UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
the apple-trees, and gave me daily opportunities 
to watch the proceedings. 
I have never known any one who has been so for- 
tunate in this respect, nor have I ever seen in print 
any account of the little rodent’s proceedings on 
such an occasion. For several years I have been an 
observer and an investigator of their little mounds 
of freshly dug earth along the margin of the high- 
ways or the woody borders of the fields, but until 
now have never caught one of the little miners at 
work. I had fancied that the digging was done at 
night, and that the earth was carried out to the 
dumping-place in the cheek pouches. But such is not 
the case. My little neighbor worked by day, and his 
cheek pockets were never used in transporting the 
earth from his hole to the dumping-place. I had 
often found the pile of fresh earth two or three yards 
from the hole out of which it came, with never a 
grain of soil littering the grass between the two, and 
no sign of a trail. I had also been fairly bewildered 
by finding stones in the pile of fresh soil so large that 
they could not be forced back into the hole out of 
which I was sure they had come. On three occasions 
I had found such freshly dug stones, and they were 
all too big for the opening that led to the chipmunk’s 
den. By what magic had he got them out? From 
what I had seen one November, after the earth had 
been frozen and then thawed once or twice, I con- 
cluded that the little engineer had made a niche in 
QT 
