FOX AND HOUND. 89 
trees about, for I constantly fancied myself watched 
by shy but jealous eyes. It is an interesting inquiry 
how the squirrel knew the burs would open if left to 
lie on the ground a few days. Perhaps he did not 
know, but thought the experiment worth trying. 
The gray squirrel is peculiarly an American prod 
uct, and might serve very well as a national emblem. 
The Old World can beat us on rats and mice, but we 
are far ahead on squirrels, having five or six species 
to Europe’s one. 
II. FOX AND HOUND. 
I stoop on a high hill or ridge one autumn day 
and saw a hound run a fox through the fields far be- 
neath me. What odors that fox must have shaken 
out of himself, I thought, to be traced thus easily, and 
how great their specific gravity not to have been 
blown away like smoke by the breeze! The fox ran 
a long distance down the hill, keeping within a few 
feet of a stone wall; then turned a right angle and 
led off for the mountain, across a plowed field and a 
succession of pasture lands. In about fifteen minutes 
the hound came in full blast with her nose in the air, 
and never once did she put it to the ground while in 
my sight. When she came to the stone wall she took 
the other side from that taken by the fox, and kept 
about the same distance from it, being thus separated 
several yards from his track, with the fence between 
her and it. At the point where the fox turned 
sharply to the left, the hound overshot a few yards, 
then wheeled, and feeling the air a moment with her 
nose, took up the scent again and was off on his trail 
