z6o IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



"Varmints," the Yankee farmers used to call 

 these animals of the wild which ate their chickens 

 or destroyed their crops. Presumably the mild, 

 vegetarian woodchuck was included in the epithet, 

 however incorrectly. But we are slowly learning 

 that the balance of nature is something which should 

 not be too rudely disturbed without careful investi- 

 gation. We have learned the lesson — a costly one — 

 with regard to our slaughtered forests and shrunken 

 water-powers. We are learning it with regard to 

 our birds. And it is certainly not beyond the range 

 of possibility that the varmints — the flesh-eating 

 animals like foxes, weasels, 'coons, and skunks — per- 

 form their useful functions, too, in their ceaseless 

 preying upon rodents, rabbits, and the like, more 

 than atoning for their occasional predatory visits to 

 the chicken-roost. At any rate, who that loves the 

 woods and streams does not love them the more 

 when the patient wait or the silent approach is 

 rewarded by the sight of some wild inhabitant about 

 his secret business, or when the telltale snows of 

 winter reveal the story of last night's hunt, or when 

 the still, cold air of the winter evenings is startled 

 by the cry of a fox, as he sits, perhaps, on a knoll 

 above the dry weed-tops in the field and bays the 

 moon? To me, at least, the woods untenanted by 

 their natural inhabitants are as melancholy as a 

 deserted village, an abandoned farm, and I would 

 readily sacrifice twenty chickens a year to know that 

 I maintained thereby a family of foxes under my 

 wall, living their sly, shrewd life in frisky happiness, 

 against all the odds of man. 



My next-door neighbor has recently had an ex- 



