GENERAL NOTES 
113 
quite extinct. A small colony, living on Guadaloupe Island, escaped destruction, 
though raided on several occasions, and from late reports there would seem to 
be a few scattered remnants to remind us of this once abundant species. — A. W. 
Anthony, Nat. Hist. Museum, Balboa Park, San Diego, California. 
MICE AND CHIPMUNKS HELP RESTOCK FORESTS 
Mice and chipmunks are helping to reestablish the forests of Oregon and Wash- 
ington, according to officials of the Forest Service, United States Department 
of Agriculture. Studies made by J. V. Hofmann, director of the Wind River 
Forest Experiment Station at Stabler, Washington, have shown that a large 
part of the young fir growth coming in on burned or logged areas in these States 
is not wholly due to seeding by occasional trees which are left, but in part to seed 
buried by small rodents beneath the duff of the forest floor. 
In the West mice and other rodents are usually condemned as workers of evil 
in the forest. They often do considerable damage to food supplies, and their 
appetite for pine and fir seed is chiefly responsible for the abandonment of 
attempts to reforest burned-over and waste areas by direct seeding methods. 
Sometimes, however, the work of these little animals is beneficial. 
“In the Douglas fir region,” says Mr. Hofmann, “the forests produce a heavy 
seed crop every two or three years. Rodents collect the seed from the cones 
in large quantities and bury them just beneath the surface of the soil. Part of 
the seed thus stored away is eaten, but snow and soil movement often cover many 
of the hoards so that they are never found. When logging operations open up 
the stand, these seed germinate and produce a new stand of little trees.” 
The Wind River Experiment Station is but one of several similar establish- 
ments maintained by the Government in the national forests for solving forestry 
problems. In this particular case many thousands of dollars have been saved 
annually to western lumbermen through the assistance of rodents in restocking 
cut-over lands. This is one example of the value of the experiments being car- 
ried on by these stations, which are so important to the perpetuation of our for- 
ests and dependent industries. — U. S. Department of Agriculture Press 
Service, Washington, D. C. 
A RECENT MIGRATION OF THE GRAY SQUIRREL IN WISCONSIN 
In a previous paper I have noted a migration of norfhern gray squirrels {Sci- 
urus carolinensis leucotis) across the Mississippi River from Wisconsin into Minne- 
sota during the autumn of 1905. The migration may have been caused by a short- 
age of nuts on the Wisconsin side of the river (Bull. Wisconsin Nat. Hist. Soc., 
vol. 8, p. 87, 1910). 
On a field trip for the United States Biological Survey during the past summer 
(1920), I had occasion to visit Pepin, Wisconsin. While there, Mr. Broach, a 
reputable citizen of that village, told me about a migration of gray squirrels 
which occurred early in the fall of either 1914 or 1915. The squirrels came from 
the hills 2 or more miles back of Pepin, followed a point out into the foot of Lake 
Pepin, and there swam a distance of about \ mile across the Mississippi River 
to the Minnesota shore. Mr. Broach would give no estimate of the number 
