264 MAMMALIA. 



severest weather its tracks may be seen on the snow throughout the 

 winter, its long tail leaving a furrow by which it may always be rec- 

 ognized. In the autumn it lays up an immense store of provision 

 for so small an animal. The beechnut constitutes its favorite food, 

 and in seasons when it is to be had no other article of diet is sought. 

 The hoards are generally established in holes in trees or in hollow 

 logs, and are, therefore, frequently discovered by the wood-chopper. 

 The beechnuts they contain are usually shucked, and I have, on sev- 

 eral occasions, removed two or three quarts from a single hoard. 



Robert Kennicott tells us that in western New York, Joseph 

 Kennicott found, " within a stump in a clover-field, several quarts of 

 clean seed of red clover, collected by a family of these mice." * 



They sometimes select odd sites for their store-houses. In October 

 and November, i88i,Drs. Hoadley, Fisher, and myself occupied the 

 neat log-house that is commonly known as the "Club Camp " at Big 

 Moose Lake. We were here much annoyed by the White-footed 

 Mice, which not only made way with any eatables that happened to 

 be lying about, but also lugged off a quantity of the cotton we had 

 brought for stuffing birds. They even climbed up to our drying- 

 boards and pulled out the cotton which we had carefully tucked under 

 the shoulders and backs of the newly-made bird skins. No place 

 was free from their depredations, and the skins were only made 

 secure by suspending them from the ceiling by means of cleats 

 fastened to the smooth spruce rafters. The loss of the cotton was a 

 matter of no small consequence, since it had to be carried there from 

 a distance of more than forty miles. A careful search was begun, 

 but no trace of it could be found till a small cupboard, supposed to be 

 mouse -proof, was unlocked, when the whole of it fell in view. In 

 this same cupboard we discovered an old shoe well filled with crackers 

 and sugar which had been taken from the kitchen, and beechnut 

 meats which had been brought from some distance outside. The 



* Quadrupeds of Illinois, 1857, p. 91. 



