384 Life-histories of Northern Animals 



the white, but this does not make it return to its winter sleep. 

 On April 27, 1892, in Manitoba, an unprecedented snow storm 

 occurred and covered the ground a foot deep. Next day the 

 Ground-squirrels were seen in thousands running about. So 

 far from becoming scarce under the trying weather, they seemed 

 rather to have increased, at least they became unusually 

 prominent. 



In the mild season of 1905, however, A. S. Barton writes 

 me, these winter-sleepers came out during February in the 

 country about Boissevain. 



Having broken their sleep, they need food, but the natural 

 supplies have not yet begun to grow, and starvation might be 

 their lot had they not been careful to lay up a store the year 

 before, when there was abundance in the land. 



Thus April is the season for which chiefly they gathered 

 the crop of the summer gone by, and the month is given over to 

 love and feasting, without care for the food of to-morrow. 



A number of specimens examined at the end of the month 

 (April 27 and 28) had their stomachs filled with the first appear- 

 ing grass. 



HOMR The home-region of each individual is doubtless very small ; 



it probably never ventures a hundred yards from its own door. 



REGION 



sociA- This is the most sociable of our three Ground-squirrels, 



as it commonly nests in straggling colonies, the members of 



which doubtless profit by each other's presence in learning of 



approaching danger, yet I never saw them indulge in any sort 



of game or social pursuit, or attempt to combine their efforts 



for a common cause. Nevertheless, as Coues says,^ "Their 



gregarious instinct is rarely in abeyance. A few thousand will 



occupy a tract as thickly as the prairie-dogs do, and then none 



but stragglers may be seen for a whole day's journey. 



******* 



" There is one very curious point in the socialism of these 

 animals. Every now and then, in odd out-of-the-way places, 



^ Am. Nat., IX, 1875, pp. 148-154. 



