TRAPPING GNOMES. 
139 
Hesperomys . Similar fortune had attended the 
remaining traps by the brook, three containing 
specimens of Zapus , two of Hesperomys , and 
one a large mole with fur as fine as the softest 
silk velvet. I pushed on eagerly to the series 
of traps in the swamp. 
On the way I crossed a strip of level pasture , 
over which a grove of gray birches is rapidly 
spreading year by year. Several of them are 
bent so that their upper branches sweep the 
ground. They are victims of the snow and ice 
storms of winter, and, unlike the Arlington 
cedars, they are not resilient enough to recover 
an erect position. In the heart of the grove, a 
family of sapsucking woodpeckers had been at 
work in one of their “orchards.” Eight trees 
bore marks of their mischievous tapping, and in 
the two principal trees many hundreds of holes 
had been made by them. Their thirst is as 
insatiable as Mulvaney’s, but I supposed that 
before this time they had wearied of their sum¬ 
mer fountains. Not so; one of them was hitch¬ 
ing around the drills, dipping as persistently as 
in early July, and bees buzzed near him, enjoy¬ 
ing their share of the tree’s sweets. Restrain¬ 
ing my impatience to see the swamp traps, I 
watched long for a humming-bird to visit the 
drills, but none came, thus confirming my im¬ 
pression that they not only arrive in New Eng- 
