SIR SQUIRREL 29 



that we regard as edible. It is even said that the 

 squirrel eats some of these growths that our skilled 

 mycologists know to be poisonous. 



It is now, when the squirrel likes to be active every 

 day, with a waste of tissue consequently great and 

 when the new foods of spring are very meagre and 

 unpalatable, that our friend finds it imperatively 

 necessary to break into his store. It is just possible 

 that, so far from going deliberately to his cupboard, 

 he only stumbles upon it by a sort of accident. There 

 are single acorns and nuts to be dug up by a lucky 

 finder, bulbs rendered at once visible and rather nasty 

 by their sprouting, and at last, while one is poking 

 about here and there, behold a heap of nuts all in one 

 hollow stump. Who can have put them there ? Was 

 it that rascal I just chased from my domain, or can it 

 have been myself in my incarnation of last summer ? 

 Without asking himself a superfluity of questions 

 about it, the clever but slightly prudent person of the 

 woods takes a meal from the welcome store. And 

 here he shows his vast superiority over the wood- 

 mouse by opening his nuts in scientific fashion. 

 Instead of taking a long time to nibble a hole 

 through any portion of the shell, perhaps the thickest, 

 he attacks the nut along the lines of its anatomy, 

 gnaws a chip out in the right place, and jerks the 

 shells apart precisely as the learned ploughboy does 

 with a jack-knife. 



Whether he finds a hoard or no, and it must be 

 remembered that squirrels exist in some districts 

 where storable fruits are hard to find, Lent is the 

 squirrel's lean time. His larder may be expected to 

 be empty before green shoots are many, though he 



