152 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



The habits of woodchucks arc formed and very much 

 influenced by their environment in nature, by which I 

 mean the character of the place selected by them for 

 their homes. Where one makes his burrow in the mid- 

 dle of an extensive clover or other pasture, where there 

 are no walls, trees, rocks, buildings, or, in fact, anything 

 about the place for a considerable distance, that animal 

 meets with a very different experience in life, as com- 

 pared with other individuals of the species that live their 

 lives under vastly different conditions. Such a wood- 

 chuck may never know what it means to climb a tree, or 

 to lie on a big boulder and sun itself ; or what garden 

 fruits and vegetables taste like; or a number of other 

 things that come into the lives of woodchucks living 

 in orchards or in close proximity to kitchen-gardens. 



Again, the wood- __^ 



chuck that makes 

 its abode in the 

 forest is another 

 animal, in some re- 

 spects, digging its 

 burrow among 

 great rocks, with 

 the perpetual shade 

 of trees overhead 

 instead of the 

 broad expanse of 

 sky. Such an indi- 

 vidual knows not 

 what a pasture or a 

 garden looks like ; 

 its life is spent 

 among the sur- 

 roundings which 

 the woods bring to 

 it perhaps near- 

 ness to a little 

 brook, or dense un- 

 dergrowth, masses 

 of rock, or trees 

 that have fallen, or 

 old, moss-covered 

 tree-trunks, and so 

 on. The life of 



such an animal may be easily imagined. He becomes 

 familiar with many kinds of birds and mammals living 

 under the same conditions, and he lives upon very much 

 the same kind of food, which may become scarce at times 

 and reduced to a meagre supply of berries, mushrooms, 

 buds, plants, and roots, and, when hunger presses, the 

 bark of trees and shrubs. Very rarely does he become 

 fat and corpulent as do his brethren of the pastures and 

 gardens; he grows sleek and more agile when his means 

 of livelihood are at their best, but decrepit and thin when 

 they fail him. When in the heyday of his existence, he 

 may "frequently be seen," say Stone and Cram, "of a 

 summer afternoon stretched in the sun along some half 

 prostrate log, evidently glad to take advantage of what- 

 ever of the sun's rays manage to penetrate among the 



shadows of his retreat. Enjoying as he does compara- 

 tive immunity from the attacks of men and dogs, and 

 having at the present day very few enemies to avoid, he 

 should and in all probability often does live out his 

 allotted time ; and it is no uncommon thing to find the 

 bones of these animals in hollow logs and similar places, 

 showing no signs of having suffered a violent death. A 

 careful observer of nature once told me that he had seen 

 a woodchuck apparently very old and feeble, laboriously 

 digging a shallow hole in the soft earth, and that on re- 

 turning, some hours later, he had discovered him curled 

 up at the bottom of the hole quite dead, undoubtedly 

 having died of old age after digging his own grave and 

 crawling into it. He believed this to be a regular cus- 

 tom with them, and said that he had met with a number 



of people who as- 



the 



same 



PORCUPINE SWIMMING 



Figure 12. This is another remarkable photograph by Mr. A. R. Dugmore, and shows 

 the animal looks when it is in the water. Note how the quills always project when 

 animal is swimming. 



serted 

 thing." 



Foxes are great 

 enemies of the 

 woodchuck in re- 

 gions where both 

 are found, while 

 some of the larger 

 hawks feed upon 

 the young when 

 they first come out 

 of the parental 

 burrow and sun 

 themselves about 

 its entrance. The 

 old ones are not 

 especially solicitous 

 of the safety of 

 their progeny, but 

 instances might be 

 given where the re- 

 verse is the case. 

 There is no espe- 

 cial difficulty ex- 

 perienced in rais- 

 ing one of these 

 little fellows for as 

 they grow, they be- 

 though they never seem to 

 Many 



how 

 the 



come as tame as can be 



develop any genuine affection for their master. 



a baby woodchuck has been reared by the farmer boys 



of New England, and it is safe to say that many more 



will be reared by them in the future. 



During the time I was post surgeon at Fort Wingate 

 and writing about the animals of the region, I made the 

 following brief notes: "Of the hoary marmot I have 

 never seen a specimen, and I have no good account of 

 the animal at hand. My knowledge of the Rocky Moun- 

 tain marmot stands pretty much in the same case, al- 

 though several years ago I shot a specimen of this species 

 in the Medicine Bow Range of the Rocky Mountains of 

 Wyoming; but he fell in a position where it was im- 

 possible to recover my prize. A number of them were 



