The red squirrel is only an irregular storer of nuts in the autumn. In this respect he stands half-way between the chipmunk and the gray squirrel, one of which regularly lays up winter stores and the other none at all.
How diverse are the ways of nature in reaching the same end! Both the chipmunk and the woodchuck lay up stores against the needs of winter, the latter in the shape of fat upon his own ribs, and the former in the shape of seeds and nuts in his den in the ground; and I fancy that one of them is no more conscious of what he is doing than the other. Animals do not take conscious thought of the future; it is as if something in their organization took thought for them. One November, seized with the cruel desire to go to the bottom of the question of the chipmunk’s winter stores, I dug out one after he had got his house settled for the season. I found his den three feet below the surface of the ground--just beyond the frostline--and containing nearly four quarts of various seeds, most of them the little black grains of wild buckwheat--two hundred and fifty thousand of them, I estimated--all cleaned of their husks as neatly as if done by some patent machine.
How many perilous journeys along stone walls and through weedy tangles this store of seeds represented! One would say at least a thousand trips, beset by many dangers from hawks and cats and weasels and other enemies of the little rodent.
The chipmunk is provident; he is a wise housekeeper, but one can hardly envy him those three or four months of inaction in the pitchy darkness of his subterranean den. His mate is not with him, and evidently the oblivion of the hibernating sleep, like that of the woodchuck and of certain mice, is not his. The life of the red and gray squirrels, who are more or less active all winter, seems preferable. They lay up no stores and are no doubt often cold and hungry, but the light of day and the freedom of the snow and of the tree-tops are theirs. Abundant stores are a good thing for both man and beast, but action, adventure, struggle are better.
Author of “The Commercial Strength of Great Britain,” “Germany’s Foreign Trade,” etc.
Queen Elizabeth was the founder of the school of “dollar diplomacy,” and to this day her memory is revered by the merchant gilds of London. This great queen paid much attention to the welfare of industry at home, and sent trade adventurers abroad to open avenues of foreign commerce; and in the degree with which the rulers and governments of all lands have observed the necessities and development of the material interests of their respective countries have nations flourished or marked time.