Banner tail 



Confused between the inborn impulse 

 and the outside stimulus of example, 

 Bannertail would seize a nut, strip off the 

 husk, and hide it quickly anywhere. 

 Some nuts he would thrust under bits 

 of brush or tufts of grass ; some he buried 

 by dropping leaves and rubbish over 

 them, and a few, toward the end, he hid 

 by digging a shallow hole. But the real, 

 well-directed, energetic instinct to hide 

 nut after nut, burying them three good 

 inches, an arm's length, underground, was 

 far from being aroused, was even hin- 

 dered by seeing the Redsquirrels and the 

 Chipmunks about him bearing away 

 their stores, without attempting to bury 

 them at all. 



So the poor, skimpy harvest was gath- 

 ered. What "was not carried off was 

 hidden by the trees themselves under a 

 layer of dead and fallen leaves. 



High above, in an old red oak, Banner- 



[36] 



