12 
NATURE study. 
ery now and then an old one would rise up and look care¬ 
fully around, for there might be a fox or a dog about. In 
the old days, when muskrats first learned to eat in this 
way, there might have been a wildcat or a panther about, 
and that would have been still more dreadful. Being in 
an open space and in a circle, the muskrats could see all 
round them, and if an enemy came near, a warning signal 
would send them all scurrying down the bank into the wa¬ 
ter. 
When the last clam had been opened and eaten, and the 
little muskrats had licked their paws and played together, 
rolling over and over on the grass, the party broke up and 
all swam away to their homes. 
Next day Pike heard the little girl say ; 
“Oh! what a big pile of shells! How did they get 
here ? ’’ 
The little boy, as if it explained it all, answered ; 
“ Huh ! The}^ are nothing but clam-shells. There are 
lots of such piles all round the lake. vSee me skip one.” 
He took a shell and threw it with all his strength, but it 
turned edgewise as it struck the water and sank without 
skipping at all. As Pike glided into the pickerel weed 
closer to the bank, he heard the little girl laugh again. 
From the littleiioss, and meanness, and niggardliness forced upon 
us by circumstances, what a relief to turn aside to the exeeeding 
plenty of Nature ! There are no bounds to it, there is no compari¬ 
son to parallel it, so great is this generosity. No physical reason 
exists why every human being should not have sufllicient, at least, 
of necessities. For any human being to starve, or even to be in 
trouble about the procuring of simple food, apjiears, indeed, a 
strange and unaccountable thing, quite upside down, and contrary 
to sense, if you do but consider a moment the enormous profusion 
the earth throws at our feet. — Richard Jefferies, in The Life of the 
Fields. 
