286 Life and Immortality. 
long sticks, and well-directed blows, manage to fell to the 
earth many a luckless fellow as he endeavors to escape his 
pursuers by running along the rail fences. 
Hackees delight in sequestered localities. There they tun- 
nel their homes, preferring some old tree, or a spot of earth 
sheltered by a wall or a bank. Their burrows are rather 
complicated affairs, running often to great lengths, so that 
the task of digging the animal out of his retreat becomes 
one of no easy accomplishment. Sandy patches of ground, 
on the outskirts of a woods, are not unusually chosen for 
burrows. A hole, almost perpendicular, is drilled into the 
earth to a depth of three feet, and is thence continued with 
one or more windings, rising a little nearer the surface until 
it has advanced some nine or ten feet, when it is made to 
terminate in a large circular nest, made of oak leaves and 
dried grasses. Small lateral galleries branch off from the 
main burrow, in which these provident little creatures lay up 
their winter’s provisions. Wheat, Indian corn, buckwheat, 
hazel-nuts, acorns and the seeds of grasses have been found 
in their underground receptacles, a proof, were further evi- 
dence lacking, that they do not pass the cold famine months 
in a sluggish and benumbed condition. Several layers of 
leaves, aggregating nine inches in thickness, are often found 
over the entrance, as a protection from frosts, which are 
further prevented from intrusion by the sealing up of the 
mouth from within. 
Everything is done by the Hackee in a business-like 
manner. In gathering his food, lest the sharp beak of the 
nut may injure his cheeks when he places the fruit in his 
pouch, he nips off the point, and then by the aid of his fore- 
paws deliberately pushes the nut into one of his pouches. 
Another and another are similarly treated, and taking a 
fourth between his teeth, he dives into his burrow, and, having 
packed them methodically away, returns to the surface for a 
fresh cargo. Four nuts are his load at each journey. With 
his cheek-pouches distended to their fullest capacity, and 
