WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



the kindly critic looking over my shoulder, that 

 everybody hears about and few see, and perhaps 

 would not recognize when they did. But sure- 

 ly every one would know a 'coon — that comical 

 little rascal, weighing about as much as a house- 

 cat, and, like him, wearing a long, grizzled fur, 

 with the hairs standing out as if blown ajDart by 

 the breeze, but having the round, fat, loose shape 

 of a well-fed bear. Like a bear, too, it walks on the 

 whole sole of its flat, black-stockinged feet, which 

 brings its body close to the ground, and half the 

 time it is sitting up on its broad stern like a portly 

 squirrel. The long tail is marked by a succession 

 of black rings, and the sharp nose and bright 

 eyes, set in striped fur, give it the cute, intelligent 

 look of a fox. 



Raccoons live in holes in trees (where they remain 

 out of sight most of the daylight hours) and are 

 properly arboreal animals, as we know from the 

 veritable story of Colonel Davy Crockett; but at 

 night they come down to raid the farmer's corn- 

 fields, and in wilder regions to steal along the 

 banks of woodland streams in search of crabs and 

 mussels, and (by the sea) of oysters. All these 

 things they handle in their fore-paws with the clev- 

 erness of a monkey, and, whenever they can, carry 



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