Our Squirrels. 179 



with its congeners the fox-squirrel and black squirrel, is well known. Its 

 food, as most persons are well aware, consists almost entirely of nuts : and 

 it is to this fact that the multiplication of our forest-trees is very largely 

 indebted ; for its habit of buiying the different nuts as a provision against 

 the necessities of winter, covering them, to the depth of two inches or a 

 little more, in the rich forest-mould, secures for them the most certain 

 germination. This squirrel is a very liberal j^rovider for its future wants ; 

 and all who are conversant with its habits know how busy it is in burying 

 tliem, from the time of the early ripening of the nuts until the ground is 

 covered with snow. 



Now, these nuts are not placed in one deposit, or two, or half a dozen : 

 for accident might destroy such caches ; or they might be placed by heavy 

 falls of snow or thick formations of ice beyond the reach of the depositor, 

 who would then be left without food through the most inclement season of 

 the year. No : by an exercise of the highest instinct, if not actual reason, 

 they are buried each by itself in every available spot in the woods, whether 

 on the hillside, or beneath a fallen and rotten trunk of a tree, or on the 

 edge of a swamp, — anywhere that it may be found when occasion calls for 

 it. And we all know how this little animal goes through the woods in the 

 heavy snow, digging down to its buried treasure with almost unerring 

 precision. 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 very readily be 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 prairies, 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 considera- 



