200 



RESEARCHES ON FUNGI 



the fungus in a fork of the tree made by two twigs and then 



dashed away. 



On November 3, 1920, at Kildonan Park, Winnipeg, I saw a 



Red Squirrel about 10 feet up a tree with a fungus in its paws. 



As I approached, the squirrel dropped the fungus. I picked it 



up and found that it was 

 a much damaged fruit-body 

 of Pleurotus ulmarius. A 

 few minutes later I observed 

 another Red Squirrel on a 

 branch eating an agaric 

 which, from where I stood, 

 looked like Pleurotus 

 ulmarius ; but, when I 

 frightened the squirrel, it 

 carried the fungus to the 

 top of a tall Cotton-wood 

 Poplar and so I was unable 

 to procure it for exact 

 identification. 



Dr. W. P. Fraser, Plant 

 Pathologist of the Dominion 

 Division of Botany, made 



FIG. 72. Sciurushudsonicus, the Red Squirrel tne following statements to 



of North America, in characteristic atti- 

 tudes. From Ernest Thompson Seton's 

 Life Histories of Northern Animals (copy- 

 right, 1909). By courtesy of E. T. Seton 

 and Charles Scribner's Sons. 



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 sporophores 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 University 

 of Wisconsin told me that in the woods of Wisconsin he had often 

 watched squirrels picking fungi, running with them along the 



