A wonderfully extensive kingdom has fallen to Adjidaumo of the shady
tail; all of Canada and most of the Rockies are his. He is at home
wherever there are pine forests and a cool climate; and he covers so
many ranges of diverse conditions that, responding to the new
environments in lesser matters of makeup, we have a score of different
Squirrel races from this parent stock. In size, in tail, in kind or
depth of coat they differ to the expert eye, but so far as I can see
they are exactly alike in all their ways, their calls and their
dispositions.

The Pine Squirrel is the form found in the Rockies about the Yellowstone
Park. It is a little darker in colour than the Red-squirrel of the East,
but I find no other difference. It has the same aggressive, scolding
propensities, the same love of the pinyons and their product, the same
friends and the same foes, with one possible partial exception in the
list of habits, and that is in its method of storing up mushrooms.

[Illustration]

The pinyons, or nuts of the pinyon pine, are perhaps the most delicious
nuts in all the lap of bountiful dame Nature, from fir belt in the
north to equatorial heat and on to far Fuego. All wild creatures revel
in the pinyons. To the Squirrels they are more than the staff of life;
they are meat and potatoes, bread and honey, pork and beans, bread and
cake, sugar and chocolate, the sum of comfort, and the promise of
continuing joy. But the pinyon does not bear every year; there are off
years, as with other trees, and the Squirrels might be in a bad way if
they had no other supply of food to lay up for the winter.

[Illustration: XXV. Red-squirrel storing mushrooms for winter use
_Sketched from life in the Selkirk Mountains, by E. T. Seton_]

[Illustration: XXVI. Chink stalking the Picket-pin
_Photo by E. T. Seton_]

A season I spent in the Southern Rockies was an off year for pinyons,
and when September came I was shown what the Squirrels do in such an
emergency. All through autumn the slopes of the hills were dotted with
the umbrellas of countless toadstools or mushrooms, representing many
fat and wholesome species. It is well known that while a few of them are
poisonous, a great many are good food. Scientists can find out which is
which only by slow experiment. "Eat them; if you live they are good, if
you die they are poisonous" has been suggested as a certain method. The
Squirrels must have worked this out long ago, for they surely know