THE GROUND SQUIRREL. 67 



At lier death, the symptoms attending her illness hav 

 ing raised some suspicions, her friends repaired to the 

 old stump of the tree, and on breaking it open for the 

 purpose of examination, curled up in the hen's nest they 

 found a rattlesnake, and killed it. This also is curious 

 in regard to the hen and the snake, and would rather 

 tend to raise the belief that either the snake will not bite 

 a fowl, or that the venom to a bird of that class is not fatal. 



Having learned from my attendant all he had ever 

 heard or known of rattlesnakes and copperheads, I cast 

 Chance off again in search of game, when, in crossing a 

 small rill of water, Brutus, on going to drink, flushed the 

 little water-rail, so common all over America. The bird 

 is about the same size as that which we have in England, 

 but rather shorter in its make ; and all the specimens 

 that I killed were slightly speckled with white. In this 

 instance the rail only flew a couple of yards, and dropped 

 before I could shoot, and nothing that myself or my dogs 

 could do would put the bird again to the wing ; so, giv 

 ing up all idea of game in the fields, I betook myself to 

 a rather large wood, fenced with the usual zigzag rail, to 

 beat for a woodcock or a rabbit, the one being as scarce as 

 the other. I had not been long thus occupied when I 

 saw something running in the midst of the moss-grown 

 limbs of a huge prostrated tree, and I lost sight of it 

 behind the butt of a tree which was standing. I felt sure 

 it was not a young rabbit, and had suspicions of a squirrel, 

 when, on reaching the spot where the animal disappeared, 

 I found a hole in the decayed tree, into which the crea 

 ture, whatever it was, had made its escape. On my 

 attendant coming up, he pronounced the animal of chase 

 to be a ground squirrel ; so, seeing that the trees all 

 round me were in a fallen or falling and decaying and 



