CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 7. RODENTIA. 357 
CATCHING A MARMOT IN SWITZERLAND. 
burrow of the mai-mot is excavated, there is an ingenuity in the one burrow which is not found 
in the other. It always consists of two galleries, the one of which contains the dwelling and the 
entrance to the dwelling ; and the other, which meets this, but has a greater inclination and 
opens further down the slope, and at a lateral distance, is a sewer or drain, by means of which 
the inhabited portion is always kept dry and comfortable. The nest consists of a great quantity 
of dried grass and moss, and is made sufficiently large for holding a considerable number of the 
animals, which keep one another warm during the inclement season, which is often very severe 
in the elevated places which these creatures inhabit. 
All the society which inhabit the same burrow work in concert, both in preparing it and stock- 
ing it with those provisions which are necessary before they pass into a dormant state for the 
winter, and after they awake in the spring, and before the fields are fit for their support. It is 
very generally said, that in carrying home their stores, one of the society allows the others, and 
even invites them, to use his bodj^ as a sort of sledge. He turns on his back, and is loaded with 
as much of the dry grass, or moss, or other necessary of a marmot's life, as he can hold together 
with his paws. When he is thus loaded, his comrades seize him by the tail and pull hiin along 
Avith his load, he contriving to keep steadily on his back all the time. As those which act as 
horses to this singular sledge get tired, they are relieved by others ; and if " Sledge" himself gets 
exhausted, another is loaded, and so on, until the load is safely conveyed to the burrow. 
The food of these creatures consists of roots, and vegetables, and occasionally of insects. From 
five to a dozen lodge in one chamber. They retire for hibernation early in October, stopping up 
the mouths of their burrows with earth. Here they lie, in a dosing, but not utterly unconscious 
