SECRETIVENESS. jog 



the overture of their duet. It begins with a pianissimo 

 nibble, a tentative prelude that can be nipped in the bud 

 by projecting a bootjack against the wall, but once fairly- 

 started they keep at it and scrape away with a wonderful 

 uniformity of intonation and accent. In the Southern 

 coast-States, where white pine forms the staple building 

 material, rats sometimes undermine a house completely 

 before their presence is as much as suspected; and the 

 destruction by the late tornado of a sea-side boarding- 

 house near Brunswick, Georgia, disclosed a colony of 

 mephites Americancs, — North American skunks, in fact, 

 — that had lined their basement-quarters with a quantity 

 of moss and cotton which must have taken them at least 

 a year to accumulate, during which time they had strictly 

 refrained from all impolite acts. On being confronted 

 with their irate landlord, however, they resented his 

 aggressive conduct in their characteristic way ; and if 

 such waters as the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Mexico 

 could be suddenly drained, I believe that the visions of 

 the Ancient Mariner would be realized. 



In well-wooded countries even larger animals can sur- 

 vive and thrive for years without betraying their exist- 

 ence, — least of all to their next neighbors, for the fox is 

 not the only robber who spares the vicinity of his head- 

 quarters. Only in three of our thirty-eight States — 

 Indiana, Rhode Island, and Connecticut — have bears 

 been entirely exterminated ; in all the rest they are either 

 autochthones of the soil or pay occasional Christmas 



