766 
FOREST AND STREAM 
The Index Book of Nature 
By Old Camper. 
U NTIL the snow comes the book of nature 
lacks an index. You may walk for days 
in succession through familiar fields and 
woods without suspecting the existence all about 
you of scores of timid wild creatures, whose 
habit is to sleep by day, or who retreat noise¬ 
lessly at your approach to places of cunning 
■concealment. It is marvelous at what a distance 
the slight vibration of the ground under the 
human foot can be detected by the delicate, fear- 
quickened senses of the little inhabitants of the 
woods and fields. I sometimes fancy that they 
can hear me coming almost as far away as a 
hoy can hear a train of cars when he kneels 
down and lays his ear to the rails. If, there¬ 
fore, you live in a thickly settled part of the 
country, where the wild creatures are few in 
number and constantly harrassed and terrified, 
you will be apt to think—until the snow comes 
—that your neighborhood is entirely deserted by 
the wilder small birds and animals. You never 
see them when you take your rambles, nor is 
there any evidence to the unaccustomed eye that 
they have been there before you. . 
As a matter of fact, however, these suburban 
and much traversed sections of country are still 
peopled, as a rule, by a goodly number of their 
former small inhabitants. As a proof of this 
fact, take a walk two or three days after the 
first considerable snowfall of the winter. You 
will be astonished to find that this apparently 
soundless and motionless wilderness, this little 
desert of scrub oaks and pines, is fairly popu¬ 
lous with small and active folk, who have plain¬ 
ly recorded their goings and comings on the 
soft, white surface of the snow. Your suppos¬ 
edly blank book proves to be a volume of most 
varied and interesting contents, of which a com¬ 
prehensive index lies before you. In all direc¬ 
tions you behold the telltale, wandering path¬ 
ways of birds, squirrels, foxes, skunks, and mice. 
In certain spots it would almost seem as if there 
had been a carnival, a sort of winter fair or 
congress of sports, to which all the wood folk 
of that section had flocked, so numerous and 
varied and intricately interlaced are the tracks 
of the birds and four-footed creatures. Such a 
medley of claws and paws! See, here is the 
path made by a whole bevy of quail, as they 
crossed the little clearing, “bunched” and hud¬ 
dled together, so that their entire track is 
scarcely six inches wide. The snow is trodden 
into a kind of fine lace-work where they passed. 
They were probably on the run, as the quail 
seldom moves about at all save in a perpetual 
fright and haste after the brooding season is 
over. It is wonderful, for instance, how fast 
they will run before a trailing dog, keeping him 
on a constant crouching, gliding trot for fifteen 
or twenty minutes, before he finally overtakes 
them along the hot scent and “points” them or 
puts them to flight. These birds were not pur¬ 
sued, but they were running, as may be seen 
from the occasional scrape of an extended and 
balancing wing, and the length of the stride, 
where one of the bevy has for a moment strayed 
a little out of the file. I suppose no sportsman 
would think it worth while to go gunning in 
these well-scoured woods, so near the factories 
and the back yards of the little houses where 
the operatives live; yet it would be no small 
sport to locate that bevy of birds with a good 
dog, scatter them in these fairly open scrub oak 
patches, and try a few stirring shots upon the 
wing, as the singles and doubles whirred away. 
A fox has been across the bit of clearing, too 
—possibly in pursuit of the quail, as his deli¬ 
cate, clear-cut track parallels theirs. Think of 
a fox prowling about within a bowshot of the 
outermost factory of a city of 100,000 inhabi¬ 
tants ! not coming there by venturesome chance, 
but dwelling in the vicinity the year round, safe¬ 
ly and snugly housed beneath some splintered 
ledge of rocks. He has this distant reward of 
his temerity, that there are, as it were, two 
strings to his gastronomical bow—the wild crea¬ 
tures of his natural domain, and the henyards 
and chicken coops of the mill hands, under the 
very shadow of the encroaching brushwood. One 
good, fat hen will go as far as six quail or forty 
mice, be it remembered, and one such catch means 
two or three days of plenty and ease for Rey¬ 
nard in his burrow under the rocks. 
You may know a fox trail in the snow by its 
linear exactness. Every footprint is directly in 
front of the preceding, as if Reynard walked 
simply on two legs, set in the middle of his body, 
behind and before. How he manages to keep 
four feet so perpetually in line is a mystery. 
It must be with the same cunning, conscious in¬ 
tent as the Indian, who also makes as narrow 
and linear and inconspicuous trail as possible 
through the winter woods, and if he has occa¬ 
sion to come back that way, returns in his own 
foot teps, and so simply reverses the record 
In strong contrast with the cramped and tim¬ 
orous track of the quail is the bold, free, sr.ow- 
scattering stride of a solitary old ruffed grouse 
cock, who, confident in his years of survival has 
been abroad this very morning, and has but re¬ 
cently crossed the clearing, at right angles to 
the quail, as the freshness of his track shows. 
