MUSK-RATS AND SQUIRRELS. 81 



weather- foretelling power, which certainly is not exhib- 

 ited by these animals at present ; and, more strangely, 

 Kalm does not suppose them ever to become torpid in 

 winter, which they now unquestionably do. Finally, the 

 underground storehouses of gray squirrels are but seldom 

 made in this neighborhood, though enormous quantities 

 of nuts are stored in the tree in which their nest is, or in 

 one very near it. This, at least, is the rule within the range 

 of my own observations. In the extracts from Kalm's 

 volumes, we have intimations, at least, of a slight change 

 in the habit of storing food, and apparently a great change 

 in the fact that these animals now hibernate to a variable 

 extent, though formerly they do not appear ever to have 

 become torpid. If this be true of squirrels one hundred 

 and more years ago, why should the habit of hibernating 

 have been acquired, when the climate was gradually be- 

 coming more mild, as it surely is ? Has hibernation taken 

 the place of storing food ? Has less food, of late years, 

 been stored, and forced semi-starvation brought about the 

 hibernating habit? From my own observations, made 

 during the past twenty years, I do not find that the bulk 

 of nuts, seeds, and corn stored by harvesting animals 

 varies to any important extent certainly not, so far as 

 gray squirrels and chipmunks are concerned. I found 

 just as many storehouses of the chipmunks in the open 

 winter of 1879-'80 as in the "Arctic" one of 1880-'81 ; 

 and yet the amount consumed the former year was prob- 

 ably one half of that gathered ; while in the latter the 

 amount consumed was almost nothing. At the time 

 of this writing (April, 1881), the magazines of the gray 

 squirrels are well stored, simply because these supposed 

 non-hibernating animals did not eat a nut apiece from 

 early in December until late in February. If ever there 

 were two consecutive winters which tested the question of 



