HARD FARE. 61 



ered with fragments of the bark, and the white, naked 

 stems and branches had been scraped by fine teeth. 

 When the sap starts in the early spring, the squirrels 

 add this to their scanty supplies. They perforate the 

 bark of the branches of the maples with their chisel- 

 like' teeth, and suck the sweet liquid as it slowly 

 oozes out. It is not much as food, but evidently it 

 helps. 



I have said the red squirrel does not lay by a store 

 of food for winter use, like the chipmunk and wood- 

 mice ; yet in the fall he sometimes hoards in a ten- 

 tative, temporary kind of way. I have seen his sav- 

 ings butternuts and black walnuts stuck here and 

 there in saplings and trees, near his nest ; sometimes 

 carefully inserted in the upright fork of a limb, or 

 twig. One day, late in November, I counted a dozen 

 or more black walnuts put away in this manner in a 

 little grove of locusts, chestnuts, and maples, by the 

 roadside, and could but smile at the wise forethought 

 of the rascally squirrel. His supplies were probably 

 safer that way than if more elaborately hidden. They 

 were well distributed ; his eggs were not all in one 

 basket, and he could go away from home without any 

 fear that his storehouse would be broken into in his 

 absence. The next week, when I passed that way, 

 the nuts were all gone but two. I saw the squirrel 

 that doubtless laid claim to them, on each occasion. 



There is one thing the red squirrel knows uner- 

 ringly that I do not (there are probably several other 

 things) ; that is, on which side of the butternut the 



