34 BOULDER REVERIES. 



branch not over six feet directly above. He is 

 peering down at me and bobbing his bushy tail 

 in rapid curves. I make a move, and up he 

 goes for 40 feet; then stops again and begins 

 to ogle and to bark. While he chatters and 

 scolds at me I write of him. A few hundred 

 thousand years ago his ancestry and mine ex- 

 isted on an equality, as pre-mammalian forms 

 inhabiting some remote corner of the earth. 

 His could not chatter; mine had not an idea 

 of spoken sound or written word. How the 

 pathways of those two sets of ancestors diverged ; 

 what environments and what victories in the 

 struggle for existence brought about the 

 changes which caused the descendant of one to 

 become a chattering rodent of the other a 

 reasoning human only the ages know. 



VIII. 



July 15, '00. Tis midsummer and as glori- 

 ous a July day as is wont to fall to the lot of 

 man in this north temperate zone. A cloud at 

 intervals bowls rapidly overhead, borne onward 

 by the breeze which, cool and refreshing, comes 

 up from the southwest. 



