UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



the apple-trees, and gave me daily opportunities 

 to watch the proceedings. 



I have never known any one who has been so for- 

 tunate in this respect, nor have I ever seen in print 

 any account of the little rodent's proceedings on 

 such an occasion. For several years I have been an 

 observer and an investigator of their little mounds 

 of freshly dug earth along the margin of the high- 

 ways or the woody borders of the fields, but until 

 now have never caught one of the little miners at 

 work. I had fancied that the digging was done at 

 night, and that the earth was carried out to the 

 dumping-place in the cheek pouches. But such is not 

 the case. My little neighbor worked by day, and his 

 cheek pockets were never used in transporting the 

 earth from his hole to the dumping-place. I had 

 often found the pile of fresh earth two or three yards 

 from the hole out of which it came, with never a 

 grain of soil littering the grass between the two, and 

 no sign of a trail. I had also been fairly bewildered 

 by finding stones in the pile of fresh soil so large that 

 they could not be forced back into the hole out of 

 which I was sure they had come. On three occasions 

 I had found such freshly dug stones, and they were 

 all too big for the opening that led to the chipmunk's 

 den. By what magic had he got them out? From 

 what I had seen one November, after the earth had 

 been frozen and then thawed once or twice, I con- 

 cluded that the little engineer had made a niche in 



27 



