60 HARD FARE. 



blotted out everything, it was not many hours before 

 the wind had placed upon the cloth another course ; 

 but it was always the same old course beans, beans. 

 What would the birds and the fowls do during such 

 winters, if the trees and the shrubs and plants all 

 dropped their fruit and their seeds in the fall, as they 

 do their leaves ? They would nearly all perish. The 

 apples that cling to the trees, the pods that hang to 

 the lowest branches, and the seeds that the various 

 weeds and grasses hold above the deepest snows, alone 

 make it possible for many birds to pass the winter 

 among us. The red squirrel, too, what would he do ? 

 He lays up no stores like the provident chipmunk, 

 but scours about for food in all weathers, feeding 

 upon the seeds in the cones of the hemlock that still 

 cling to the tree, upon sumac-bobs, and the seeds of 

 frozen apples. I have seen the ground under a wild 

 apple-tree that stood near the woods completely cov- 

 ered with the " chonkings " of the frozen apples, the 

 work of the squirrels in getting at the seeds ; not an 

 apple had been left, and apparently, not a seed had 

 been lost. But the squirrels in this particular locality 

 ! evidently got pretty hard up before spring, for they 

 / developed a new source of food-supply. A young 

 bushy-topped sugar-maple, about forty feet high, 

 standing beside a stone fence near the woods, was at- 

 tacked, and more than half denuded of its bark. The 

 object of the squirrels seemed to be to get at the soft, 

 white, mucilaginous substance (cambium layer) be- 

 tween the bark and the wood. The ground was cov- 



