90 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



park close by the gate-house. Even then he did not at 

 once desert his home, before the laborers began hacking 

 off the branches ; when he quietly betook himself with 

 his family to a neighboring oak, whither he has since 

 transferred by night the scanty remainder of his spring 

 hoard. 



The relics of the hoard are still to be seen in the aban- 

 doned hole, a deep recess where a gnarled bough had 

 made a natural scar, improved upon with careful art by 

 many generations of squirrels. There are acorn-skins, 

 split shells of cob-nuts, beech-mast, and other mouldering 

 spoils in plenty the ancestral shards of many a winter 

 feast. Indeed, it is curious how the trees and the ani- 

 mals have managed in this matter so cleverly to outwit 

 each other in the see-saw of continuous adaptation. For 

 the nuts have acquired their hard shells to get the better 

 of the squirrels ; and the squirrels have acquired their 

 long pointed teeth to get the better of the nut-shells. 

 Yet even at the present day, when the balance of victory 

 apparently inclines for the moment to the side of the 

 squirrel, the trees are not without their occasional re- 

 venge, since some nuts either prove too hard for the dep- 

 redators or are forgotten in the abundance of supplies ; 

 and so it has happened that, in certain recorded cases, the 

 existence of young seedlings in wild places has been 

 demonstrably traced to an abandoned hoard, which has 

 afforded a good supply of rich manure to the germinat- 

 ing embryos. 



It is odd, too, how general among the rodents is this 

 instinct of laying by supplies for the winter, due, no 

 doubt, in part to the exceptionally imperishable nature of 

 their chief foodstuffs (for nuts, grains, and roots do not 

 decay quickly, like fruits or meat), and in part to the 

 usual close similarity in their surroundings and mode of 



