Red-squirrel 323 



a sort of gall that formed on the spruce trees (P. alba). Cross- 

 bills also were eating them at that time. 



In the autumn the showering abundance of nuts and seeds 

 gives the Red-squirrel a chance to feast, to fatten, and also to 

 lay up store for times of famine ahead; all of which it attends 

 to with admirable assiduity. In the country about Kenora, 

 the principal autumn (and therefore winter and spring) 

 food of the Squirrel is seeds of the jack-pine. But about 

 Carberry the spruce and oaks supply its staples of support. 



The Red-squirrel has three principal sources of winter in the 

 food supply in Manitoba. 



I St. Stores of food and nuts that it has laid up in hollow 

 trees or in underground vaults during the previous season, and 

 over which it exercises the surveillance of a jealous ownership. 



So far as I have been able to observe, the Red-squirrel 

 never buries separate nuts here and there in the ground, after 

 the manner of the Fox-squirrel, nor does it store up any useless 

 husks, but first prepares the food carefully, and stores it in one 

 or two places, usually a hollow log or tree. About Winnipeg, 

 where hollow trees are scarce, I found evidence of its storing 

 this food underground, and farther north, according to Sabine 

 and Richardson:^ 



"These animals * * * are found wherever the white 

 spruce fir grows, living upon its seeds, and passing the winter 

 in holes at the roots of trees, coming out occasionally for food, 

 and to sport in fine weather among the branches.'* 



Osgood says^ that on the Yukon '' little excavations in the 

 moss show where the Chickarees have been digging for roots; 

 and spruce cones tucked away in these and other out-of-the-way 

 places are further evidence of their sagacity. The ground is 

 often strewn for some distance with the scales of spruce cones 

 which they have stripped. Near Lake Marsh I found one 

 such place twenty feet square which was covered six inches deep 

 with scales." 



' Franklin's Land Journey, 1823, p. 663. 

 * N. A. Fauna, No. 19, p. 27, 1900. 



