THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



gray squirrel! One of these passed us only a few 

 yards away on our walk in the woods the other day 

 — a long, undulating line of soft gray, silent as a 

 spirit and graceful as a wave on the beach. 



A little later, in the fine, slow-falling rain, a 

 rabbit sudddenly emerges into my field of vision 

 fifty feet away. How timid and scared she looks! 

 She pauses a moment amid the weeds, then hops a 

 yard or two and pauses again, then passes under 

 the bars and hesitates on the edge of a more open 

 and exposed place immediately in front of me. Here 

 she works her nose, feeling of every current of air, 

 analyzing every scent to see if danger is near. Ap- 

 parently detecting something suspicious in the cur- 

 rents that drift from my direction, she turns back, 

 pauses again, works her nose as before, then hurries 

 out of my sight. 



Yesterday I saw a rat stealing green peas from 

 my garden in the open day. He darted out of the 

 stone wall six or eight feet away to the row of peas, 

 rushed about nervously among the vines; then, 

 before I could seize my rifle, darted back to the 

 cover of the wall. Once I cautiously approached his 

 hiding-place in the wall and waited. Presently his 

 head emerged from the line of weeds by the fence, 

 his nose began working anxiously, he sifted and 

 resifted the air with it, and then quickly withdrew; 

 his nose had detected me, but his eye had not. The 

 touchstone of most animals is the nose, and not the 

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