On sunny hillsides around the principal trees they lie in big piles,--bushels and basketfuls of them, all fresh and clean, making the most beautiful kitchen-middens imaginable.

The brown and yellow scales and nut-shells are as abundant and as delicately penciled and tinted as the shells along the sea-shore; while the beautiful red and purple seed-wings mingled with them would lead one to fancy that innumerable butterflies had there met their fate.
He feasts on all the species long before they are ripe, but is wise enough to wait until they are matured before he gathers them into his barns.

This is in October and November, which with him are the two busiest months of the year.

All kinds of burs, big and little, are now cut off and showered down alike, and the ground is speedily covered with them.

A constant thudding and bumping is kept up; some of the larger cones chancing to fall on old logs make the forest reecho with the sound.