44 THOREA U. 



great river meadow, fifty rods from the nearest wood, 

 and much farther from the nearest chestnut-tree, and 

 he could not tell how it came there. Occasionally, 

 when chestnutting in midwinter, I find thirty or forty 

 nuts in a pile, left in its gallery, just under the leaves, 

 by the common wood-mouse. 



But especially, in the winter, the extent to which 

 this transportation and planting of nuts is carried on 

 is made apparent by the snow. In almost every wood 

 you will see where the red or gray squirrels have pawed 

 down through the snow in a hundred places, sometimes 

 two feet deep, and almost always directly to a nut or a 

 pine-cone, as directly as if they had started from it 

 and bored upward, which you and I could not have 

 done. It would be difficult for us to find one before 

 the snow falls. Commonly, no doubt, they had de 

 posited them there in the fall. You wonder if they 

 remember the localities, or discover them by the scent. 

 The red squirrel commonly has its winter abode in the 

 earth under a thicket of evergreens, frequently under 

 a small clump of evergreens in the midst of a decidu 

 ous wood. If there are any nut-trees which still re 

 tain their nuts, standing at a distance without the 

 wood, their paths often lead directly to and from 

 them. We, therefore, need not suppose an oak stand 

 ing here and there in the wood in order to seed it, 

 but if a few stand within twenty or thirty rods of it, 

 it is sufficient. 



I think that I may venture to say that every white- 

 pine cone that falls to the earth naturally in this town, 

 before opening and losing its seeds, and almost every 

 pitch-pine cone that falls at all, is cut off by a squirrel, 

 and they begin to pluck them long before they are 

 ripe, so that when the crop of white-pine cones is a 



