e
tricks of this little fellow, as was once my own case, steals along
carefully toward the stump, thinking that the squirrel is so busy with
his music, that he is perfectly unconscious of any thing else that is
going on, and that it is just the easiest matter in the world to catch
him. Half a dozen times, at least, I have tried this experiment, before
I became satisfied that I was not the only interested party who was wide
awake. "Chip, chip, chip," sings the squirrel. He does not move an inch.
He does not vary his song. His eyes seem half closed. The boy advances
within a few feet of the squirrel. He reaches out his hand to secure his
prize, when down goes the striped vocalist into his hole, always
uttering a sort of laugh, as he enters his door, and seeming pretty
plainly to say, though in rather poor Anglo-Saxon, it must be confessed,
"No, you don't."

Whoever takes the pains to dig into the earth, where the striped
squirrel has made his nest, will find something that will amply repay
him for his trouble. The hole goes down pretty straight for some feet;
then it turns, and takes a horizontal direction, and runs sometimes a
great distance. Little chambers are seen leading out from this
horizontal passage, each chamber connected by a door with the passage,
and sometimes with other chambers. In each of these rooms, the squirrel
stores up different varieties of nuts and other provisions. In one you
will find acorns; in another hickory nuts--real shag-barks, for our
chipping squirrel is a good judge in these matters; and in another
chestnuts, a whole hat-full of them, sometimes. There is quite as much
order and regularity in the store-houses of the chipping squirrel, as
there seems to be about the premises of some lazy and careless farmers
one meets with occasionally.

Accounts are given of the ingenuity of the squirrels in Lapland, which
would be too astonishing for belief, were they not credited by such men
as Linnaeus, on whose authority we have them. It seems that the squirrels
in that country are in the habit of emigrating, in large parties, and
that they sometimes travel hundreds of miles in this way, and that when
they meet with broad or rapid lakes in their travels, they take a very
extraordinary method of crossing them. On approaching the banks, and
perceiving the breadth of the water, they return, as if by common
consent, into the neighboring forest, each in quest of a piece of bark,
which answers all the purp