256 THE GREAT NORTH-WEST 



almost a chestnut, and occasionally the fur is mottled, 

 brown, black, and grey. In any case, it is absolutely 

 certain that these abnormally coloured specimens are not 

 a distinct variety. The numbers in which they occur 

 are alone a proof of that ; though formerly they seem to 

 have been much more numerous than at present, if the 

 accounts I have heard of late years are to be relied on, 

 of which I have no doubt. At this time they were so 

 numerous that I obtained a sufficient number to make 

 an overcoat of. Coats formed of the skins of animals 

 of small size, or lined with them, seem to be warmer 

 than those made of the pelts of larger mammals. Such 

 articles of clothing are very desirable possessions to a 

 man exposed to a North American winter. 



No matter how numerous squirrels were in a district, 

 I never succeeded in finding many of their storehouses, 

 probably because they seem to choose holes far up the 

 trunks of trees, often very near the tops, for this purpose. 

 Of those I did discover I can record that they did not 

 contain anything like the quantity of food which I found 

 in the stores of the chipmunks ; and whereas the chip- 

 munk's store generally consisted largely of grain, those 

 of the chickarees consisted mainly of wild-grown nuts, &c., 

 and rarely any sort of grain unless the place of storage 

 was near a farm or barn. It is curious that I never 

 found wild rice in the winter store of any species of 

 rodent, though several of them, including the chipmunk, 

 feed off this grain in marshy districts. Wild rice, I 

 should mention, grows abimdantly in the head-waters of 

 the Ohio and other streams of the district, and forms a 

 principal food, in the season, of several small animals, 

 and especially of birds. I have raised flocks of ducks 

 numbering thousands from a patch of wild rice. Small 

 birds are much attracted by it, clinging to the straw to 

 pick out the grain : but the larger birds, such as ducks 

 and other water-fowl, swim among it, and pull the straws 

 down to get at the head. The rodents nibble the straws 



