THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



eggs of the unfertilized queen produce drones — that 

 is, in producing males, the male is dispensed with. It 

 is to produce the neuters or the workers that the 

 service of the male is required. The queen bee is 

 developed from one of these neuter eggs, hence her 

 male offspring have only a grandfather. 



The chipmunk is an old friend of my boyhood and 

 my later years also, but by scrutinizing his ways a 

 little more closely than usual the past summer I 

 learned things about this pretty little rodent that 

 I did not before know. I discovered, for instance, 

 that he digs his new hole for his winter quarters in 

 midsummer. 



In my strolls afield or along the road in July I 

 frequently saw a fresh pile of earth upon the grass 

 near a stone fence, or in the orchard, or on the edge 

 of the woods — usually a peck or two of bright, 

 new earth carefully put down in a pile upon the 

 groimd without any clue visible as to where it prob- 

 ably came from. But a search in the grass or leaves 

 usually disclosed its source — a little round hole 

 neatly cut through the turf and leading straight 

 downward. I came upon ten such mounds of earth 

 upon a single farm, and found the hole from which 

 each came, from one to six feet away. In one case, 

 in a meadow recently mowed, I had to explore the 

 stubble with my finger over several square yards of 

 surface before I found the squirrel's hole, so undis- 

 turbed was the grass around it; not a grain of soil 

 238 



