FEBRUARY 



21 



Entering the woods, the number and variety of 

 the tracks contrast strongly with the rigid, frozen 

 aspect of things. Warm jets of life still shoot and 

 play amid this snowy desolation. . . . The mice 

 tracks are very pretty, and look like a sort of fan- 

 tastic stitching on the coverlid of the snow. One 

 is curious to know what brings these tiny creatures 

 from their retreats ; they do not seem to be in 

 quest of food, but rather to be traveling about for 

 pleasure or sociability, though always going post- 

 haste, and linking stump with stump and tree with 

 tree by fine, hurried strides. 



BURROUGHS: Winter Sunshine. 



22 

 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, 1819. 



Those trees and shrubs which retain their with- 

 ered leaves through the winter, shrub oaks, and 

 young white, red, and black oaks, the lower branches 

 of larger trees of the last-mentioned species, horn- 

 beams, young hickories, etc., seem to form an inter- 

 mediate class between deciduous and evergreen 

 trees. They may almost be called the ever-reds. 

 Their leaves, which are falling all winter long, 

 serve as a shelter to rabbits and partridges, and 

 other winter birds and quadrupeds. Even the 

 chickadees love to skulk amid them, and peep out 

 from behind them. 



THOREAU: Autumn. 



