HUDSON'S BAY SQUIRREL, CHICKAREE, ETC. 129 



shell-barks {Carya alba), and chesnuts, were taken from a hollow tree oc- 

 cupied by a single pair of these industrious creatures ; although gene- 

 rally the quantity of provision laid up by them is considerably less. The 

 Chickaree has too much foresight to trust to a single hoard, and it often 

 has several, in different localities among the neighbouring trees, or in 

 burrows dug deep in the earth. Occasionally these stores are found under 

 leaves, beneath logs, or in brush-heaps, at other times they are deposited 

 in holes in the ground ; and they are sometimes only temporarily laid 

 by, in some convenient situation to be removed at leisure. When, for in- 

 stance, nuts are abundant in the autumn, large quantities in the green 

 state, covered by their thick envelope, are collected in a heap near the tree 

 whence they have fallen ; they are then covered up with leaves, until the 

 pericarp, or thick outer covering, either falls off or opens, when the Squir- 

 rel is able to carry off the nuts more conveniently. In obtaining shell- 

 barks, butter-nuts, {Juglans cinerea) chesnuts, hazel-nuts, &c., this Squir- 

 rel adopts the mode of most of the other species. It advances as near to 

 the extremity of the branch as it can vnth safety, and gnaws off that 

 portion on which the nuts are dependent. This is usually done early in 

 the morning, and the noise occasioned by the falling of large bunches of 

 of chesnut burrs, or clusters of butter-nuts, hickory, or beech-nuts, thus 

 detached from the parent stem, may be heard more than a hundred j'ards 

 off. Some of the stems attached to the nuts are ten inches or a foot in 

 length. After having thrown down a considerable quantity, the Squir- 

 rel descends and drags them into a heap, as stated above. 



Sometimes the hogs find out these stores, and make sad havoc in the 

 temporary depot. But Providence has placed much food of a different 

 kind within reach of the Red-Squirrel during winter. The cones of 

 many of our pines and firs in high northern latitudes, are persistent dur- 

 ing winter ; and the Chickaree can be supported by the seeds they con- 

 tain, even should his hoards of nuts fail. This little Squirrel seems also 

 to accommodate itself to its situation in another respect. In Pennsylva- 

 nia, and the southern part of New York, where the winters are com- 

 paratively mild, it is very commonly satisfied with a hollow tree as a 

 winter residence ; but in the latitude of Saratoga, N. Y., in the northern 

 part of Massachusetts, in New Hampshire, Maine, Canada, and farther 

 north, it usually seeks for additional protection from the cold, by forming 

 deep burrows in the earth. Nothing is more common than to meet with 

 five or six Squirrel-holes in the ground, near the roots of some white pine 

 or hemlock ; and these retreats can be easily found by the vast heaps of 

 scales from the cones of pines and firs, which are in process of time accu- 

 mulated around them. This species can both swim and dive. We once 



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