2 WILD NEIGHBORS chap. 



ing into its interior, showing that it is hollow. 

 There seems, however, to be no special entrance, 

 the inmates pushing their way into the centre, and 

 escaping from it wherever it seems easiest to part 

 the twigs. I have never seen more than one pair 

 at work upon any one nest. The work is done 

 mainly in the early morning, and the task is ac- 

 complished very speedily. 



I know this particular pair of squirrels very 

 well. They have been tenants of the grove ever 

 since we came to live in this edge of the city, 

 and though the town has now grown beyond and 

 around us, and the grove is given a perpetual 

 moonlight from the electric lamp on the corner, 

 the trees and bushes remain. In midsummer they 

 may indulge their fondness for toadstools, upon 

 which, during August, they seem almost wholly 

 to subsist. Nuts and acorns come with each re- 

 turning autumn, and in midwinter provender is 

 spread upon friendly window-sills. 



Almost the only advantage the squirrels have 

 taken of civilization, however, has been to occupy 

 the boxes that my benevolent neighbor. Dr. J. P. 

 Phillips, has put up for them in the trees, which 

 are tenanted more or less all the year round, one 

 family occupying each box and tree by itself as 

 long as it wishes, and putting in its own furniture 

 — a new bedroom set of grass and soft leaves. Of 

 these boxes they distinctly prefer those which are 

 simply sections of hollow logs, probably because 



