of 



no doubt, before there is plenty again ; there will be 

 suffering and death. But what with the migrating, 

 the strange deep sleeping, the building and harvest- 

 ing, there will be also much comfortable, much joy- 

 ous and sociable living. 



Long before the muskrats began to build, even be- 

 fore the swallows commenced to flock, my chipmunks 

 started their winter stores. I don't know which be- 

 gan his work first, which kept harder at it, chipmunk 

 or the provident ant. The ant has come by a reputa- 

 tion for thrift, which, though entirely deserved, is 

 still not the exceptional virtue it is made to seem. 

 Chipmunk is just as thrifty. So is the busy bee. It 

 is the thought of approaching winter that keeps the 

 bee busy far beyond her summer needs. Much of 

 her labor is entirely for the winter. By the first of 

 August she has filled the brood chamber with honey 

 forty pounds of it, enough for the hatching bees 

 and for the whole colony until the willows tassel 

 again. But who knows what the winter may be ? 

 How cold and long drawn out into the coming May ? 

 So the harvesting is pushed with vigor on to the 

 flowering of the last autumn asters on until fifty, a 

 hundred, or even three hundred pounds of surplus 



10 



