356 Transactions British Mycological Society. 



In the autumn of 1919, I spent many days studying the fungi 

 in the woods about Kenora. There, in the first week of October, 

 Armillaria mellea — the Honey Fungus — was exceedingly com- 

 mon, and I noticed that, here and there, clumps of it had been 

 damaged by a rodent. I also found a few isolated, half-eaten 

 fruit-bodies hanging in the forks of branches of trees at a height 

 of from six to about twelve feet above the ground. Two of these 

 fruit-bodies I identified as Armillaria mellea and one as Hygro- 

 phorns chrysodon. I suspected that the destructive agent had 

 been a Red Squirrel, for Red Squirrels were not uncommon in 

 the woods. On October 6, my suspicions were confirmed. On 

 that day I was approaching the Lake of the Woods and, just 

 as I came to its margin, I saw a Red Squirrel on the top of a 

 wood-pile close by the water's edge not twenty feet away. I 

 stood still and observed that the squirrel was sitting on its hind 

 legs with its tail curled over its back and was engaged in eating 

 an agaric held in its fore-paws. I watched this little scene for 

 some moments and then drew nearer, whereupon the squirrel 

 suddenly dropped the fungus and darted away. I then went 

 up to the wood-pile and recovered the fungus which proved to 

 be a fruit-body of Armillaria mellea. The pileus had been eaten 

 all around the periphery; but the disc showed the characteristic 

 honey colour and scales, and the stipe still retained its annulus 

 and its peculiar dingy yellow base. On the ground at the foot 

 of the wood-pile I found a clump of Armillaria mellea fruit- 

 bodies, some of which had been broken off by a rodent. Doubt- 

 less, this clump had been the source of the fruit-body which the 

 squirrel had been eating. 



Dr W. P. Fraser, Plant Pathologist of the Dominion Division 

 of Botany, made the following statements to me: "In some of 

 the woods in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, Red Squirrels are 

 very numerous. Many scores of times I have seen these animals 

 carrying or eating the sporophores of Hymenomycetes. A 

 squirrel, after seizing a sporophore upon the ground and before 

 eating it, usually carried it to the top of a stump or log or up 

 to one of the branches of a tree. Partially devoured sporo- 

 phores were often left lying about on stumps, logs, etc. Most 

 of the fungi were Russulae." 



Dr E. M. Gilbert of the Botanical Department of the Uni- 

 versity of Wisconsin told me that in the woods of Wisconsin he 

 had often watched squirrels picking fungi, running with them 

 along the ground, carrying them up trees, and eating them on 

 the branches. When making these observations, he usually lay 

 on the ground with his head resting on a cushion. Among the 

 fungi carried up into the trees were various species of Russula and 

 also Lactarius piperatus parasitised by Hypomyces lactifluorum. 



