268 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. 



that fixity of purpose that only the devotee of 

 method can attain to. Even the pet in your house, 

 kept warm the year through, will curl up in his 

 kennel (or, better, in your cellar) and be indifferent 

 to the world until his duty of sleep has been ful- 

 filled. Pick him up, and you will think him dead, 

 so rigid, cold, and insensible is he. Only the most 

 delicate instruments show that his heart beats and 

 that the blood still oozes sluggishly through his 

 inert veins. He will survive for hours in a jar of 

 carbonic-acid gas, where he would drown, when 

 awake, in two minutes. It is true that you may 

 carefully thaw him out, but the moment you let 

 him alone he will drop into slumber again, regard- 

 less of temperature. And so his winter passes in 

 one long dream of summer. 



Could anything be sweeter or more convenient ? 

 Having only provided a shelter, he forthwith rids 

 himself of winter. He need make no other 

 preparation. Wrapped in his own fur, warmed 

 and fed by the slow consumption of the fat which 

 it was the supreme pleasure of his life to acquire, 

 apathetic to cold, hunger, fear, or fretting, he 

 escapes not only the famine and freezing to which 

 such animals as are abroad all the year are ex- 

 posed, but the hard work required of those, like 

 the chipmunk, which must fill a storehouse in 

 advance, in order to feed during the months of 

 scarcity. Ah, he is a canny old marmot ! 



But, sad to say, few things in this world are 



