286 Life and Immortality. 



long sticks, and well-directed blows, manage to fell to the 

 earth many a luckless fellow as he endeavors to escape his 

 pursuers by running along the rail fences. 



Hackees delight in sequestered localities. There they tun- 

 nel their homes, preferring some old tree, or a spot of earth 

 sheltered by a wall or a bank. Their burrows are rather 

 complicated affairs, running often to great lengths, so that 

 the task of digging the animal out of his retreat becomes 

 one of no easy accomplishment. Sandy patches of ground, 

 on the outskirts of a woods, are not unusually chosen for 

 burrows. A hole, almost perpendicular, is drilled into the 

 earth to a depth of three feet, and is thence continued with 

 one or more windings, rising a little nearer the surface until 

 it has advanced some nine or ten feet, when it is made to 

 terminate in a large circular nest, made of oak leaves and 

 dried grasses. Small lateral galleries branch off from the 

 main burrow, in which these provident little creatures lay up 

 their winter's provisions. Wheat, Indian corn, buckwheat, 

 hazel-nuts, acorns and the seeds of grasses have been found 

 in their underground receptacles, a proof, were further evi- 

 dence lacking, that they do not pass the cold famine months 

 in a sluggish and benumbed condition. Several layers of 

 leaves, aggregating nine inches in thickness, are often found 

 over the entrance, as a protection from frosts, which are 

 further prevented from intrusion by the sealing up of the 

 mouth from within. 



Everything is done by the Hackee in a business-like 

 manner. In gathering his food, lest the sharp beak of the 

 nut may injure his cheeks when he places the fruit in his 

 pouch, he nips off the point, and then by the aid of his fore- 

 paws deliberately pushes the nut into one of his pouches. 

 Another and another are similarly treated, and taking a 

 fourth between his teeth, he dives into his burrow, and, having 

 packed them methodically away, returns to the surface for a 

 fresh cargo. Four nuts are his load at each journey. With 

 his cheek-pouches distended to their fullest capacity, and 



