15. Does it injure trees to tap them?
16. Do the holes made in earlier years become farther apart as the tree grows?
17. What other trees besides the sugar maple give sweet sap?
18. What animals, birds, and insects are to be seen in the woods during sugar-making time?
19. Have you ever seen the tracks of animals on the snow in the woods? If so, make pictures of them and tell what animals made them.
LEAFLET XLIX.
THE RED SQUIRREL OR CHICKAREE.[66]
By ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK.
"All day long the red squirrels came and went, and afforded me much entertainment by their manœuvres. One would approach at first warily through the shrub-oaks, running over the snow crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with his "trotters" as if it were for a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting on more than half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe were fixed on him,—for all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as those of a dancing girl,—wasting more time in delay and circumspection than would have sufficed to walk the whole distance,—I never saw one walk,—and then suddenly, before you could say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top of a young pitch-pine, winding up his clock and chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the universe at the same time,—for no reason that I could ever detect, or he himself was aware of, I suspect."—Thoreau.
