THE SNOW-WALKEKS 55 



winter snow. Her course is a clear, strong line, 

 sometimes quite wayward, but generally very direct, 

 steering for the densest, most impenetrable places, 

 — leading you over logs and through brush, alert 

 and expectant, till, suddenly, she bursts up a few 

 yards from you, and goes humming through the 

 trees, — the complete triumph of endurance and 

 vigor. Hardy native bird, may your tracks never 

 be fewer, or your visits to the birch-tree less fre- 

 quent ! 



The squirrel tracks — sharp, nervous, and wiry — 

 have their histories also. But how rarely we see 

 squirrels in winter ! The naturalists say they are 

 mostly torpid; yet evidently that little pocket-faced 

 depredator, the chipmunk, was not carrying buck- 

 wheat for so many days to his hole for nothing: 

 was he anticipating a state of torpidity, or providing 

 against the demands of a very active appetite ! Red 

 and gray squirrels are more or less active all winter, 

 though very shy, and, I am inclined to think, par- 

 tially nocturnal in their habits. Here a gray one 

 has just passed, — came down that tree and went 

 up this; there he dug for a beechnut, and left the 

 burr on the snow. How did he know where to dig 1 

 During an unusually severe winter I have known 

 him to make long journeys to a barn, in a remote 

 iield, where wheat was stored. How did he know 

 there was wheat there? In attempting to return, 

 the adventurous creature was frequently run down 

 and caught in the deep snow. 



His home is in the trunk of some old birch or 



