NATURK STUDY. 
174 
chickadee friends, whom he sometimes shelters on cold 
winter nights, that the sharp, Gothic roof is due to his taste 
in architecture, but there is plainly a saving of labor as 
compared with the “hairy’s” more thorough excavation. 
When the tunnel is completed, the “hairy” and the 
“downy” alike cover the cup-shaped bottom with a bed of 
chips, preferably those of the bark, finely broken with their 
bills, and here, the house-building having ended, the home¬ 
making begins. The eggs change to hungry chicks, the 
chicks to full-grown birds, and when the woodpeckers have 
shifted their quarters, the nest remains, being occupied, in 
course of time, by bluebird or squirrel, and coming at last 
to be a veritable kitchen midden, replete with objects of 
interest to the investigator. But that, as Kipling would 
say, is another story. 
Trapping Foxes. 
The intelligence of foxes has been somewhat over-esti¬ 
mated. That he makes use of many tricks that are also 
practiced by other wild animals cannot be doubted ; but his 
shrewdness and keenness of scent have been exaggerated 
in the many tales that have made Sir Reynard famous. So 
many have asserted that it is impossible to trap him with¬ 
out smoking the trap to remove the odor of human hands, 
that it may not be out of place to state that there lives in 
Manchester a gentleman who, in early life, was successful 
in trapping foxes without smoking his traps or doing any¬ 
thing to alter their odor. 
Mr. Isaac Huse was born in Manchester when the pres¬ 
ent city was but a dream. Fond of out-of-door sports, he 
early acquired a liking for hunting, and the fox was his 
favorite game. In all ways has he secured the coveted 
pelt that would serve as a reminder and evidence of his 
