236 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



furs is exported every spring, the majority of them 

 muskrat pelts,of course, but many fox and even otter 

 skins being of the number. A Southern darky, now 

 a resident of this town, told with pride of the catch 

 made by a friend of his. 



"'Twas an o'ter," he said, "an'' Sam got fo' 

 dollars a foot fo' dat hide, yassuh, fo' dollars a foot, 

 an' it wore six feet long!" 



Even more surprising to most people than the 

 size of Sam's otter, and better authenticated, will 

 be the statement that the treasurer of Berkshire 

 County, Massachusetts, has paid out five-dollar 

 bounties for an average of about eighteen wildcats 

 a year since 1903, when the law went into effect. 

 To the thousands of motor tourists who pass through 

 this beautiful section of New England every season, 

 even to the occupants of the summer estates which 

 dot our hills and gracious valleys, it will doubtless 

 seem strange that so formidable a forest beast as the 

 wildcat should still prowl the woods. It only shows 

 how little most of us nowadays know about our 

 four-footed neighbors. 



I have recently acquired a two-hundred-acre farm 

 in southern Berkshire, under the shadow of Mount 

 Everett, or the Dome, as we more familiarly call it. 

 One half of the farm runs up the mountain-side, the 

 other half is comparatively level land at the foot, 

 and the two halves are bisected by the so-called 

 Under Mountain Road, the main motor highway 

 from New York to the Berkshires. On a pleasant 

 Saturday in summer I suppose as many as a thou- 

 sand cars may pass my door. Yet one of the first 

 discoveries I made in going over the land was a fox's 



