Perhaps you may think my squirrel anecdote incredible; but I can vouch for the truth of it on my own personal experience, as I not only saw but also felt it:  the black squirrels are most lovely and elegant animals, considerably larger than the red, the grey, and the striped:  the latter are called by the Indians “chit-munks.”

We were robbed greatly by these little depredators last summer; the red squirrels used to carry off great quantities of our Indian corn not only from the stalks, while the crop was ripening, but they even came into the house through some chinks in the log-walls, and carried off vast quantities of the grain, stripping it very adroitly from the cob, and conveying the grain away to their storehouses in some hollow 1og or subterranean granary.

These little animals are very fond of the seeds of the pumpkins, and you will see the soft creatures whisking about among the cattle, carrying away the seeds as they are scattered by the beasts in breaking the pumpkins:  they also delight in the seeds of the sunflowers, which grow to a gigantic height in our gardens and clearings.  The fowls are remarkably fond of the sunflower-seeds, and I saved the plants with the intention of laying up a good store of winter food for my poor chicks.  One day I went to cut the ripe heads, the largest of which was the size of a large dessert-plate, but found two wicked red squirrels busily employed gathering in the seeds, not for me, be sure, but themselves.  Not contented with picking out the seeds, these little thieves dexterously sawed through the stalks, and conveyed away whole heads at once:  so bold were they that they would not desist when I approached till they had secured their object, and, encumbered with a load twice the weight of their own agile bodies, ran with a swiftness along the rails, and over root, stump, and log, till they eluded my pursuit.

[Illustration:  Red-squirrel]

Great was the indignation expressed by this thrifty little pair on returning again for another load to find the plant divested of the heads.  I had cut what remained and put them in a basket in the sun, on a small block in the garden, close to the open glass-door, on the steps of which I was sitting shelling some seed-beans, when the squirrels drew my attention to them by their sharp scolding notes, elevating their fine feathery tails and expressing the most lively indignation at the invasion:  they were not long before they discovered the Indian basket with the ravished treasure; a few rapid movements brought the little pair to the rails within a few paces of me and the sunflower-heads; here, then, they paused, and sitting up looked in my face with the most imploring gestures.  I was too much amused by their perplexity to help them, but turning away my head to speak to the child, they darted forward, and in another minute had taken possession of one of the largest of the heads, which they conveyed away, first one carrying it a few yards, then the other, it being too bulky for one alone to carry it far at a time.  In short, I was so well amused by watching their manoeuvres that I suffered them to rob me of all my store.  I saw a little family of tiny squirrels at play in the spring on the top of a hollow log, and really I think they were, without exception, the liveliest, most graceful creatures I ever looked upon.