NATURAL HISTORY. 263 



ground, and being constantly employed in digging up 

 the earth. Whenever they venture abroad, one is 

 placed as a sentinel, sitting on an elevated rock, while 

 the others amuse themselves in the fields below, or 

 are employed in cutting grass, and making it into hay 

 for their future convenience. And no sooner does their 

 sentinel perceive a man, an eagle, a dog, or any other 

 enemy, than he informs the rest by a kind of whistle, 

 and is himself the last that takes refuge in the cell. 



They make no provision for the winter. But when 

 they perceive the first approaches of the season in 

 which their vital motions are to continue in some mea- 

 sure suspended, they labour very diligently to close 

 up the apertures of their dwellings, which they effect 

 with such solidity, that it is more easy to open the 

 earth in any other part than where they have closed 

 it. They are at that time very fat, and some of them 

 are found to weigh twenty pounds. In this plight 

 they continue for three months ; but by degrees 

 their flesh begins to waste, and they are quite thin by 

 the end of winter. When their retreat is discovered, 

 they are found each rolled into a ball, and covered 

 with hay. In this state they seem entirely lifeless : 

 thev may be taken aw ay, and even killed, without be- 

 traying any symptom of pain; and those who find them 

 in this manner, carry home the fat ones for food, and 

 the young ones in order to rear and tame them. The 

 marmot produces but once a year, and the litter gene- 

 rally consists of three or four : their growth is quick, 

 and they live only nine or ten years : they are found 

 in the Alps, Appenines, Pyrenees, in the highest 

 mountains of Germany, in Poland and in Canada, with 

 a fevr variations. 

 Vol. I. K k 



