230 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



them much in the deep woods. The foxes will even 

 try to dig them out, and the hawks pounce upon the 

 young when they are running about, both in the 

 woods and even around the farms. Yet the genuine 

 forest-dwellers are probably far less numerous than 

 of old. 



I fear it must be confessed that the woodchuck's 

 god is his belly, and he thinks more highly of easy 

 feeding than he does of woodland freedom. He 

 gravitates by instinct toward the mown clover, the 

 turnip -fields, the apple-orchards. He considers man 

 his best friend as well as his worst enemy. Like the 

 rabbit, he is strictly vegetarian, and that has en- 

 abled him to survive not only to survive, but to 

 survive in great numbers while one by one his 

 ancient and more powerful enemies of the forest 

 have; been exterminated, always with the exception 

 of the foxes. He might be almost safe in the deep 

 woods, but he prefers the richer rewards of danger, 

 and though man fights to exterminate him, man 

 also provides him with such a vastly increased food- 

 supply that extermination seems impossible. The 

 story of the woodchuck is a paradox. 



Of course, too, another powerful factor in his sur- 

 vival is his hibernating habit. Taking to the cover 

 of the warm earth before even the early November 

 snow flies (and very often, I feel sure, the chucks go 

 back to the woods to dig in for the winter, where 

 the ground does not freeze so deep, for I have more 

 than once excavated a pasture hole which had been 

 inhabited all summer, only to find it empty), the 

 chuck does not have to worry about the lean season. 

 He goes to sleep as fat as a butter-ball, wrapped in 



