140 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



is bound to be sooner or later — but spells it 

 Olympus in very truth. Man may be the de- 

 vastator of the earth, and he certainly is so far 

 as its wild life is concerned, but as a producer of 

 succulence in the kitchen garden he is a deity 

 before whom any woodchuck must fall down and 

 worship. 



For the woodchuck besides being the original 

 home-body is without doubt one of the founders 

 of vegetarianism. Born in the desert places, 

 feeding on locust bark and wild honeysuckle, he 

 added inches to his girth when he learned that red 

 clover which the early settlers kindly brought 

 with them had a nourishing quality that defies 

 competition. A woodchuck can get so fat on 

 clover that by November, when he retires for the 

 year, he is as near a complete globe as anything 

 with feet and a face can ever be. The convexity 

 begins at his eyebrows above, at his chin beneath, 

 and though he has feet, they have the effect of 

 being merely pinned on to the lower hem of his 

 garment, as those of a proper young lady in our 

 grandmother's day were supposed to be. The 

 woodchuck can get no fatter than that on garden 

 truck, but he likes it better. I doubt if Charles 

 Dickens ever saw the animal, but when he created 



