how to approach him. The skunk wants a 

 champion. Some one ought to spend an entire 

 October moon with him and give us the better 

 side of his character. If some one would take 

 the trouble to get well acquainted with him at 

 home, it might transpire that we have grievously 

 abused and avoided him. 



There is promise of a future for the birds in 

 their friendship for us and in our interest and 

 sentiment for them. Everybody is interested in 

 birds ; everybody loves them. There are bird- 

 books and bird-books and bird-booksnew vol- 

 umes in every publisher's spring announcements. 

 Every one with wood ways knows the songs and 

 nests of the more common species. But this is 

 not so with the four-footed animals. They are 

 fewer, shyer, more difficult of study. Only a 

 few of us are enthusiastic enough to back into a 

 hole in a sand-bank and watch all night for the 

 "beasts" with dear old Tarn Edwards. 



But such nights of watching, when every fallen 

 leaf is a sentinel and every moonbeam a spy, will 

 let us into some secrets about the ponds and fields 

 that the sun, old and all -seeing as he is, will 

 never know. Our eyes were made for daylight ; 

 [203] 



