A squirrel’s dry-house. 
127 
in storing nuts for winter use. Some squirrels certainly 
do make stores of nuts, and perhaps all do so to some ex¬ 
tent in regions where the winter is severe ; but it should 
be remembered that the squirrel is a southern animal in its 
origin, and whatever habits of prudent storage it has have 
been acquired through the hard experience of many gen¬ 
erations. 
There is every reason to believe that this habit of laying 
up a store of food for future needs, was not acquired by all 
the squirrels and at the same time. Squirrels, so far as the 
range of their limited powers extends, are more like human 
folk than we are apt to imagine. Here and there a squir¬ 
rel, more intelligent and industrious than his neighbor, laid 
by a small store of nuts and by its help lived through a hard 
winter, while many of his less thrifty neighbors perished. 
Perhaps he got the idea from finding a few nuts that had 
fallen into the hollow of a tree. Gradually, such is the 
force of example, other squirrels would put the new idea in 
practice, until it would become a general, perhaps univer¬ 
sal, custom in squirrel land 
But the squirrels did not rest content with a single a- 
chievement. They have their centuries of progress to look 
back upon and boast of, in their own narrow limits, just as 
human beings do. Squirrels are not naturally wanderers, 
and do not like to leave home. So, when the nut habit 
had been acquired, if, for some reason the nut supply should 
be short or fail altogether, the more enterprising squirrels 
would make experiments. Some of these experiments 
would prove successful, come to be adopted by other squir¬ 
rels, and thus another habit would be acquired. It is well 
known that the woodpeckers in some parts of the country, 
have changed their habits to a considerable extent during 
the past twenty years, and there is no reason to doubt that 
the squirrels are doing the same. An incident, seeming 
to prove this, came under the writer’s observation recently, 
and may be of interest to Nature Study readers. 
