JMe$ on some Small HeiaiU found in Xorth America. 117 



an appearance to possess any gastronomic attractions for me. 

 Every one to his taste — De guttiimt mm vd dvspvAandLurn. 



The Aplodontia has a terrible and untiring enemy in the 

 badger (Tax-idea Americana j . He is always on the hunt for the 

 poor little -miner, and digs him out from his hiding places and 

 devours him with as much gusto as the Indian. Its geographi- 

 cal . not very extended, being. I know, confined 

 entirely to a small section of ....-.-West America. I have 

 seen it on the east and west slope of the Cascades, but not on 

 the Rocky Mountains, although it very probably exists there. 

 It is also found at Fn md, Fort .Steilacum, on the banks 

 of the Sumass and Chflukweyuk rivers, West of the Cascades. 

 On the Xachess . :oria and the DaHs, on the Colum- 

 bia. East of the Cascades. 



I have thus endeavoured to jot down a few note3 on the 

 habits and localities of this curious Eodent. Feeding entirely 

 on vegetable matter (for I never discovered a trace of insect 

 or larvse remains in its stomach), passing its life principally in 

 dark burrows, and limited, as far as we at present know, to a 

 very narrow f a barren country, it is hard to imagine 



what purpose i: fan the great chain of nature, save it 



be that of supplying food to the badger, and both food and 



ring to the savage; and yet we know that the all-wise 

 Creator fashioned it, and gave it life, for some grand and 

 specific purpose, if we could but read and rightly interpret 

 the pages of nature's wondrous book. If we ask ourselves 

 why was this or that made ? how seldom can we, with all 

 our boasted knowledge, answer the question. Why did He 



. made our world, the sun, and the stars, deck the 

 butterfly's wing with tiny scales, that by a simple change in 

 rient produce patterns beside which the most finished 

 painting is a bungling daub ? Why were those microsc . 

 wonders, the diatoms and infusoria, formed with shells of 

 purest flint, of the quaintest devi. Hi .matical cor- 



rectness; atomies that fringe every frond reed, tenant 



rj road- side pool, and are in countless millions in e~ 

 berg and floe, that form banks hundreds of miles in length, 

 and dance in myriad forms in every sunbeam ? Why all the 

 prodigal variety of strange forms crowding the sea — forms 

 more wonderful than the poet's wildest dreams ever pictured. 

 Who can tell ? All mystery inexplicable; the further we wander 

 into the enchanted labyrinth of life, the more we feel our own 

 littleness, and learn this great truth, that all we see 

 to us, but to One greater, and wiser, and holier; and amid all 

 the stir, and hum, and bustle of nature's vast garden, in I 

 babble of the brook, in the whisper of the breeze, we hear, 



: old, " the word of the Lord God walking among the trees 

 of the garden in the cool of the d. 



