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that if chipmunk robs at all he docs it so seldom as 

 to call for no alarm nor for any retribution. 



There is scarcely a day in the nesting season when 

 I fail to see half a dozen chipmunks about the walls, 

 yet I never noticed one even suspiciously near a 

 bird's nest. In an apple tree, barely six jumps from 

 the home of the family in the orchard wall, a brood 

 of white-bellied swallows came to wing one spring ; 

 while robins, chippies, and red-eyed vireos — not to 

 mention a cowbird, which I wish they had devoured 

 — have also hatched and flown away from nests that 

 these squirrels might easily have rifled. 



It is not often that one comes upon even the red 

 squirrel in the very act of robbing a nest. But the 

 black snake, the glittering fiend ! and the dear house 

 cats ! If I run across a dozen black snakes in the 

 early summer, it is safe to say that six of them will 

 be discovered by the cries of the birds they are 

 robbing. Likewise the cats. No creature, however, 

 larger than a June-bug was ever distressed by a chip- 

 munk. 



In a recent letter to me Mr. Burroughs says : *' No, 

 I never knew the chipmunk to suck or destroy eggs 

 of any kind, and I have never heard of any well- 



i8i 



