THE RED SQUIRREL AS A MYCOPHAGIST 211 



such as beef and mutton. The storage of fungi for the winter, 

 by increasing and varying the supply of food, is undoubtedly bene- 

 ficial to the Red Squirrel and is due to an instinct which appears 

 to have been developed in response to severe winter conditions. 



Two Chickens Hung in a Tree. Mr. J. B. Wallis, Principal of 

 the Machray School, Winnipeg, once observed a squirrel which, 

 instead of storing fungi in the branches of a tree, hung up there 

 two chickens. As is well known, the Red Squirrel robs birds' 

 nests and kills birds freely. The killing of the two chickens, 

 therefore, was not very extraordinary ; but the hanging of the 

 chickens in the forked branches of a tree was a very curious and 

 unusual proceeding, and suggests that for once the fungus-storing 

 instinct had become perverted. Mr. Wallis has written to me 

 concerning the incident as follows : 



" A red squirrel had taken up its abode just behind a farm- 

 house near Thornhill, a village some eighty miles W.S.W. of 

 Winnipeg. This squirrel had become quite friendly and showed 

 no fear of its human neighbours. One day, whilst visiting the 

 house, I was called outside and here was the squirrel laboriously 

 dragging by the neck, up a small oak-tree, a chicken nearly as 

 big as itself. On looking more closely, two other chickens were 

 discovered, hung by their heads in forked branches. The three 

 chickens had all been killed by bites at the back of the head. The 

 squirrel, on perceiving my friend and myself, immediately seemed 

 to sense disapproval of his thrifty habits and retired rapidly to a 

 high bough from whence he was dislodged with a charge of number 

 six shot. As a really advanced squirrel, he thus fell a victim to 

 his very advancement." 



Summary. The Red Squirrel of North America not only 

 feeds on the seeds of fir-cones, hazel-nuts, etc., but is also an 

 habitual mycophagist. In the late autumn, it often collects fleshy 

 fungi in large numbers for its winter supply of food, and it stores 

 these fungi sometimes en masse in holes in tree -trunks, old birds' 

 nests, etc., and sometimes on the branches of certain trees. 



