NATURE'S CALENDAR 



ing higher and higher as the leaves fly 

 backward and the head disappears from 

 sight. Presently the squirrel reappears, 

 and, turning about, scratches the leaves 

 and soil back again, pats them down with 

 his feet, then runs away and up a tree, cack- 

 ling like a proud young chanticleer. The 

 boy goes over to see what has been done, 

 but finds it a little difficult to discover 

 the place where the squirrel had been dig- 

 ging. When he succeeds, he paws away 

 the loose soil until he finds, perhaps three 

 inches deep, a single big acorn, the one 

 the little creature had been carrying. Did 

 he care to, and know enough, he might 

 find perhaps fifty others buried here and 

 there in the neighborhood, for it is thus, 

 one by one, that the gray squirrel hides 

 his winter supply of food. It is a very 

 simple method, and a safe one ; but how 

 does the creature (who does not hiber- 

 nate at all, even in the coldest ^veather) 

 ever recover these nuts and acorns when 

 he wants them } Memory, undoubt- 

 edly, helps him a great deal ; but he is 

 guided mainly, it seems, by the sense of 

 smell. At any rate, a good many of 

 them are found, even when covered with 

 two or three feet of snow, or needing 

 to be dug out of ground frozen into 

 hard ice ; on the other hand, many are 

 never exhumed, but simply rot, or, when 

 circumstances favor, sprout into sap- 

 lings. The gray squirrel is perhaps 

 the foremost American tree planter, and 



