also. But how rarely we see squirrels in winter! The naturalists say
they are mostly torpid; yet evidently that little pocket-faced
depredator, the chipmunk, was not carrying buckwheat for so many
days to his hole for nothing: was he anticipating a state of
torpidity, or providing against the demands of a very active
appetite? Red and gray squirrels are more or less active all winter,
though very shy, and, I am inclined to think, partially nocturnal in
their habits. Here a gray one has just passed,--came down that tree
and went up this; there he dug for a beechnut, and left the burr on
the snow. How did he know where to dig? During an unusually severe
winter I have known him to make long journeys to a barn, in a remote
field, where wheat was stored. How did he know there was wheat
there? In attempting to return, the adventurous creature was
frequently run down and caught in the deep snow.

His home is in the trunk of some old birch or maple, with an
entrance far up amid the branches. In the spring he builds himself a
summer-house of small leafy twigs in the top of a neighboring beech,
where the young are reared and much of the time is passed. But the
safer retreat in the maple is not abandoned, and both old and young
resort thither in the fall, or when danger threatens. Whether this
temporary residence amid the branches is for elegance or pleasure,
or for sanitary reasons or domestic convenience, the naturalist has
forgotten to mention.

The elegant creature, so cleanly in its habits, so graceful in its
carriage, so nimble and daring in its movements, excites feelings of
admiration akin to those awakened by the birds and the fairer forms
of nature. His passage through the trees is almost a flight. Indeed,
the flying squirrel has little or no advantage over him, and in