Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1895 — He Does Not Fly. [ARTICLE]

He Does Not Fly.

Of course the flying squirrel has no wings, and he does not really rise and fly; but good Mother Nature has kindly given him a wide fringe of skin running nearly all the way around his body, which forms a very perfect parachute. When he leaps from bis treetop Into the air, and spreads himself, his parachute aud his broad, flat tall enable him to float down easily and gracefully, In a slanting direction, until he alights low down on the trunk of a tree perhaps fifty or even one hundrod feet distant Then he clambers nimbly up to Its top, chooses his direction, and launches forth again, quite possibly to the same tree from which he started. His flight is simply a sailing downward at an angle of about forty-five degrees, with a graceful sweep upward at the last,-to enable him to alight easily.