Went a-chestnutting this afternoon to Smith’s wood-lot near the Turnpike. Carried four ladies. I raked. We got six and a half quarts, the ground being bare and the leaves not frozen. The fourth remarkably mild day. I found thirty-five chestnuts in a little pile under the end of a stick under the leaves, near - within a foot of - what I should call a gallery of a meadow mouse. These galleries were quite common as I raked. There was no nest nor apparent cavity about this store. Aunt M. found another with sixteen in it. Many chestnuts are still in the burs on the ground. Aunt found a twig which had apparently fallen prematurely, with eight small burs, all within the compass of its five or six inches, and all but one full of nuts. The galleries above named were evidently permanent and not made by one trip.
