250 FAMILIAR LIFE IN FIELD AND POBBST. 



tinues for about ten feet, but divided perhaps into 

 two galleries, each of wliicli leads to a circular cham- 

 ber a foot in diameter ; in this there is a snug nest 

 made of dried grasses, leaves, etc. Here the creature 

 dvrells with his fields of plenty directly over his head, 

 and one would think that, like the squirrels, when in 

 the midst of abundance he would set by a store of 

 good things for the winter ; but not at all. He is no 

 hand at providing for the future ;* the very nature of 

 his food is perishable, and it is a question whether it 

 would outlast the cold even of a protecting burrow. 

 Very soon after the autumnal equinox the improvi- 

 dent animal retires to his hole which he has now dug 

 on the sheltering margin of the wood, and he does 

 not venture forth again until the arrival of the spring 

 equinox, which is sometimes coincidental with the so- 

 called " woodchuck's day." f If the weather is still 

 too cold to be springlike, his day — which weather- 

 wise folk always insist is a forerunner of six weeks' 

 sunshine — will be postponed. 



*I actually found in Brehm's Life of Animals — a very good 

 Natural History, by the way — the absurdly incorrect statement 

 that the woodchuck in the fall occupies himself in collecting 

 provender for the coming winter ! 



f In different localities the times of the woodchuck are also 

 different; farther south, he reappears about the middle of March, 

 and in the valley of the Connecticut he remains out until No- 

 vember. 



