126 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



But here is a track like the rabbit's, only larger, with 

 the hind feet leaving four distinct toe marks, and nearly 

 four and one-half inches long. It is the track of a vary- 

 ing hare, or snow-shoe rabbit, a breed once common in 

 New England but now growing more and more rare. He 

 changes to white in winter, unlike the cottontail. I 

 once saw one cross a field in a mild December, the most 

 conspicuous thing in the landscape. Poor fellow, he 

 was protectively coloured for snow, and the weather 

 man had disappointed him. He is so rare in our country 

 now that to find his track in the woods or swamps is 

 something of an adventure, almost like finding (as we did 

 last winter, only a mile from home) the paw marks of a 

 wildcat. Now at last we pick up the track of a fox. 



It was one January morning, in the foxes' mating 

 season, that the following drama was disclosed to us in 

 the snow. The stage was set with snow and rocks and 

 young second-growth timber, not three hundred yards 

 back from a farmhouse and a country road, but close to 

 the mountain. We came first on the tracks of the 

 heroine, which were unmistakable. She was walking, 

 making apparently but two paw marks in a line. Sud- 

 denly she began to gallop. After a few rods another 

 galloping track joined with hers and paralleled it. We 

 followed this second track back a way. The hero had 

 been bounding, too, but only for a short distance. Be- 

 yond that he had been walking. Slinking through the 

 night, he had heard the call of the mating season, and 



