166 THE MINDS AND MANNERS 



and I think that the majority of them still ask the question: 

 "How does the squirrel know precisely where to dig?" That 

 question cannot be answered until we have learned how to read 

 the squirrel mind. 



Small city parks easily become overstocked with gray 

 squirrels that are not adequately fed, and the result is, — com- 

 plaints of "depredations." Of course hungry and half -starved 

 squirrels will depredate, — on birds' nests, fruit and gardens. 

 My answer to all inquirers for advice in such cases is— feed the 

 squirrels, adequately, and constantly, on cracked corn and nuts, 

 and send away the surplus squirrels. 



At this time many persons know that the wild animals and 

 birds now living upon the earth are here solely because they 

 have had sufficient sense to devise ways and means by which 

 to survive. The ignorant, the incompetent, the slothful and 

 the unlucky ones have passed from earth and joined the grand 

 army of fossils. 



Take the case of the Rocky Mountain Pika, or little chief 

 "hare," of British Columbia and elsewhere. It is not a hare 

 at all, and it is so queer that it occupies a family all alone. 

 I am now concerning myself with Ochotona princeps, of the 

 Canadian Rockies. It is very small and weak, but by its wits 

 it lives in a country reeking with hungry bears, wolverines and 

 martens. The pika is so small and so weak that in the open 

 he could not possibly dig down below the grizzly bear's ability 

 to dig. 



And what does he do to save himself, and insure the sur- 

 vival of the fittest? 



He burrows far down in the slide-rock that falls from the 

 cliffs, where he is protected by a great bed of broken stone so 

 thick that no predatory animal can dig through it and catch him. 

 There in those awful solitudes, enlivened only by the crack and 

 rattle of falling slide-rock, the harsh cry of Clark's nut-cracker 

 and the whistling wind sweeping over the storm-threshed 

 summits and through the stunted cedar, the pika chooses to 



