SUMMER AND WINTER QUARTERS 



You may see them behaving after this fashion for hours 

 together, and you feel quite sorry that you are not able to 

 speak their language and go amongst them to hear what 

 they are talking about. 



Although prairie-marmots are so timid that the slightest 

 movement of a hunter will, as we have seen, cause a whole 

 colony of them to disappear underground, leaving no signs 

 of their existence except the mounds in front of their 

 burrows and a chorus of little yelps which seem to come 

 from the depths of the earth, yet they are not in the least 

 terrified by buffaloes, but will play about amongst their 

 hoofs quite fearlessly. 



There are some mammals, though not many, which have 

 two dwellings every year, one for summer and the other for 

 winter. Amongst them are the Marmots (Arctomys\ whose 

 homes have been described very accurately by Tschudi in a 

 well-known book about the Alps. 



Marmots, he tells us, choose for their abode in summer 

 grassy oases surrounded by rocks and chasms ; they prefer 

 spots where they can enjoy plenty of sunshine, avoiding 

 damp and shady places. They dig holes which are in many 

 cases three or four feet deep, and galleries a fathom or two 

 long, but so narrow that they will only just admit a closed 

 fist. These galleries lead into the actual dwelling, which in 

 shape is something like a big basin. The entrance to the 

 burrow is occasionally found piercing the turf quite in the 

 open, but more often it is hidden amongst rocks or under 

 stones, where it is by no means easy to discover. The 

 galleries run up and down in various directions; some are 

 single, while others divide into branches, and their walls are 

 beaten and pressed so hard by the animal passing to and fro 

 that you would think he must have squeezed his way through 

 the ground without troubling to dig out any of the earth. 



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