CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 7. RODENTIA. 



357 





CATCHING A MARMOT IX SWITZERLAND. 



burrow of the marmot is excavated, there is an ingenuity in the one burrow which is not found 

 in tbe other. It always consists of two galleries, the one of which contains the dwelling and the 

 entrance to the dwelling ; and the other, which meets this, but has a greater inclination and 

 opens further down the slope, and at a lateral distance, is a sewer or drain, by means of which 

 the inhabited portion is always kept dry and comfortable. The nest consists of a great quantity 

 of dried grass and moss, and is made sufficiently large for holding a considerable number of the 

 animals, which keep one another warm during the inclement season, which is often very severe 

 in the elevated places which these creatures inhabit. 



All the society which inhabit the same burrow work in concert, both in preparing it and stock- 

 ing it with those provisions which are necessary before they pass into a dormant state for the 

 winter, and after they awake in the spring, and before the fields are fit for their support. It is 

 very generally said, that in carrying home their stores, one of the society allows the others, and 

 even invites them, to use his body as a sort of sledge. He turns on his back, and is loaded with 

 xs much of the dry grass, or moss, or other necessary of a marmot's life, as he can hold together 

 with his paws. When he is thus loaded, his comrades seize him by the tail and pull him along 

 with his load, he contriving to keep steadily on his back all the time. As those which act as 

 norses to this singular sledge get tired, they are relieved by others; and if "Sledge" himself gets 

 •xhausted, another is loaded, and so on, until the load is safely conveyed to the burrow. 



The food of these creatures consists of roots, and vegetables, and occasionally of insects. From 

 ive to a dozen lodge in one chamber. They retire for hibernation early in October, stopping up 

 ■he mouths of their burrows with earth. Here they lie, in a dosing, but not utterly unconscious 



