132 ANIMAL COMPETITORS 



and crannies. It is thus difficult to judge what 

 this scattered accumulation amounts to in the 

 aggregate, but it is probably a good deal more 

 than one animal wants. The little rascals seem 

 to recognize no property rights in these sav- 

 ings, but during the winter seize anything they 

 can find, so that fierce fights are always happen- 

 ing, in which the thievish grays take a full 

 share. With a short account by Mr. Hardy of 

 the cone-saving squirrels of the northern woods 

 I will conclude this part of the subject: 1 



Storing pine-cones. "With us [in Maine] he lays 

 up large stores of the cones of pine and spruce and 

 knows the exact season when they are fit to cut for 

 his use. If cut too early they will be sealed closely 

 with pitch ; if cut too late the winged seeds will have 

 escaped. The red squirrel cuts them by the hundreds 

 the last of September, just when the sticky covering 

 has hardened into drops of stiff pitch and just before 

 the cones have opened. One who is in the pine woods 

 then will hear the dull, heavy thud as they fall, and 

 if he gets a close view of the squirrel, will see that 

 his paws and face are smeared with pitch. . . . 



1 A full discussion of the meaning of this custom of storing 

 food against a coming time of scarcity; and of its probable 

 origin and development through the influence of natural selec- 

 tion, will be found in the chapter entitled " A Squirrel's 

 Thrift," in my Wit of the Wild, 2d edition, Dodd, Mead & Co., 

 New York, 1911. 



