Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 September 1875 — When the Chipmucks go to Work. [ARTICLE]

When the Chipmucks go to Work.

About Aug. 15 they commenced to work in real earnest. Instead „of tire playful careless creatures that lived from hand to mouth they became very busy and sober indeed. Instead of keeping comparatively near home they wandered quite a distance for them, and filling both cheekpouches full of corn, chincapins (dwarf chestnuts) and small* acorns, home they , would hurry, looking, in the face, like children with the mumps. This storing away of food was continued until the first heavy white frosts, when the chipmucks, as a member of Congress once said, went “into a state of retiracy.” The food gathered, we believe, is consumed in part on their going into winter quarters, they spending some time in their retreats before commencing their hibernating sleep. This belief, on our part, is based on a result of diggingout a third nest on the 3d of November. The last time we noted down seeing a chipmuck belonging to a certain nest was Oct. 22. Twelve days after we very carefully closed the three passages that led to the nest and dug down. VVe found four chipmucks very cosily fixed for winter in a roomy nest, and all of them thoroughly wide-awake." "Their store of provisions was wholly chestnuts and acorns, and the shells ot these nuts were all pushed into passages so that there should be no litter mingled with the soft hay that lined the nest. How long this underground life lasts before hibernation readily commences it is difficult to determine; but as' this torpid state does not continue until their food supply is again obtainable out of doors the chipmucks, no doubt, store away sufficient for their needs throughout the early spring, and until berries are ripe. I —Or. Abbott, in Popular Science Monthly ! for August. New London has the largest wharf in the United States. It is 1,150 feet long, and 200 and 250 feet wide, has twenty Teet depth of and covers nearly' six acres; the walls are solid stone-work, with a filling-in of gravel. The wharf is the terminus of the New London Northern Railroad, and is now about completed. " , To read, to think, to love, to hope and to pray—these are the things that make men happy. They have power to do these things; they will never have power to do more. The world’s prosperity or adversity depends upon our knowing and teaching these few things, but upon iron or glass, steam or electricity, in nowise.— Ruskin.