Fox's Earth to Mountain Tarn 



The water yields the proper distance and pro- 

 portion of stream and land. Floods eat under- 

 neath the banks, forming dim galleries filled with 

 the music of the passing current, with grassy 

 projecting roofs fretted and groined, every here 

 and there, by tree roots. From between the 

 roots the water washes the soil, opening up 

 tortuous passages to some inner chamber. 



So the most powerful and interesting of our 

 native wild animals passes a life varied and 

 charming, not without times of stress ; its jungle 

 among the sedges of the shallows, its stronghold 

 the rude islet cut off by the parting of the 

 stream in twain, its holt the dark chamber reached 

 by the tortuous passage through the tree roots. 

 The outlet of the field drain is only a retreat 

 when pressed, since a few yards back it narrows 

 to pipes, and in rain is exposed to sudden flood. 



A night feeder, it sleeps out the day in the 

 shadows. Much as I haunt streams I have not 

 seen one ; often I have heard, and even felt it in 

 the dark, and fished along with it in the same dim 

 pool, where it rose with its sputtering blow. In 

 its night habits safety dwells ; it has no natural 

 enemies. The rustic bothers not the otter, for 

 the simple reason that the two are seldom abroad 

 at the same time. He may try his dog, but 

 where hounds of finer fibre fail, scant success is 

 likely to attend the effort. If, unhappily for 

 itself, the cur should come into grips, it will have 



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