I never knew an observer of the home life of the gray squirrel who was not profoundly impressed by the habit of that animal in burying nuts in the autumn, and digging them up for food in the winter and spring. From my office window I have seen our silver- gray friends come hopping through eight or ten inches of snow, carefully select a spot, then quickly bore a hole down through the snow to Mother Earth, and emerge with a nut. Thousands of people have seen this remarkable performance and I think that the majority of them still ask the question: "_How_ does the squirrel know precisely where to dig?" That question cannot be answered until we have learned how to read the squirrel mind. Small city parks easily become overstocked with gray squirrels that are not adequately fed, and the result is,--complaints of "depredations." Of course hungry and half-starved squirrels will depredate,--on birds' nests, fruit and gardens. My answer to all inquirers for advice in such cases is--_feed the squirrels, adequately, and constantly, on cracked corn and nuts, and send away the surplus squirrels._ At this time many persons know that the wild animals and birds now living upon the earth are here solely because they have had sufficient sense to devise ways and means by which to survive. The ignorant, the incompetent, the slothful and the unlucky ones have passed from earth and joined the grand army of fossils. Take the case of the Rocky Mountain Pika, or little chief "hare," of British Columbia and elsewhere. It is not a hare at all, and it is so queer that it occupies a family all alone. I am now concerning myself with _Ochotona princeps,_ of the Canadian Rockies. It is very small and weak, but by its wits it lives in a country reeking with hungry bears, wolverines and martens. The pika is so small and so weak that in the open he could not possibly dig down below the grizzly bear's ability to dig. And what does he do to save himself, and insure the survival of the fittest? He burrows far down in the slide-rock that falls from the cliffs, where he is protected by a great bed of broken stone so thick that no predatory animal can dig through it and catch him. There in those awful solitudes, enlivened only by the crack and rattle of falling slide-rock, the harsh cry of Clark's nut-cracker and the whistling wind sweeping over the storm-threshed summits and through the stunted cedar, the pika chooses to make his home. Over the slide-rock that protects him, the snows of the long and dreary winter pile up from six to ten feet deep, and lie unbroken for months. And how does the pika survive? [Illustration with caption: WILD CHIPMUNKS RESPOND TO MAN'S PROTECTION. J. Alden Loring and his wild pets] [Illustration with caption: AN OPOSSUM FEIGNING DEATH] When he is awake, _he lives on hay, of his own making!_