LEAFING 83 



a rake and a bag with me much better things to 

 take into the woods than empty hands, and sure to 

 scratch into light a number of objects that would 

 never come within the range of opera-glass or gun 

 or walking stick. To see things through a twenty- 

 four-toothed rake is to see them very close, as 

 through a microscope magnifying twenty-four diam- 

 eters. 



And so, as the leaves pile up, we keep a sharp 

 lookout for what the rake uncovers here, under a 

 rotten stump, a hatful of acorns, probably gathered 

 by the white-footed wood mouse. For the stump 

 gives at the touch of the rake, and a light kick 

 topples it down the hill, spilling out a big nest of 

 feathers and three dainty little creatures that scurry 

 into the leaf-piles like streaks of daylight. They are 

 the white-footed wood mice, long-tailed, big-eared, 

 and as clean and high-bred looking as greyhounds. 



Combing down the steep hillside with our rakes, 

 we dislodge a large stone, exposing a black patch of 

 fibrous roots and leaf mould, in which something 

 moves and disappears. Scooping up a double hand- 

 ful of the mould, we capture a little red-backed sala- 

 mander. 



This is not the "red" salamander that Mr. 

 Burroughs tells us is "the author of that fine plaintive 

 piping to be heard more or less frequently, according 

 to the weather, in our summer and autumn woods." 

 His "red" salamander is really a "dull orange, 



