6o 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE. 



about that time, the little ones will be- 

 gin to venture out, or they will at least 

 have a sufficient growth of fur to pre- 

 vent them from being- chilled by a brief 

 opening of the nest. 



One very cold day in mid-winter I lost 

 an entire family of white Belgians by 

 freezing. I took out nearly all the fine fur, 

 or most of that not greatly contaminated 

 with hay, and of this fairly clean nu- 

 cleus I had a pile that filled a large sized 



dinner plate and was two and a half feet 

 high ! The mother rabbit seems to have 

 realized the severity of the cold and to 

 have gone to an extreme in depilation. 

 Not much was left on her breast and 

 sides, or that seemed to be the fact as 

 1 rubbed my hand over those parts, but, 

 strange to say, she had removed the hair 

 so evenly that in no place was the skin 

 entirely bare nor the fur ragged. Its 

 absence was apparent only to the touch. 



MIRROR PHOTOGRAPHY. 



There is a peculiar charm in a reflec- 

 tion. It is a "memory" of the present and 

 doubles the pleasure. There is an indefin- 

 able appeal to the aesthetic emotions from 

 seeing the thing from two points of view. 



Then, too, there is a scientific value. I 

 have often wondered why mirror photo- 

 graph}' is not used more extensively by 

 scientists and naturalists. We all ap- 

 preciate a mirror photograph on a large 

 scale, as when mountains or trees are 



AN EXCELLENT EXAMPLE OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN A NATURAL MIRROR. 



Shadow Lake, Liberty, N. Y. 

 Photograph by Mr. H. H. Moritz. 



