SQUIRRELS 11 



beneath the snow, always hitting the spot ac- 

 curately. 



The red squirrel lays up no stores like the pro- 

 vident chipmunk, but scours about for food in 

 all weathers, feeding upon the seeds in the cones 

 of the hemlock that still cling to the tree, upon 

 sumac-bobs, and the seeds of frozen apples. I 

 have seen the ground under a wild apple-tree 

 that stood near the woods completely covered 

 with the " chonkings ' ' of the frozen apples, the 

 work of the squirrels in getting at the seeds ; not 

 an apple had been left, and apparently not a 

 seed had been lost. But the squirrels in this 

 particular locality evidently got pretty hard up 

 before spring, for they developed a new source 

 of food-supply. A young bushy-topped sugar- 

 maple, about forty feet high, standing beside a 

 stone fence near the woods, was attacked, and 

 more than half denuded of its bark. The ob- 

 ject of the squirrels seemed to be to get at the 

 soft, white, mucilaginous substance (cambium 

 layer) between the bark and the wood. The 

 ground was covered with fragments of the bark, 

 and the white, naked stems and branches had 

 been scraped by fine teeth. When the sap starts 

 in the early spring, the squirrels add this to their 

 scanty supplies. They perforate the bark of the 

 branches of the maples with their chisel-like 



