Had I removed the stones and dug out the nest, I should have found a tunnel leading into the ground for a few feet and opening into a chamber filled with a bulky grass nest,—a bed capable of holding half a dozen chipmunks, and adjoining this, by a short passageway, the storehouse of the oats. How many trips they made between this crib and the oat patch, how many kernels they carried in their pouches at a trip, and how big a pile they had when all the grains were in,—these are more of the questions I should like to know. I might have killed one of the squirrels and numbered the contents of his pouches, but my scientific zeal does not quite reach that pitch any more. The knowledge of just how many oat kernels a chipmunk can stuff into his left cheek (into _both_ cheeks he can put twenty-nine kernels of corn) is really not worth the cost of his life. Of course some one has counted them,—just as some one has counted the hairs on the tail of the dog of the child of the wife of the Wild Man of Borneo, or at least seriously guessed at the number. But this is thesis work for the doctors of philosophy, not a task for farmers and mere watchers in the woods. The chipmunks are in no danger because of my zeal for science; not that I am uninterested in the capacity of their cheeks in terms of oats, but that I am more interested in the whole squirrel, the whole family of squirrels. When the first frosts come, the family—if they are still a family—seek the nest in the ground beneath the stone wall. But they do not go to sleep immediately. Their outer entrances have not yet been closed. There is still plenty of fresh air, and, of course, plenty of food,—acorns, chestnuts, hickory nuts, and oats. They doze quietly for a time and eat, pushing the empty shells and hulls into some side passage prepared beforehand to receive the débris. But soon the frost is creeping down through the stones and earth overhead, the rains are filling the outer doorways and shutting off the supply of fresh air, and one day, though not sound sleepers, the family cuddles down and forgets to wake,—until the frost has begun to creep back toward the surface, and down through the softened soil is felt the thrill of the waking spring. [Illustration] XIV The Buzzard of the Bear Swamp TO most eyes, no doubt, the prospect would have seemed desolate, even forbidding. A single track of railroad lay under my feet, while down and away in front of me stretched the Bear Swamp, the largest, least-trod area of primeval swamp in southern New Jersey.