202 RESEARCHES ON FUNGI 



been placed by squirrels upside down on high stumps, dead brush, 

 and dead branches of felled trees ; whilst others had been cleverly 

 and accurately set in the crotches of branches several feet from the 

 ground. Of certain species only the older and more mature fruit- 

 bodies were eaten or harvested, while the younger and less mature 

 ones were left untouched. It was particularly noticed that Amanita 

 muscaria the poisonous Fly Agaric was never eaten or stored. 

 Among the species gathered and stored by the squirrels were the 

 following : 



Russula rubra Clitocybe maxima 



Other Russulae C. monadelpha 



Lactarii Tricholoma persona turn (?) 



Cantharellus cibarius Boletus sp. (probably scaber) 



Lentinus lepideus 



It thus appears that the Red Squirrel is just as keen a 

 mycophagist in the State of Wisconsin as in Nova Scotia 

 more than a thousand miles distant. 



Professor J. E. Howitt of the Ontario Agricultural College told 

 me that at Muskoka, Ontario, in the month of September, he had 

 often seen squirrels carrying fungi about trees, and that once 

 he had seen an Amanita so carried. Sometimes the squirrels 

 fetched and carried fungi with great persistency for several days 

 in succession. Doubtless they were laying up provender for the 

 winter. 



J. S. Boyce, 1 in treating of Polyporus amarus as the cause of 

 dry rot in Libocedrus decurrens, the Incense Cedar, states that 

 the soft fleshy or cheesy sporophores of this fungus, issuing through 

 knots, are usually soon eaten by squirrels and microlepidopterous 

 insects. 



Perley Spaulding, 2 in giving an account of some investigations 

 made upon the White-Pine Blister-Rust disease in the United 

 States of America (Cronartium ribicola on Pinus strobus), makes 

 the following remarks : " In a number of outbreak areas where 



1 J. S. Boyce, " The Dry-Rot of Incense Cedar," Bull. No. 871, Bureau of Plant 

 Industry, U.S. Dept. of Agri., 1920, p. 10. 



2 Perley Spaulding, " Investigations of the White-Pine Blister Rust," Bull. 

 No. 957, Bureau of Plant Industry, U.S. Dept. of Agri., 1922, pp. 35-36, Plate III. 



