30 Clear Skies and Cloudy. 



with its loss of volume, there has been un- 

 happily a loss of wild life which formerly found 

 the world here Nature at her best. Otters are 

 all gone, I suppose. The last pair, it may 

 be, were those killed within a few months. 

 The beaver has been long extinct, but, while 

 no trace of a dam remains, the bones of these 

 creatures are common in the ashes of Indian 

 cooking sites. Even the lumpish, lazy musk- 

 rats have a host of enemies forever at their 

 heels. Think of those to come after us, re- 

 duced to the contemplation of meadow mice. 

 I am almost too late, but the savage within me 

 pleasantly thrills my breast as I make out the 

 frozen tracks of a raccoon, now firm in texture 

 as fossil footprints. It is useless to follow them 

 up, but there is some satisfaction, upon their 

 basis, of repeopling the brookside. Even now, 

 sitting at the foot of a cluster of silvery birches, 

 I can see not only the coon, but its more for- 

 midable cousin, the bear. Not strange, this, 

 for I saw only yesterday a bear's tooth, picked 

 from an upland field, which some Indian had 

 worn as an ornament. Is not this the secret of 

 the satisfaction we sometimes have in wander- 



