1x A NATURAL NEW ENGLANDER 255 
pressed down, dust-tight, when the animal is 
tunnelling. 
The young shoots of the grasses and weeds 
smell good, and the cubs exercise their white new 
teeth in nibbling these a little, but the mother 
guides them on further to a treat—a bunch of 
plantain; and there they get their first out-door 
meal. As they grow older they learn to like many 
different vegetables, but never lose their special 
fondness for the juicy plantain. 
Day by day they develop in size, strength, and 
accomplishments. As playful as other youngsters, 
they roll, and tumble, and chase one another, but 
never go so far away that they cannot scuttle back 
to the ancestral burrow the instant the warning 
whistle of some watchful companion tells them a 
boy, or dog, or other dreaded creature is coming. 
In the old days, before the Yankees took the 
trouble to “improve” a country that, in some 
respects at least, was better before they began, 
the woodchucks all lived in the woods — 
“ As their name implies,” you say? 
Hold on a bit, my friend. That word “wood- 
chuck” is bad English for a half-forgotten Indian 
term, and has nothing to do with “woods” at all. 
But let us go on. 
And although often, doubtless, they sought the 
grassy glades and river-bottoms for food, they 
were not tenants of the open country, and were 
scarcely known on the Western prairies until 
