LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 



please ; and individual tastes differ among them 

 as among men. 



In my immediate vicinity the hard woods are 

 restricted to certain comparatively limited groves 

 and thickets, and the gray squirrels are of course 

 naturally confined to these, although here and 

 there is a family reared in the evergreen woods, 

 subsisting probably on berries and mushrooms 

 and seeds of one kind and another. But in the 

 autumn they move to the hard woods, to the 

 hickories by preference, and when these fail to 

 yield a crop, to the white oaks or chestnuts or 

 beeches, according to the year ; for none of these 

 trees can be depended upon to bear each season, 

 and the gray squirrel population drifts about 

 from one locality to another, assembling in con- 

 siderable numbers wherever food is most abun- 

 dant, collecting all the nuts that are to be had 

 and storing them beneath stumps and in hollow 

 trees by the bushel. These stores they live upon 

 until they are finally exhausted, when they move 



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