habit is not inherited, fear has led to its acqui- 

 sition. But protected by the dark, the shy and 

 suspicious creep out of their hiding-places ; they 

 travel along the foot-paths, they play in the 

 wagon-roads, they feed in our gardens, and I 

 have known them to help themselves from our 

 chicken-coops. If one has never haunted the 

 fields and woods at night he little knows their 

 multitude of wild life. Many a hollow stump 

 and uninteresting hole in the ground— tombs 

 by day— give up their dead at night, and some- 

 thing more than ghostly shades come forth. 



If one's pulse quickens at the sight and sound 

 of wild things stirring, and he has never seen, 

 in the deepening dusk, a long, sniffling snout 

 poked slowly out of a hollow chestnut, the glint 

 of black, beady eyes, the twitch of papery ears, 

 then a heavy-bodied possum issue from the hole, 

 clasping the edge with its tail, to gaze calmly 

 about before lumbering off among the shadows 

 —then he still has something to go into the 

 woods for. 



Our forests by daylight are rapidly being 

 thinned into picnic groves ; the bears and pan- 

 thers have disappeared, and by day there is 

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