440 - Squirrels of B. America. 



and consequently is obliged, during the winter season, to consume 

 as great a quantity of food as at any other. Nature has, there- 

 fore, instructed it to make provision in the season of abundance 

 for the long winter that is approaching; and the quantity of nuts 

 and seeds it often lays up in its store-house, is almost incredible- 

 On one occasion we were present, when a bushel and a half of 

 shell-baiks [Carya alba,) and chesnuts, were taken from a hollow 

 tree occupied by a single pair of these industrious creatures ; al- 

 though generally the quantity of provision laid up by them is con- 

 siderably less. The Chickaree has too much foresight to trust to 

 a single hoard, and it often has several, in difterent localities 

 among the neighbouring trees, or in burrows dug deep in the 

 earth. Occasionally these stores are found under leaves, beneath 

 logs, or in brush-heaps, at other times they are deposited in holes 

 in the ground ; and they are sometimes only temporarily laid by 

 in some convenient situation, to be removed at leisure. When, 

 for instance, nuts are abundant in the autumn, large quantities in 

 the green state, covered by their thick envelope, are collected in 

 a heap near the tree whence they have fallen ; they are then co- 

 vered up with leaves, until the pericarp, or thick outer covering, 

 either falls olf or opens, when the Squirrel is able to carry off the 

 nuts more conveniently. In obtaining shell-barks, butter-nuts, 

 {Juglatis cinerea) chesnuts, hazelnuts, ttc, this squirrel adopts the 

 mode of most of the other species. It advances as near to the 

 extremity of the branch as it can with safety, and gnaws off that 

 portion on which the nuts are dependent. This is usually done 

 early in the morning, and the noise occasioned by the falling of 

 large bunches of chesnut burrs, or clusters of butter-nuts, hickory, 

 or beech-nuts, thus detached from the parent stem, may be heard 

 more than a hundred yards off. Some of the stems attached to 

 the nuts are ten inches or a foot in leui^th. After havino- thrown 

 down a considerable quantity, the squirrel descends and drags 

 them into a heap, as stated above. 



" Sometimes the hogs find out these stores, and make sad havoc 

 in the temporary depot. But Providence has placed much food 

 of a different kind within reach of the red-squirrel during winter. 

 The cones of many of our pines and firs in high northern latitudes 

 are persistent during winter ; and the Chickaree can be supported 

 by the seeds they contain, even should his hoards of nuts fail. 

 This little squirrel seems also to accommodate itself to its situa- 

 tion in another respect. In Pennsylvania, and the southern part 



