160 PEPACTON 



has absolutely no muscular tension or rigidity, but 

 is as baggy and shaky as a skin fiUed with water. 

 Let the rifleman shoot one while it lies basking on 

 a sideling rock, and its body slumps off, and rolls 

 and spills down the hill, as if it were a mass of 

 bowels only. The legs of the woodchuck are short 

 and stout, and made for digging rather than run- 

 ning. The latter operation he performs by short 

 leaps, his belly scarcely clearing the ground. For 

 a short distance he can make very good time, but 

 he seldom trusts himself far from his hole, and, 

 when surprised in that predicament, makes little 

 effort to escape, but, grating his teeth, looks the 

 danger squarely in the face. 



I knew a farmer in New York who had a very 

 large bob-tailed churn-dog by the name of Cuff. 

 The farmer kept a large dairy and made a great 

 deal of butter, and it was the business of Cuff to 

 spend nearly the half of each summer day treading 

 the endless round of the churning-machine. Dur- 

 ing the remainder of the day he had plenty of time 

 to sleep and rest, and sit on his hips and survey 

 the landscape. One day, sitting thus, he discovered 

 a woodchuck about forty rods from the house, on a 

 steep sidehill, feeding about near his hole, which 

 was beneath a large rock. The old dog, forgetting 

 his stiffness, and remembering the fun he had had 

 with woodchucks in his earlier days, started off at 

 his highest speed, vainly hoping to catch this one 

 before he could get to his hole. But the wood- 

 chuck seeing the dog come laboring up the hill, 



