398 LEWIS'S AMERICAN SPORTSMAN. 



the farmer, who, with the assistance of all his family, is not able 

 to protect his hard-earned crops from the depredations of these 

 lawless little fellows, that swarm in the cornfield at such times by 

 hundreds, and even thousands, consuming all within their reach, 

 and destroying still more by throwing it down on the ground. 



When eating, or occupied in listening, they sit erect on their 

 hind-legs, with their long, bushy tail raised beautifully along the 

 back as far as the shoulders, then falling in a graceful curve near 

 the extremity, and hanging towards the ground. Their food is 

 always held in their fore-paws. 



The teeth of the whole race are remarkable for their sharpness, 

 power, and durability ; they cut with ease, in an incredibly short 

 time, through the hardest hickory-nut, and have the sagacity to 

 tell a withered or rotten nut from a good one by the mere feel or 

 smell ; and no sooner do they pick up one of these bad ones than 

 they turn it round in their nimble paws and discard it. This fact 

 we have again and again tested with the common gray squirrel. 

 The gullet of the squirrel is said to be very small, or rather con- 

 tracted at one point, to prevent the food from being disgorged 

 when descending trees. We do not know if such is the fact, and 

 we have no squirrel at hand at this present time to examine. 



The whole race, with one or two exceptions, inhabit the thick 

 woods, living upon the profusion of seeds, acorns, hickory-nuts, 

 chestnuts, and the various other products of our rich and grand 

 forests. Several varieties of squirrels, more especially those 

 at the North, are very provident and thoughtful of the morrow, 

 always collecting and laying up in secret storehouses the surplus 

 food, which they partake of during the winter season, when the 

 nuts are all shaken by the cold blasts from the trees, and perhaps 

 covered up a foot or more in frozen snow. These well-stocked 

 granaries are generally in the neighborhood of their nests, either 

 in the hollow of a tree, in the bottom of an old stump, or in the 

 wide fissure of an overhanging rock. The quantities of nuts thus 

 stowed away by a single squirrel is sometimes enormous. We have 

 &een as much as a bushel of hickory-nuts, chestnuts, acorns, beech- 



