WINTER ANIMALS. 
297 
for this brave bird is not to be scared by winter. It is 
frequently covered up by drifts, and, it is said, “ some¬ 
times plunges from on wing into the soft snow, where it 
remains concealed for a day or two.” I used to start 
them in the open land also, where they had come out of 
the woods at sunset to “bud” the wild apple-trees. 
They will come regularly every evening to particular 
trees, where the cunning sportsman lies in wait for them, 
and the distant orchards next the woods suffer thus not 
a little. I am glad that the partridge gets fed, at any 
rate. It is Nature’s own bird which lives on buds and 
diet-drink. 
In dark winter mornings, or in short winter afternoons, 
I sometimes heard a pack of hounds threading all the 
woods w r ith hounding cry and yelp, unable to resist the 
instinct of the chase, and the note of the hunting horn 
at intervals, proving that man was in the rear. The 
woods ring again, and yet no fox bursts forth on to the 
open level of the pond, nor following pack pursuing their 
Actason. And perhaps at evening I see the hunters re¬ 
turning with a single brush trailing from their sleigh for 
a trophy, seeking their inn. They tell me that if the 
fox would remain in the bosom of the frozen earth he 
would be safe, or if he would run in a straight line 
away no fox-hound could overtake him; but, having left 
his pursuers far behind, he stops to rest and listen till 
they come up, and when he runs he circles round to his 
old haunts, where the hunters await him. Sometimes, 
however, he will run upon a wall many rods, and 
then leap off far to one side, and he appears to know 
that water will not retain his scent. A hunter told me 
that he once saw a fox pursued by hounds burst out on 
to Walden when the ice was covered with shallow pud- 
