HARD FARE. 



SUCH a winter as was that of 1880-81 deep 

 snows and zero weather for nearly three months 

 proves especially trying to the wild creatures that at- 

 tempt to face it. The supply of fat (or fuel) with 

 which their bodies become stored in the fall is rapidly 

 exhausted by the severe and uninterrupted cold, and 

 the sources from which fresh supplies are usually ob- 

 tained are all but wiped out. Even the fox was very 

 hard pressed and reduced to the unusual straits of 

 eating frozen apples ; the pressure of hunger must be 

 great, indeed, to compel Reynard to take up with 

 such a diet. A dog will eat corn, but he cannot di- 

 gest it, and I doubt if the fox extracted anything 

 more than the cider from the frozen and thawed ap- 

 ples. They perhaps served to amuse and occupy his 

 stomach for the time. Humboldt says wolves eat 

 earth, especially clay, during winter, and Pliny makes 

 a similar observation. In Greenland the dog eats 

 seaweed when other food fails. In tropical countries, 

 during the tropical winter, or period of rains, many 

 savage tribes eat clay. It distends their stomachs 

 and in a measure satisfies the cravings of hunger. 

 During the season referred to the crows appeared to 

 have little else than frozen apples for many weeks ; 



