^§c j^a^ of tS)t &axxb 



slope, was his burrow, which was one of the latest 

 of the forty-six holes to be discovered. 



When I shall have been milking and hucklc- 

 berrying and hen's nesting and aimlessly wandering 

 over these fourteen acres for five years more, I shiill 

 have found, it may be, the very last of the wood- 

 chuck holes. No, not in five, nor in five hundred 

 years, for the families in the old holes keep multi- 

 plying, and the new holes keep multiplying too. 



But woodchucks are not the only " things," not the 

 only crop that the farm yields, although it must cer- 

 tainly seem that there can be little room on these 

 scant acres for anything more. My farming, how- 

 ever, is intensive, — from the tops of my tallest pines 

 to the bottoms of my deepest v/oodchuck burrows, — 

 so that I have an abundant crop of crows, chip- 

 munks, muskrats, mice, skunks, foxes, and rabbits 

 (few rabbits, I ought to say, because of the many 

 foxes). 



Lately I found a den of young foxes within bark- 

 ing distance of the house, but along a stony ridge 

 on the adjoining farm. No one would believe in 

 the number of foxes (or the number of times I have 

 counted the same fox) here on the farm, and this 



205 



