62 MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 



collection from the mountains of Pa. are almost as near to N. J. striatus in 

 their coloration as to lysteri from Maine. On the basis of palest specimens 

 those in the collection coming from Eaglesmere, Sullivan Co., and from the 

 mountain tops of Clinton, McKean and Cambria Cos. are nearest lysteri. 

 Specimens from the Pocono plateau are also quite pale, as well as those from 

 Summit Mills in southern Somerset Co. 



A large series from the southern end of Greenwood Lake, Passaic Co., N. J., 

 the most boreal locality in that state, show that lysteri has no place in her 

 fauna. 



Habits, etc. Some peculiarities of this species are worthy of note. They 

 hibernate, as is generally supposed, at the approach of frosty weather and 

 come out again in spring ; say about the first of April. At Greenwood Lake 

 they were amazingly abundant, and during the whole time spent there, the 

 last week in October, though the temperature descended to 20 there was no 

 sunshiny day that did not bring them out by 9 or 10 o'clock. Of forty 

 specimens secured there, no really fat one was found among them, though the 

 acorns, which they were busily harvesting and storing away, were abundant. 

 This is contrary to the usual condition of hibernating animals at that season. 

 I have been told by Seth Nelson of Clinton Co., and Otto Behr of Sullivan 

 Co. that sometime in February tracks in the snow show that chipmunks 

 emerge from their homes and caper about. Nelson thinks this is their rutting 

 season and that the females do not again come out of their burrows until the 

 young are quite large, and much later than the males in spring. I cannot 

 vouch for this idea, but if true it has its exceptions, as I have shot in late 

 October young chipmunks about two-thirds grown, which could not have 

 been born much earlier than late July. Nevertheless, I have never, at any 

 season, secured a gravid female, but suckling ones have been sometimes taken 

 in an advanced stage towards weaning. It is not unlikely that the female 

 chipmunk during parturition and for some time after the birth of her young 

 does not leave the burrow, but either lives on the food she has stored there, 

 or is fed by her male partner. While autumn is the time of greatest excite- 

 ment among chipmunks, I have been unable to certainly discover that this is 

 the rutting season. That late autumn or early winter is the rutting season 

 for the tree squirrels, including the flying squirrel, there seems no doubt, as 

 their young may be found in the nest in February and March. That many 

 chipmunks enter and appear to be at home in the same burrow in the late 

 fall is evidenced by my having trapped at the mouth of a single burrow, be- 

 tween the isth and 25th of October, on the mountain 3 miles above Round 

 Island, Clinton Co., Pa., seven full-grown chipmunks, of which i was an adult 

 female, one an adult male, one a young female and four young males. Three 

 of the young males and the young female were so nearly alike in size that I 

 think them the offspring of the old pair, and that it was likely they all were 



