ALONG FOUR-FOOTED TRAILS 



" For," thought I, " if happiness and freedom 

 cannot be found in nature it certainly cannot 

 exist." But my desire to protect and help the 

 little vagabonds, as I afterward learned them to 

 be, was but a foolish impulse of a tender, sym- 

 pathetic, child mind. But, after all, it was far 

 more noble and quite as sensible as the impulse 

 which the man of matured mind follows too 

 often in destroying ruthlessly and mercilessly 

 his furred and feathered friends. The history 

 of the buffalo, the big-horn, the antelope, the 

 otter and the prairie-hen show well the short- 

 sighted selfishness of the man who thus inter- 

 feres with nature's ways ; he is rapidly destroy- 

 ing the makers of all four-footed trails ! 



Field mice breed at short intervals during the 

 entire year, each litter having from four to eight 

 young. From this fact their numbers increase 

 very rapidly. Their food is mainly vegetable, 

 though they destroy many insects and small 

 mollusks, and with plants they act as laborato- 

 ries converting the vegetable into the animal 

 nature's way of supplying many carnivorous de- 

 pendents with food. Nevertheless, though this is 

 their destiny, they still seem to maintain a footing 



