79 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING. 
Here five or six young mice are born, and stay until the 
coming of warm weather, by which time they are grown, 
and go out to take care of themselves. Sometimes one of 
them, instead of hunting up a wife and getting a home of 
his own, will wander off by himself and live alone like a 
hermit, growing crosser as he grows older. 
In the deepest part of the burrow is placed their store of 
provisions. Uncover one of these little granaries in Novem- 
ber, before the owners have used much of it, and you might 
find five or six quarts of seeds, roots, and small nuts. Out 
on the prairie this store would consist chiefly of the round 
tubers—like very small potatoes—-of the spike-flower, a few 
juicy roots of some other weeds and grasses, bulbs of the 
wild onion, and so forth. If a wheat or rye patch was near, 
there would be quantities of grain; and if you should open 
a nest under a log or stump in the woods, you might dis- 
cover a hundred or so chestnuts, beech- nuts, and acorns, 
nicely shelled. All these stores are carried to the burrows, 
often from long distances, in their baggy cheeks, which are 
a mouse’s pockets, and they work with immense industry, 
knowing just when to gather this and that kind of food for 
the winter. A friend of mine, who had a farm near the 
Hudson River, had a nice field of rye, which he was only 
waiting a day or two longer to harvest until it should be 
