150 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
are gone some time, and come up a rod off. 
At first I saw but one, then, a minute after, 
three. The first phebe, near the water, is heard. 
March 16, 1855. P. M. To Conantum End. 
At the woodchuck’s hole, just beyond the cock- 
spur thorn, X see several diverging and con¬ 
verging tracks of, undoubtedly, a woodchuck or 
several, which must have come out at last as 
early as the 13th. The track is about one and 
three quarters inches wide by two long, the five 
toes very distinct and much spread, and, in¬ 
cluding the scrape of the snow before the foot 
came to its bearing, is somewhat handlike. It 
is simple and alternate, thus, * * * * * ^ 
commonly, but sometimes much like a rabbit’s, 
and again, like a mink’s, somewhat thus 
They had come out and run about directly from 
hole to hole, six in all, within a dozen rods or 
more. This appeared to have been all their 
traveling, as if they had run round a visiting 
and waked each other up the first thing. At 
first they soiled the snow with their sandy feet. 
At one place they had been clearing out to- 
day the throat of two holes within a rod of 
each other, scattering the mud-like sand, made 
wet by the melting snow, over the pure snow 
around. X saw where, between these holes, they 
had sat on a horizontal limb of a shrub-oak 
(which they had tried their teeth on) about a 
