FIELD EXERCISES
Describe the size, colour, shape, length of tail, and movements of the chipmunk. Compare with the red squirrel.
Have all chipmunks the same number of stripes?
Discover its home; method of carrying grain, nuts, or other foods; whether it is found most commonly on the ground, in trees, or among logs and stones. Try to tame it by placing food where it can reach it and, finally, try to have it feed from your hand.
Find out why there is no loose soil around the entrance to its burrow, whether more families than one live in one burrow, whether the chipmunk comes out during winter, or how early in the spring. Learn to distinguish the sounds of the animal, as expressing alarm, surprise, anger, playfulness.
To the teacher.—Chipmunks carry grain, etc., in their cheeks. Frequently these are so full that they must be emptied to permit them to enter their burrows. It is not uncommon for several to spend the winter in the same burrow, having a common storehouse connected by passages to the main burrow. These little animals are easily tamed and soon learn to take food from the hand. They are not hibernating animals, for they store food for winter, and though they are not asleep all winter, yet they rarely come out of their burrows while there is snow on the ground.
EASTERN SWALLOW-TAIL BUTTERFLY
No butterfly is more suitable for study by the Junior Forms than the Eastern Swallow-tail. It is one of the most beautiful and attractive of our butterflies and lays its eggs so accommodatingly on every carrot or parsnip bed that it gives ample opportunity for observation.
If possible, have the pupils observe the insect in the act of placing the eggs, one here and one there, on the under surface of the leaves of the plants, noting the busy movements; discuss the advantage of scattering the eggs, and also that of placing them on the under surface of the leaves.
If the egg placing cannot be observed, there will be little difficulty in finding the large yellow and green larva with a head shaped like that of a miniature sea-horse. If the larva itself is not easily found, the leaves stripped bare of green blade and the droppings on the ground will reveal its presence.