Ix A NATURAL NEW ENGLANDER 263 
inner extremity. He does not care much whether 
his tunnel is straight or curved. If he meets a 
~ rock or large root, he goes around it; and he usually 
excavates two or three short branches, one of 
which is afterward used as a place for depositing 
allexcrement andrefuse. At last, twenty or twenty- 
five feet from the entrance, he stops, and scoops 
out -a chamber big enough for the two of them to 
turn around in comfortably. This done, the young 
wife makes a basket of her cheeks, and carries in 
enough grass for a soft bed. Meanwhile her 
mate has extended a branch of the tunnel to the 
surface, opening there, beneath a tussock of grass 
or stump or stone, a small exit against a time of 
need, as when a mink, weasel, or big snake in- 
vades the premises; but no hillock of earth is 
thrown out around this back door, to attract atten- 
tion. 
Such is the home of the old-fashioned contented 
woodchuck family; but that admirable disposition 
in this race to steadfastly reduce exertion to a mini- 
mum, is leading the more thoughtful ones to get 
rid of the last vestige of the labor slavery of their 
ancestors, and release themselves from even house- 
building. Many young ’chucks, nowadays, there- 
fore, simply renovate abandoned burrows of the year 
before, for it is the fashion in Arctomid society to 
change the dwelling-place annually ; or they seek a 
retreat in the hollow that nature has kindly opened 
for their accommodation beneath and within some 
