WINTER FOOD OF MAMMALS. 189 



here and there to feed on the seeds of grass or 

 weeds which overhang the ice. 



Farther down the brook, after two or three 

 tributaries have added their waters unto it, be- 

 comes a stream of some importance. The 

 deeper ice-covered holes are more abundant, the 

 area of the ripples less. The ice has here been 

 used as a highway by a number of animals. 

 Another fox and a mink or two represent the 

 carnivorous forms, and squirrels and rabbits the 

 herbivorous ones, which have traveled here. 

 The space beneath every overhanging bank and 

 every pile of driftwood has been explored by 

 the mink. It has stopped at the brink of each 

 open ripple and evidently gazed and sniffed into 

 its depths in search of fish or other form of 

 aquatic life. The fox has traveled near the 

 banks and smelled among the grasses. It is thus 

 that these mammals seek their food when the 

 bosom of earth is mantled with snow and her 

 crust hardened by the power of frost. 



At the base of the cliff of clay, ten rods long 

 and thirty feet high, which rises perpendicu- 

 larly from the brink of the stream, there are 



