WAKING AND SLEEPING 3 



Few of our warm-blooded creatures sleep till the 

 real dawn appears, though our fauna numbers 

 many alleged hibernators. On this first day of 

 January the squirrel of the pine-wood, nay, all 

 the squirrels of the pine-wood, are abroad. They 

 are down upon the floor digging up nuts and 

 chestnuts, sampling fir-cones, nibbling the bark 

 of ground ash to replenish life's liquor in its cup. 

 The squirrel, it is true, is not exactly a hibernator. 

 He belongs to the intermediate type that stores 

 food against its awakening. These are all rodents. 

 The best sleeper of them all, the dormouse, has a 

 store of nuts that he will not break into much 

 before April. The brown rat has the saitte, though 

 he is seen out and about in the coldest weather. 

 The field vole makes his store of wheat or haws, 

 or other convenient food, unless he can rely on the 

 mountain of food that man puts up in the potato 

 or mangel clamp. But in every fall of snow I see 

 the dirty tracks of the voles, or can unroof their 

 galleries under the cold crust. The storing habit 

 does nbt, so far as I know, descend to our 

 rabbits. They stay much underground, dozing 

 and living quietly on their own fat, or leisurely 

 digesting their last cropful of grass. Some have 

 wondered whether a rabbit may not chew the cud, 

 but the hypothesis has no facts to go upon. 



A little more and our rabbit might have been 

 a hay-maker like the Little Chief hare or pica of 

 the Rocky Mountains. This animal, though it 

 likes to come out in the winter, would have little 



