UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



that the green corn and the choke-cherries would 

 spoil in his underground retreat, and that the hard, 

 dry kind, and the cherry-pits, would keep. He did 

 know it, but not as you and I know it, by experi- 

 ence; he knew it, as all the wild creatures know how 

 to get on in the world, by the wisdom that pervades 

 nature, and is much older than we or they are. 



My chipmunk knows corn, cherry-pits, buck- 

 wheat, beech-nuts, apple-seeds, and probably several 

 other foods, at sight; but peach-pits, hickory -nuts^ 

 dried sweet corn, he at first passed by, and pea- 

 nuts I could not tempt him to touch at all. He was 

 at first indifferent to the rice, but, on nibbling at it 

 and finding it toothsome, he began to fill his pockets 

 with it. Amid the rice I scattered puffed wheat. 

 This he repeatedly took up and chipped into, at- 

 tracted probably by the odor, but, finding it hollow, 

 or at least very spongy and unsubstantial in its in- 

 terior, he quickly dropped it. It was not solid 

 enough to get into his winter stores. After I had 

 cracked a few hickory-nuts he became very eager 

 for them, and it was amusing to see him, as he sat on 

 my table, struggle to force the larger ones into his 

 pockets, supplementing the contractile power of his 

 cheek muscles with his paws. \Mien he failed to 

 pocket one, he would take it in his teeth and make 

 off. I offered him some peach-pits also, but he only 

 carried one of them up on the stone wall and han- 

 dled it awhile, then looked it over and left it. But 



9 



