270 WILD NEIGHBORS chap. 



inquirer abroad, and am inclined to think the tale 

 an idle fancy : the woodchuck is too level-headed 

 to be likely to take counsel of a shadow. 



He does certainly appear at the end of March, 

 however, even though, as usually happens, he 

 must bore his way out through a snow-bank. He 

 is then weak and lean and hungry, and is likely to 

 starve before the fresh grass appears. 



I am at a loss how to explain this defect in the 

 woodchuck's system (unless he is accounted a Jack- 

 sonian Democrat from the South, unwilling to con- 

 cede anything to Northern ideas, even of climate), 

 except by the theory that his conservatism has for 

 once led him into disadvantage. There is such a 

 thing as the precession of the equinoxes, those cos- 

 mic dates upon which the marmot's whole reckon- 

 ing appears to be based ; these change a trifle every 

 year, and the effect in the course of time is to 

 bring the seasons and the names long ago applied 

 to them out of coincidence. The woodchuck 

 family is a very ancient one, and highly connected ; 

 when it first knew the autumnal equinox by name, 

 the late frosts had killed the herbage, nights were 

 cold, and bed-time was truly at hand. Similarly 

 in those days the vernal equinox really marked the 

 end of cold weather, the disappearance of snow, 

 and the sprouting of green leaves. But while, with 

 a commendable clinging to ancient ways, the wood- 

 chucks have been faithfully following old traditions, 

 the rascally earth has been wabbling in its orbit 



