THE WOODCHUCK. 93 



Pacific slope, burrowing near the snow line. It is 

 more social or gregarious than the American species, 

 living in large families like our prairie-dog. In the 

 Middle and Eastern States our woodchuck takes the 

 place, in some respects, of the English rabbit, burrow- 

 ing in every hillside and under every stone wall and 

 jutting ledge and large bowlder, from whence it makes 

 raids upon the grass and clover and sometimes upon 

 the garden vegetables. It is quite solitary in its 

 habits, seldom more than one inhabiting the same den, 

 unless it be a mother and her young. It is not now 

 so much a wood chuck as a field chuck. Occasionally, 

 however, one seems to prefer the woods, and is not 

 seduced by the sunny slopes and the succulent grass, 

 but feeds, as did his fathers before him, upon roots 

 and twigs, the bark of young trees, and upon various 

 wood plants. 



One summer day, as I was swimming across a 

 broad, deep pool in the creek in a secluded place in 

 the woods, I saw one of these sylvan chucks amid the 

 rocks but a few feet from the edge of the water where 

 I proposed to touch. He saw my approach, but doubt- 

 less took me for some water-fowl, or for some cousin 

 of his of the muskrat tribe ; for he went on with his 

 feeding, and regarded me not till I paused within ten 

 feet of him and lifted myself up. Then he did not 

 know me, having, perhaps, never seen Adam in his 

 simplicity, but he twisted his nose around to catch my 

 scent ; and the moment he had done so he sprang like 

 a jumping-jack and rushed into his den with the ut- 

 most precipitation. 



The woodchuck is the true serf among our animals ; 

 he belongs to the soil, and savors of it. He is of the 

 earth, earthy. There is generally a decided odor about 



