Gn Cecount with Mature 
that if chipmunk robs at all he does it so seldom as 
to call for no alarm nor for any retribution. 
There is scarcely a day in the nesting season when 
I fail to see half a dozen chipmunks about the walls, 
yet I never noticed one even suspiciously near a 
bird’s nest. In an apple tree, barely six jumps from 
the home of the family in the orchard wall, a brood 
of white-bellied swallows came to wing one spring ; 
while robins, chippies, and red-eyed vireos — not to 
mention a cowbird, which I wish they had devoured 
— have also hatched and flown away from nests that 
these squirrels might easily have rifled. 
It is not often that one comes upon even the red 
squirrel in the very act of robbing a nest. But the 
black snake, the glittering fiend! and the dear house 
cats! If I run.across a dozen black snakes in the 
early summer, it is safe to say that six of them will 
be discovered by the cries of the birds they are 
robbing. Likewise the cats. No creature, however, 
larger than a June-bug was ever distressed by a chip- 
munk. 
In a recent letter to me Mr. Burroughs says: “ No, 
I never knew the chipmunk to suck or destroy eggs 
of any kind, and I have never heard of any well- 
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