■the mother, as well as much smaller, were amus- 

 ingly shy, and they made comic shows in trying 

 to eat peanuts. They could not break through 

 the shell. If offered a shelled nut, they were as 

 likely to bite the end of your finger as the nut. 

 They had not learned which was which. With 

 their baby teeth they could eat but little of the 

 nut, but they had the storing instinct and after 

 a struggle managed to thrust one or two of the 

 nuts into their cheek pockets. 



The youngsters, on being left to shift for 

 themselves, linger about their old home for a 

 week or longer, then scatter, each apparently 

 going off to make an underground home for 

 himself. The house may be entirely new or it 

 may be an old one renovated. 



I do not know just when the mother returns 

 to her old home. Possibly the new home is 

 closely connected with the one she has tempo- 

 rarily left, and it may be that during the au- 

 tumn or the early spring she digs a short tunnel 

 which unites them. The manner of this aside, 

 I can say that each summer the mother that I 

 watched, on retiring from the youngsters, car- 



288 



