IX A NATURAL NEW ENGLANDER 271 
until the seasons have slipped back, and now the 
animal goes to sleep long before he need, and 
wakes up a month or two before he ought. 
An astronomer tells me that there is much 
force in this theory, but points out a trifling diffi- 
culty in the fact that it is wrong end to, since the 
effect of the grecession of the equinoxes is to 
advance, rather than retard, the procession of the 
seasons! You can study the matter out for your- 
self and welcome. The woodchucks have shown 
themselves otherwise possessed of so much clear- 
headedness and philosophic wisdom, that I expect 
soon to hear of their calling a council like that 
which reformed our human calendar, and setting 
this matter straight. That done, I see nothing left 
for the most captious woodchuck to desire, and the 
rest of us may then admire one bit of the world 
perfected ! 
Note. — Much has been written about our woodchucks. 
Technical descriptions of all the species and varieties will be 
found in Dr. Elliot’s “Synopsis ” (see page 116). Their hiber- 
nation is discussed in my “Life of Mammals”; and more fully 
treated of in Wesley Mills’s “Nature and Development of 
Animal Intelligence.” A very full and pleasing biography of 
the animal in New England is that by W. E. Cram in Stone 
and Cram’s “American Animals”; while other detailed ac- 
counts may be found in Merriam’s “Natural History of the 
Adirondacks” (Zransactzons Linnean Society of New York, 
Vol. I, 1882), in Audubon and Bachman’s “Quadrupeds of 
North America,” in Godman’s “American Natural History,” 
in Mrs. Wright’s “ Four-footed Americans,” John Burroughs’s 
“ Pepacton,” Rowland Robinson’s “In New England Fields 
and Woods,” Silas Lottridge’s “Animal Snapshots,” and in 
various scientific periodicals. 
