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: 4 
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. 
1A 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. 
