344 HUNTING TRAILS. 
or underground trails for the purpose of hunting. 
He is a night-feeder, and exposed to terrible 
perils from the various small carnivora that prowl 
about like bandits in the dark—stoats, weasels, 
martens, and skunks. So, to avoid and escape 
these enemies, he comes quietly along the sub- 
terranean roadways, and cautiously emerging at 
the open cutting, feels about with his wonderful 
nose; and I doubt not, guided by an acute sense 
o: smell, pounces upon larve, slugs, beetles, or 
any nocturnal creeping-thing he can catch; and 
so traversing his different hunting-trails during 
the night, manages in that way to fare sump- 
tuously, and safe from danger. Turning in, to 
sleep away his breakfast, dinner, and supper, at 
the first peep of the grey morning, he dozes on, 
until hunger again prompts him to make another 
excursion on the ‘ hunting-path.’ 
It is scarcely possible to imagine a more skil- 
fully-contrived hunting-system, to avoid danger 
and facilitate escape, than are these tunnel-trails 
with open cuttings; for the sly little hunter has, 
on the slightest alarm, two means of flight at his 
disposal—one before and another behind him; 
and the fur, as I have already mentioned, laying 
as evenly when smoothed from tail to head as it 
does when turned in the natural direction, enables 
