TAMIAS STKIATUS. I 37 



odd years (nut years), remaining till the following July. They 

 then depart and are not seen again till the autumn of the next year. 

 Hence they are here al)0ut ten months and absent about fourteen 

 months, the period of greatest abundance being in June of the 

 even years (when there are no nuts). 



They are most industrious creatures, and, though small, lay up 

 an astonishingl)- large supply of food. Audubon and Bachman, 

 who once dug out a nest occupied by four Chipmunks, speak thus 

 of the larder : " There was about a gill of wheat and buckwheat in 

 the nest ; but in the galleries we afterwards dug out, we obtained 

 about a (juart of the beaked hazel nuts ( Corylus rostratiis'), nearly 

 a peck of acorns, some grains of Indian corn, about two quarts of 

 buckwheat, and a very small quantity of grass seeds." * 



In addition to their store-houses, they frequently, like the gray 

 squirrel, make little caches, burying here and there beneath the 

 leaves the contents of their cheek-pouches. Mr. Ira Sayles thus 

 graphically describes this habit : — 



" I lately noticed in my garden a bright-eyed Chipmunk, Sciur^is 

 striates, advancing along a line directly towards me. He came 

 briskly forward, without deviating a hair's breadth to the right or 

 the left, until within two feet of me ; then turned square towards my 

 left — his right — and went about three feet or less. Here he paused 

 a moment and gave a sharp look all around him, as if to detect 

 any lurking spy on his movements. ( His distended cheeks revealed 

 his business : he had been out foraging.) He now put his nose to 

 the ground, and, aiding this member with both forepaws, thrust 

 his head and shoulders down through the dry leaves and soft muck, 

 half burying himself in an instant. 



" At first, I thought him after the bulb of an ErytJironiiini, that 

 grew directly in front of his face and about three inches from it. I 

 was the more confirmed in this supposition, by the shaking of the 

 plant. 



* Quadrupeds of North America, Vol. I, 1846, p. 70. 

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