54 SIGNS AND SEASONS 



branch, filled with pods, lay upon the snow, it 

 looked as if the whole flock had dined or breakfasted 

 off it. The wind seemed to shake down the pods 

 about as fast as they were needed. When a fresh 

 fall of snow had blotted out everything, it was not 

 many hours before the wind had placed upon the 

 cloth another course; but it was always the same 

 old course — beans, beans. What would the 

 birds and the fowls do during such winters, if the 

 trees and the shrubs and plants all dropped their 

 fruit and their seeds in the fall, as they do their 

 leaves 1 They would nearly all perish. The apples 

 that cling to the trees, the pods that hang to the 

 lowest branches, and the seeds that the various weeds 

 and grasses hold above the deepest snows, alone 

 make it possible for many birds to pass the winter 

 among us. The red squirrel, too, what would he do 1 

 He lays up no stores like the provident chipmunk, 

 but scours about for food in all weathers, feeding 

 upon the seeds in the cones of the hemlock that 

 still cling to the tree, upon sumac-bobs, and the 

 seeds of frozen apples. I have seen the ground 

 under a wild apple-tree that stood near the woods 

 completely covered with the " chonkings " of the 

 frozen apples, the work of the squirrels in getting 

 at the seeds; not an apple had been left, and appar- 

 ently not a seed had been lost. But the squirrels 

 in this particular locality evidently got pretty hard 

 up before spring, for they developed a new source 

 of food-supply. A young bushy-topped sugar-ma- 

 ple, about forty feet high, standing beside a stone 



