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 purpose of boats for wafting them over. When the
whole company are fitted in this manner, they boldly commit their little
fleet to the waves--every squirrel sitting on its own piece of bark, and
fanning the air with its tail, to drive the vessel to the desired port.
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