The Wit of the Wild 



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We speak lightly of an animal foreseeing the 

 winter, and even of having prophetic knowledge 

 of what its character is to be. Proverbial 

 weather-lore is founded on this popular faith, 

 as witness such sayings as that the muskrats 

 build their houses twenty inches higher and 

 far thicker before early and long winters 

 than in view of short and mild ones; and that 

 chipmunks store a larger supply of nuts than 

 ordinary in anticipation of a hard winter. Per- 

 haps nothing in folk-lore is more fixed and wide- 

 spread than this class of beliefs, despite the 

 discouragement of many adverse statistics. 

 Yet what evidence have we that any one of the 

 small mammals or birds that interest us at 

 the moment have any conscious anticipatory 

 thought of winter ahead, or a conception of 

 winter at all? The associative memory of older 

 and superior animals may bring back from time 

 to time a recollection of the last or previous 

 ones, but we can hardly suppose that these mice 

 and squirrels many too young to have seen 

 snow and ice have any realization of the fact 

 of the succession of seasons, or are able to rea- 



