TAMIAS STRIATUS. 
137 
odd years (nut years), remaining till the following July. They 
then depart and are not seen again till the autumn of the next year. 
Hence they are here about ten months and absent about fourteen 
months, the period of greatest abundance being in June of the 
even years (when there are no nuts). 
They are most industrious creatures, and, though small, lay up 
an astonishingly large supply of food. Audubon and Bachman, 
who once dug out a nest occupied by four Chipmunks, speak thus 
of the larder : “ There was about a gill of wheat and buckwheat in 
the nest ; but in the galleries we afterwards dug out, we obtained 
about a quart of the beaked hazel nuts (Corylus rostratus), nearly 
a peck of acorns, some grains of Indian corn, about two quarts of 
buckwheat, and a very small quantity of grass seeds.” * 
In addition to their store-houses, they frequently, like the gray 
squirrel, make little caches, burying here and there beneath the 
leaves the contents of their cheek-pouches. Mr. Ira Sayles thus 
graphically describes this habit : — 
“ I lately noticed in my garden a bright-eyed Chipmunk, Sciurus 
striatus, advancing along a line directly towards me. He came 
briskly forward, without deviating a hair’s breadth to the right or 
the left, until within two feet of me ; then turned square towards my 
left — his right — and went about three feet or less. Here he paused 
a moment and gave a sharp look all around him, as if to detect 
any lurking spy on his movements. ( H is distended cheeks revealed 
his business : he had been out foraging.) He now put his nose to 
the ground, and, aiding this member with both forepaws, thrust 
his head and shoulders down through the dry leaves and soft muck, 
half burying himself in an instant. 
“ At first, I thought him after the bulb of an Erythronium , that 
grew directly in front of his face and about three inches from it. I 
was the more confirmed in this supposition, by the shaking of the 
plant. 
10 
* Quadrupeds of North America, Vol. I, 1846, p. 70. 
