in the hollow trunk of some tree, lays by a store of
beech-nuts for winter use. Every nut is carefully shelled, and the
cavity that serves as storehouse lined with grass and leaves. The
wood-chopper frequently squanders this precious store. I have seen half
a peck taken from one tree, as clean and white as if put up by the most
delicate hands,--as they were. How long it must have taken the little
creature to collect this quantity, to hull them one by one, and convey
them up to his fifth-story chamber!

But the deer mice do not always carry their supplies home in this
manner; they often hide them in the nearest convenient place. I have
known them to carry a pint or more of hickory nuts and deposit them in a
pair of boots standing in the chamber of an outhouse. Near the
chestnut-trees they will fill little pocket-like depressions in the
ground with chestnuts; in a grain-field they carry the grain under
stones; under some cover beneath cherry-trees they collect great numbers
of cherry-pits. Hence, when cold weather comes, instead of staying at
home like the chipmunk, they gad about hither and thither looking up
their supplies. One may see their tracks on the snow everywhere in the
woods and fields and by the roadside. The advantage of this way of
living is that it leads to activity, and probably to sociability.

[Illustration: WHITE-FOOTED MOUSE]

One day, on my walk in the woods, I saw at one point the mice-tracks
unusually thick around a small sugar-maple. It was doubtless their
granary; they had beech-nuts stored there, I'll warrant. There were two
entrances to the cavity of the tree,--one at the base, and one seven or
eight feet up. At the upper one, which was only just of the size of a
mouse, a squirrel had been trying to break in. He had cut and chiseled
the solid wood to the depth of nearly an inch, and his chips strewed
the snow all about. He knew what was in there, and the mice knew that he
knew; hence their apparent consternation. They had rushed wildly about
over the snow, and, I doubt not, had given the piratical red squirrel a
piece of their minds. A few yards away the mice had a hole down into the
snow, which perhaps led to some snug den under the ground. Hither they
may have been slyly removing their stores while the squirrel was at work
with his back turned. One more night and he would effect an entrance:
what a good joke upon him if he found the cavity empty! These native
mice, I imagine, have to take m