1x A NATURAL NEW ENGLANDER 257 
amid the timothy and the clover, and laughs, as he 
listens from a hole in the wall or under a stump, 
to hear the farmer using language which is good 
Saxon but bad morals, and the dog barking him- 
self into a fit. Next day he watches his chance, 
invites his best friend to the feast, and makes his 
way to a certain bed of lettuce, to a field of celery, 
to rows of juicy beets and cabbages, or best of all, 
to a patch of peas, — he will risk his whiskers for 
green peas!— where the two rascals will stuff 
their cheeks and fill themselves until their bulging 
stomachs fairly drag upon the ground. Then the 
farmer swears harder than ever, and if the greedy 
marauders try to repeat their performance, ten to 
one they will get buckshot inside their ribs, or 
find themselves prisoners in the torture of a trap. 
Woodchucks seem never to “catch on” to a trap, 
until it has caught on to them. 
One, having thus, or otherwise, fallen into the 
hands of a naturalist many years ago, was labelled 
Arctomys monax,—the monk bear-mouse; and the 
tribe has never been able to get rid of it. 
Another unkindness, in woodchuck opinion, is 
the way folks laugh at his gait and movements. 
He feels no call to hurry, and he does not consider 
it a just matter for ridicule that many other 
animals are able to outrun him. His ambitions 
are intellectual rather than athletic. ' If he is loose 
in his clothes — well, so is man’s favorite, the cat; 
and he thinks it is unfair, when some one sees him 
s 
