FOX AND HOUND. 89 



trees about, for I constantly fancied myself watched 

 by shy but jealous eyes. It is an interesting inquiry 

 how the squirrel knew the burs would open if lef( 

 lie on the ground a few days. Perhaps he did not 

 know, but thought the experiment worth trying. 



The gray squirrel is peculiarly an American prod 

 uct, and might serve very well as a national emblem 

 The Old World can beat us on rats and mice, but we 

 are far ahead on squirrels, having five or six species 

 to Europe's one. 



III. FOX AND HOUND. 



I STOOD on a high hill or ridge one autumn day 

 and saw a hound run a fox through the fields far be- 

 neath me. AVhat odors that fox must have shaken 

 out of himself, I thought, to be traced thus easily, and 

 how great their specific gravity not to have been 

 blown away like smoke by the breeze ! The fox ran 

 a long distance down the hill, keeping within a few- 

 feet of a stone wall ; then turned a right angle and 

 led off for the mountain, across a plowed field and a 

 succession of pasture lands. In about fifteen minutes 

 the hound came in full blast with her nose in the air, 

 and never once did she put it to the ground while in 

 my sight. When she came to the stone wall she took 

 the other side from that taken by the fox, idd kept 

 about the same distance from it, being thus separated 

 several yards from his track, with, the fence bet wren 

 her and it. At the point where the fox turned 

 sharply to the left, the hound overshot a few yards, 

 then wheeled, and feeling the air a moment with her 

 nose, took up the scent again and was off on his trail 



