus) eating the fruits of an Eleocarpus. When it took a fruit, it hung head downward from a bough by its hind feet only. ''Sc. tenuis'' too usually hangs from the trunk of a tree by its hind feet head downwards when eating acorns. As there is no season here when a squirrel cannot get food, it never stores up