THE PESTS OF THE FARM. 91 



this little animal goes throiigli the woods in the heavy snow, 

 digging down to its burled treasure with almost unerring pre- 

 cision. We have said it is a liberal provider ; and what is the 

 proportion of the nuts it eats, of the whole number it deposits ? 

 Not one-fourth ; and as it instinctively buries only those nuts 

 that are perfectly sound, without insect stings or germs of rot, 

 of course all that are left buried sprout and spring from the 

 ground, miniatures of the parent tree. It is well known that 

 only a very small proportion of those nuts that are left on the 

 surface of the ground, exposed to the action of the elements, 

 ever mature and sprout ; they rot and shrivel, or become the 

 food and burrowing-place of noxious insects ; and it can l3e very 

 readily seen that it is on the labors of the arboreal squirrels that 

 an extension of the growth of our forest trees depends. It is 

 not alone in the confines of the woods that the nuts are buried ; 

 but all along their borders, sometimes rods away from them, in 

 the open fields and pastures, do these active animals make their 

 deposits ; and people who live in the prairie countries, in which 

 are belts of oaks and chestnuts, often find the young of these 

 trees growing at a considerable distance from the parent grove, 

 and attribute their presence to the action of high winds that had 

 blown the nuts to that distance. 



In many sections the gray squirrel is destructive in the fields 

 of Indian corn, especially when such fields are situated near its 

 haunts ; but, generally speaking, we have no hesitation in saying 

 that it is far more valuable on the farm than noxious. 



The little red squirrel is another of our small quadrupeds that 

 is distributed almost entirely throughout our continent. Like 

 the gray squirrel, it makes its home in the woods, and is in 

 some localities very abundant. In the pine and hemlock for- 

 ests of the North it is probably the most common of all the 

 mammals, every little grove of these trees having one or more 

 families. It feeds principally on various nuts and seeds, and 

 in localities where the various pines abound, together with the 

 oaks and chestnuts. It is especially valuable in securing a- con- 

 tinuance of the latter, and even an introduction of them into 

 the forests of the pines and hemlocks ; for, preferring the dark 

 shades of these evergreens for its home, it naturally eats its food 

 in them ; and all who have paid much attention to the different 

 phenomena of nature have doubtless noticed that when a patch 



