The Turnpike Road. 117 



about the lifeless body, and went once quite close to its 

 head, and then ran away up the hill. Perhaps he was 

 touched by uncertainties and doubts, akin to human ones. 



It is the general impression that there is little or nothing 

 to see of animal life on a winter ramble, and that during 

 the dead months, as they are called, every thing is truly 

 dead. There are books on nature, that take great pains 

 to point out this seeming, and to some extent, actual error 

 in the popular mind, but though it is true that there are 

 mice and birds, and even flies and moth abroad, yet it is 

 also true, that we walk over the snow as a man in the 

 depths of night along the main street of the village when 

 all are sleeping. It is not correct to call Winter the season 

 of the dead, but with much accuracy, we may say, that 

 it is the months, or days, of the sleepers. The brown 

 chrysalis wrapped in withered leaves and silk, is the purple 

 and green Luna moth of June. 



The cows wander along the hill-sides, and eat bush 

 twigs and the dry oak leaves. They also devour the red 

 bunches of sumach berries, and sometimes, in Summer, the 

 poison ivy yine. The cow looks well among the bushes; 

 stands for us in place of the wild deer, and the other brow- 

 sing creatures that have gone. We would miss them 

 greatly, and a Japanese landscape is wanting much, in its 

 dearth of cattle. Sometimes she scratches her head with a 

 hind leg, and then the mild eyed cow loses her grace ; she 

 seems to be trying a new feat in gymnastics a new one to 

 the race of kine. 



The bells on their necks sound quaintly; they have 

 even a sylvan tone. A constant, tingling, tingling, as the 



