UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
that the green corn and the choke-cherries would 
spoil in his underground retreat, and that the hard, 
dry kind, and the cherry-pits, would keep. He did 
know it, but not as you and I know it, by experi- 
ence; he knew it, as all the wild creatures know how 
to get on in the world, by the wisdom that pervades 
nature, and is much older than we or they are. 
My chipmunk knows corn, cherry-pits, buck- 
wheat, beech-nuts, apple-seeds, and probably several 
other foods, at sight; but peach-pits, hickory-nuts, 
dried sweet corn, he at first passed by, and pea- 
nuts I could not tempt him to touch at all. He was 
at first indifferent to the rice, but, on nibbling at it 
and finding it toothsome, he began to fill his pockets 
with it. Amid the rice I scattered puffed wheat. 
This he repeatedly took up and chipped into, at- 
tracted probably by the odor, but, finding it hollow, 
or at least very spongy and unsubstantial in its in- 
terior, he quickly dropped it. It was not solid 
enough to get into his winter stores. After I had 
cracked a few hickory-nuts he became very eager 
for them, and it was amusing to see him, as he sat on 
my table, struggle to force the larger ones into his 
pockets, supplementing the contractile power of his 
cheek muscles with his paws. When he failed to 
pocket one, he would take it in his teeth and make 
off. I offered him some peach-pits also, but he only 
carried one of them up on the stone wall and han- 
dled it awhile, then looked it over and left it. But 
9 
