shelf in the tree where he could sit and eat them at his ease.

[Illustration: RED SQUIRREL]

The red squirrel is not so provident as the chipmunk. He lays up stores
irregularly, by fits and starts; he never has enough put up to carry him
over the winter; hence he is more or less active all the season. Long
before the December snow, the chipmunk has for days been making hourly
trips to his den with full pockets of nuts or corn or buckwheat, till
his bin holds enough to carry him through to April. He need not, and I
believe does not, set foot out of doors during the whole winter. But the
red squirrel trusts more to luck.

As alert and watchful as the red squirrel is, he is frequently caught by
the cat. My Nig, as black as ebony, knows well the taste of his flesh. I
have known him to be caught by the black snake and successfully
swallowed. The snake, no doubt, lay in ambush for him.

This fear, this ever-present source of danger of the wild creatures, we
know little about. Probably the only person in the civilized countries
who is no better off than the animals in this respect is the Czar of
Russia. He would not even dare gather nuts as openly as my squirrel. A
blacker and more terrible cat than Nig would be lying in wait for him
and would make a meal of him. The early settlers in this country must
have experienced something of this dread of apprehension from the
Indians. Many African tribes now live in the same state of constant fear
of the slave-catchers or of other hostile tribes. Our ancestors, back in
prehistoric times, must have known fear as a constant feeling. Hence
the prominence of fear in infants and children when compared with the
youth or the grown person. Babies are nearly always afraid of strangers.

In the domestic animals also, fear is much more active in the young than
in the old. Nearly every farm boy has seen a calf but a day or two old,
which its mother has secreted in the woods or in a remote field, charge
upon him furiously with a wild bleat, when first discovered. After this
first ebullition of fear, it usually settles down into the tame humdrum
of its bovine elders.

Eternal vigilance is the price of life with most of the wild creatures.
There is only one among them whose wildness I cannot understand, and
that is the common water turtle. Why is this creature so fearful? What
are its enemies? I know of nothing that preys upon it. Yet see how
watchful and suspicious these turtles are as they su