ARCTOMYS MONAX. 
H3 
hay is cut in July, while there are a few that never abandon their 
forest homes. But few reside permanently in the open fields.* 
The Woodchuck is our most remarkable example of a hibernating 
mammal. He lays up no store of provision, but remains dormant 
throughout the winter. Neither temperature nor quantity of food 
at hand has to do with the beginning of his voluntary seclusion, 
The first copious rains that fall after haying is over cause fresh 
green grass to spring up anew upon the meadows. This second crop, 
termed rowen or aftermath, usually attains a luxuriant growth by 
the latter part of August. In many places it consists largely of 
red clover ( Tri folium pratense), the favorite food of the Wood- 
chuck. And this animal eats so much during the month previous 
to his withdrawal into the earth that he becomes exceedingly fat, 
and proportionally inert, and is therefore in excellent condition for 
hibernating. Along the western border of the Adirondacks he 
usually goes into winter-quarters between the 18th and 25th of 
September, not to reappear till the middle or latter part of March. 
It is indeed a curious coincidence that the limits of the dormant 
state should so closely correspond with the periods of the equi- 
noxes. In nine cases out of ten he disappears, with astonishing 
precision, within a few days of the autumnal equinox, and remains 
under ground till about the time the sun cuts the plane of the 
equator at the vernal equinox. f 
* It may not be amiss to acquaint my readers with the reasons that lead me to believe that the 
majority of our Woodchucks desert the meadows in autumn and hibernate in burrows in the woods. 
There are two principal facts, either of which is sufficient, in my opinion, to establish the existence 
of this habit. First : As will be hereafter shown, Woodchucks, in this region, come out from their 
burrows in early spring two or three weeks before the disappearance of the snow, and may easily 
be tracked to their holes. Now it has been my experience (an experience covering at least fifteen 
years) that fully 99 per cent, of those that appear before the snow goes in spring, come from holes 
in the woods. Second : In the fall of the year I have opened a number of meadow burrows, 
which I knew were inhabited up to a week of the time when the animals went into winter- 
quarters in September, and almost without exception such burrows have been found to be 
tenantless. 
f To this rule there are, of course, exceptions, but they are not sufficiently frequent to in any 
way invalidate the accuracy of the above general statement. During very warm weather it some- 
times happens that a Woodchuck maybe seen sunning himself at the mouth of his hole for an hour 
or two in the hottest part of the afternoon as late as the first of October, but such instances are 
