THE SQUIRREL. 273 



ends, then splitting the shells vertically, just as one 

 would do with a penknife. The squirrel never 

 wastes time and energy over cracking bad nuts, 

 evidently being able to tell by their weight whether 

 the kernel is sound ; and the apparently sound nuts 

 often found in a squirrel's abandoned larder will, 

 if opened, invariably prove to be empty. Among 

 rocks, these abandoned larders are often seen to 

 be half-full of empty nuts. 



Autumn being a time of plenty for the squirrel, 

 there is no particular haste as regards the winter 

 store, and having laid aside a goodly stock in a 

 hollow tree or a cranny among the rocks, the little 

 animal now resorts to a curious practice, which for 

 a long time puzzled me. It is October, and he is 

 to be seen climbing nimbly into the branches of 

 nut-bearing trees, from which, at regular intervals, 

 he descends to earth, runs off to the forest-edge, 

 and scratches a hole in some soft piece of ground, 

 where he buries his find. This done, he ascends 

 the tree again ; then duly buries another nut in 

 another place ; and so on time after time for so 

 long as the sunshine lasts. In the Bolton Abbey 

 woods I have watched squirrels thus employed 

 during the greater part of the day, generally using 

 for their burial-ground the exposed earth of a 

 land-slide or some other treeless patch, but I have 

 never been able to find the nuts thus buried. 



This is all part of the storage system. The 

 squirrel cannot, of course, remember the exact 

 whereabouts of all his hastily made caches, num- 

 bering, as they do, many hundreds, but he retains 

 a hazy notion that in such and such a bank nuts 

 are buried, to be found by the diligent searcher. 

 Meantime the food is safe, as nuts are best pre- 

 served in damp ground, and should keen frosts 



W.A. r 



