ubject; and I am sure that you,
children, will never think of eating any kind that you have not first
brought to me. There sits the squirrel. Let us make him show us how he
can leap from one bough to another. I clap my hands and Jack throws a
stone, and off the little fellow goes, taking wonderful leaps. As the
winter approaches the squirrel will be busy laying up stores for
consumption during that season, such as nuts, acorns, and beech-mast.
For the greater part of the winter the squirrel is dormant; on fine
warm days, however, he ventures out of his retreat in the hole of a
tree, visits his cupboard, cracks a few nuts, and then goes to sleep
again. The nest of the squirrel is made of moss, leaves, and twigs
curiously intertwined, and is generally placed between the forked
branches; the young ones, two or three in number, are born in the
month of June. A gentleman, in a letter to Mr. Jenyns, says "a pair
which frequented a tree opposite the window of one of the rooms,
evinced great enmity to a couple of magpies with whom they kept up a
perpetual warfare, pursuing them from branch to branch, and from tree
to tree with untiring agility. Whether this persecution arose from
natural antipathy between the combatants, or from jealousy of
interference with their nests, is not known."

What are those black circular spots some four or five yards in
diameter, so common in the woods of the Wrekin? They are places where
wood has been burnt for charcoal. Always examine such spots, as you
may find rare plants growing upon them which scarcely grow anywhere
else. Here, for instance, is _Flammula carbonaria_ abundant. On these
charcoal spots this fungus delights to grow, and I do not think you
will find it elsewhere. Mr. Worthington Smith tells us it is a very
rare British fungus; it is not mentioned in Mr. Berkley's 'Outlines of
Fungology.' Here is a beautifully marked variety of _Polyporus
perennis_, also very rare; it is tinted with rich sienna, chocolate,
and black; it is found only in these charcoal rings. Let us go farther
on. Look at that splendid bright, orange-yellow fungus growing amongst
the moss in large tufts as it were. Each plant has a tender stem with
short branches; what a number are growing together with roots or lower
portions of the stem closely intertwined! This is _Clavaria
fastigiata_. Here we meet with the sticky _Gomphidius viscidus_, and
here with the handsome _Tricholoma scalpturatus_, and the lovely _T.
rut