Davis: Loca Notes ON THE GRAY SQUIRREL 129 
husk and get at the meat within. This in some cases had been 
eaten, but in others the nut had been abandoned. The fruit of 
the flowering dogwood is also one of their sources of food supply 
in midsummer, for I found many under a tree; they had been 
bitten in two and the seed extracted. The acorns of several Eng- 
lish oaks had received much attention, and the ground beneath the 
trees was strewn with acorn cups gnawed at the base in the 
characteristic way. There were quite a number of acorns that 
had been cut off the tree and lay on the ground unopened. The 
ground beneath one ironwood (Carpinus) was thickly strewn with 
the long bunches of seeds that with wings and all had been cut 
from the tree by the squirrels; sometimes even a few leaves had | 
been included. ‘These small seeds had been opened like those of 
the flowering dogwood, that is, mostly along the long diameter. 
Reference is made above to the acorns cut off the tree by the 
squirrel. These and also those that fall off are often carefully 
examined by the gray squirrels for the acorn weevil larvae they 
may contain. The squirrel bites off a small part of the cup so 
as to expose the base of the acorn and then punctures it slightly. 
The odor no doubt tells if there is a larva within, and if such 
proves to be the case the hole is enlarged and the highly prized 
morsel secured. (See Canad. Entom., Jan. 1907.) 
They also open the large galls so common on some black oaks. 
Naturally these galls would stay on the trees all winter, or at 
least but few would fall off. Gray squirrels sometimes discover 
that each one contains a fine plump larva, and so in the early part 
of June on Staten Island we have known them to cut off the galls 
on the infested black oaks, let them fall to the ground, and then 
open them. Usually a few large pieces of the outer shell are re- 
moved from one half of the gall, then the spongy interior is taken 
out in two or three pieces and the larvae in the central cell se- 
cured. On June 6, 1908, we found over one hundred of these 
large galls under a black oak near Richmond each of which had 
been opened as described, and on subsequent occasions other trees 
from which the galls had been removed. Many black oaks how- 
