294 CAMP-FIRES IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES 



dreary winter." When we reflect that from October until 

 May, almost eight months, the frozen earth is locked fast 

 under a thick layer of ice and snow, it needs no philoso- 

 pher to suggest that only the toughest and wisest ani- 

 mals can survive the great annual test of endurance. 

 The bookshelves of our libraries and our homes actually 

 yawn for a volume which will tell us, fully and truly, 

 how the small creatures of the summits live through the 

 awful winters which we, in our comfortable homes, shiver 

 to think of. As yet we have only begun to learn how 

 a few of the rodents manage to pull through. Those of 

 the summits surely must lie for months in a torpid state, 

 more dead than alive. 



No doubt I am to blame for not having been more 

 diligent in devoting time and labor to investigations of 

 the home life of the small rodents with which we came 

 in touch. Perhaps I lost some opportunities which could 

 have been improved; but really, I think not. During the 

 month that we were in the mountains, it was a physical 

 impossibility to do more than we did. My total sum of 

 hard climbing in hunting for big game, specimen- 

 making, meat-drying, sketching and note-taking left me 

 no time for the pursuit of small creatures, either with 

 digging tools or traps. Whenever I wished to spend half 

 an hour in digging out some interesting burrowing crea- 

 ture, it always chanced upon a mountain-side or summit 

 whereon there were no tools with which to dig. In dig- 

 ging out mountain rodents, one needs a good, healthy 

 grizzly bear as an assistant. 



From my first day on the slide-rock, I became deeply 



