MAMMALS. 41 



These are the abundant chipmunks around the hotels and camps 

 and along the trails in the lower levels of both slopes of the park. 

 Their principal range is along the lower edge of the timbered slopes, 

 but in many places where the conditions are especially favorable it 

 extends up on open slopes nearly to timberline. At Glacier Station 

 they were common along the creek from the hotel well up the side of 

 the mountain. A few were seen on Two Medicine Lake and at the 

 lower end and along the north side of St. Mary Lake. Tliey were 

 common in the Swiftcurrent Vallej', along Kennedy Creek, in the 

 Belly Eiver valley, and at the Waterton Lakes, where, in IST-l, the 

 type was collected by Dr. Elliot Coues ; also on the west slope around 

 Lake McDonald, at Belton, and in the Xorth Fork Valley. They rarely 

 climb trees and much prefer logs and stumps and brush patches, slide 

 rock, or such cover as the}^ can find about the camps and hotels. Their 

 homes are underground, among rocks, or in hollow logs, and they 

 rarely go far from their burrows or from retreats into which they can 

 quickly escape their numerous enemies. At Many Glacier Hotel sev- 

 eral Avere in the habit of coming for scattered crumbs to the kitchen 

 door, and for oats to the place where horses were being fed. They had 

 become so tame that they Avould take food from the hands of some of 

 the employees with whom they became friendly, but occasionally were 

 scared away by some one foolishly trying to catch them. It was a 

 source of daily interest to watch them come for food and fill their 

 cheek pouches until they bulged out on both sides, then rush away 

 to a burrow under some rock, where the pockets were emptied into 

 their winter storehouse. They were easily photographed at i or 6 

 feet from the camera, but their motions are so quick that usually 

 only snapshots are possible. 



As a chipmunk gathers the scattered oats around a feed box he 

 shells each seed as it is held between his thumbs and in a twinkling 

 tucks it into a pocket and goes after another. The pockets grow 

 rapidly in size as the animal works, and often in a space of five min- 

 utes they will contain a good load for the granary. The chi])munlvs 

 are strictly diurnal in habits, and though industrious do not observe 

 union hours. They work from sunrise to sunset; with a long siesta 

 at noontime. From midsummer until the snows cover their food 

 plants they work with great energy, and the stores of seeds, grain, 

 and nutlets which they lay away are evidently ample to carry them 

 through the long cold winter. They do not become- excessively fat 

 in autumn and no one knows whether they really hibernate in their 

 underground dens or whether they merely doze and sleep and eat 

 in their warm nests under the dee]) snow. The first light snow does 

 not drive them into their dens, but after it becomes deep and the 

 Aveather is cold they are not seen, and remain hidden until the. warm 

 days of April begin to bring bare spots on the hillsides, 

 51140°— 1§ 4 



