88 NOTES BY THE WAY. 



II. CHEATING THE SQUIRRELS. 



For the largest and finest chestnuts I had last fall 

 I was indebted to the gray squirrels. Walking through 

 the early October woods one day, I came upon a place 

 where the ground was thickly strewn with very large 

 unopened chestnut burs. On examination I found 

 that every bur had been cut square off with about an 

 inch of the stem adhering, and not one had been left 

 on the tree. It was not accident, then, but design. 

 Whose design? The squirrels'. The fruit was the 

 finest I had ever seen in the woods, and some wise 

 squirrel had marked it for his own. The burs were 

 ripe, and had just begun to divide, not " threefold," 

 but fourfold, '' to show the fruit within." The squir- 

 rel that had taken all this pains had evidently rea- 

 soned with himself thus : '' Now, these are extremely 

 fine chestnuts, and I want them ; if I wait till the 

 burs open on the tree the crows and jays will be sure 

 to carry off a great many of the nuts before they fall ; 

 then, after the wind has rattled out what remain, 

 there are the mice, the chipmunks, the red squirrels, 

 the raccoons, the grouse, to say nothing of the boys 

 and the pigs, to come in for their share ; so I will 

 forestall events a little ; I will cut off the burs when 

 they have matured, and a few days of this dry Octo- 

 ber weather will cause every one of them to open on 

 the ground ; I shall be on hand in the nick of time to 

 gather up my nuts." The squirrel, of course, had to 

 take the chances of a prowler like myself coming 

 along, but he had fairly stolen a march on his neigh- 

 bors. As I proceeded to collect and open the burs, I 

 was half prepared to hear an audible protest from the 



