Ill 



HARD FARE 



Q1 ITCH 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 attempt 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 obtained are all but wiped out. Even the 

 fox was very hard pressed and reduced to the un- 

 usual 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 digest it, and I doubt if the fox ex- 

 tracted anything more than the cider from the frozen 

 and thawed apples. They perhaps served to amuse 

 and occupy his stomach for the time. Humboldt 

 says wolves eat earth, especially clay, during win- 

 ter, and Pliny makes a similar observation. In 

 Greenland the dog eats seaweed when other food 

 fails. In tropical countries, during the tropical 

 winter, many savage tribes eat clay. It distends 

 their stomachs, and in a measure satisfies the crav- 

 ings of hunger. During the season referred to, the 



