314 NATURAL HISTORY HEADER. 



carefully closed the three passages that led to the nest and 

 dug down. We found four chipmunks very cozily fixed 

 for winter, in a roomy nest, and all of them thoroughly 

 wide awake. 



9. Their store of provisions was wholly chestnuts and 

 acorns, and the shells of these nuts were all pushed into 

 one of the passages, so that there should be no litter min- 

 gled with the soft hay that lined the nest. How long this 

 underground life lasts before hibernation really commences, 

 it is difficult to determine ; but as this torpid state does 

 not continue until their food-supply is again obtainable 

 out of doors, the chipmunks, no doubt, store away suffi- 

 cient for their needs throughout the early spring, and per- 

 haps until berries are ripe. charles a AhhoU _ 



AN EXCAVATOR. 



1. Walking through the fields one May morning, I 

 surprised a mole above ground — a very large specimen, 

 one of the giants of this kind. It was an unwonted spec- 

 tacle, something I had never seen before — this purblind, 

 shovel-footed, subterranean dweller, this metaphysician of 

 the earth, groping his way along in the open daylight. 

 Had lie grown tired, then, of the darkness, of the endless 

 burrowings that lead nowhither, of undermining the paths 

 and the garden, and culling off the tender rootlets of the 

 plants ? 



2. He was ill-equipped for traveling above ground ; he 

 was like a stranded fish ; the soil was his element, and he 

 knew it as well as I did. The moment I disturbed him he 

 began to go into the ground as a diver into the water. 

 When he moved, his tendency was downward, like a plow. 

 It was amusing to see his broad, muscular, naked front 



