Jan. 13, 1912.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
47 
December Days. 
Delanson, N. Y., Dec. 29.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: Most of December with us has been 
Indian summer continued. Early in the month 
the boys reported several woodcock when they 
came in from their traps. The yth was a typical 
Indian summer day, and so was the 8th, the day 
I walked home from the village. The frost was 
out of the ground and my neighbors had re¬ 
sumed the interrupted fall plowing. I heard of 
pansies blossoming in a village garden. 
On the morning of the isth we found an inch 
of snow on the ground and at breakfast time a 
robin, the first we had seen in four weeks, 
perched in the berry garden and called repeatedly 
for his mate. After the bird disappeared came 
mist and rain, the snow melted, the big creek 
sang again and we were encouraged to seek 
some surer sign. 
On the 17th one of the boys brought in a 
light for April, when the wide spaces from hill 
to hill, and from hill to mountain have been 
newly swept and purified by wind and snow. 
This .was earth’s nimbus or rather aural light 
that flooded the landscape far and near. Save 
for this we might have dreamed of April. 
My companion, a lover of nature at all sea¬ 
sons, had not spent a Christmas in the country 
in over two decades. He has told me of his 
constant yearning, winter and summer, for the 
old hills and the quiet country village near where 
he lived as a boy and young man. One of the 
incidents of his city life so impressed me that 
I venture to tell it here. A part of his work is 
the assortment and checking of flange screws in 
the stock room of a big shop, and he said that 
when the screws were counted and thrown in 
piles, that their metallic tink ing reminded him 
of the tintinnabulation of countless hylas on 
April nights when he was a boy at home. I 
noticed when we crossed a wild pasture that he 
saw their tracks in the snow in the edge of the 
pines, and later in the day dug one out of his 
burrow that was as wide awake as in summer 
and ready to meet all comers. 
The December robin, the frog, the woodchuck 
at Christmas are of course exceptional, and are 
perhaps rarely recorded by the naturalists. 
Glimpses of the migrant’s unseasonable return, 
of batrachian or dormant quadruped awakening 
prematurely to life are more often reserved for 
the hunter and trapper, the woodchopper or the 
fortunate walker like myself. 
Will W. Christman. 
Jack Rabbits. 
Las Animas, Colo., Jan. 4.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: Dec. 20 a fall of snow covered Colo¬ 
rado east of the mountains to a depth of ten 
inches. Up to this time it has lain without a 
thaw. It has been cold for this section, and 
great numbers of quai' and meadowlarks have 
a DECEMBER FRESHET IN THE CREEK. 
Photograph by Mrs. W. W. Christman. 
DUKE SOULE IN CAMP. 
Photograph by 'William K. Soule. 
foot-long blackberry bush with newly-opened 
buds and green leaves. The frogs were out 
in the little brook that creeps out of the swamp, 
or at least one was; not a poor, stiff-legged 
creature such as one might dig out of a muddy, 
leaf-choked spring, but a wide awake, swimming 
frog, apparently ready to usher in the spring 
with exultant trump. 
The warm weather culminated in a delightful 
Christmas. A few belated plowmen still drove 
their teams afield, the creeks were running free, 
with a little ice piled here and there against the 
driftwood. A raccoon that one of the boys had 
previously tracked into a rock hole along the 
creek came out, stuck his paw in the trap, but 
successfudy extricated it and sought some safer 
refuge. 
My city friend and I took a long walk that 
day up through the Indian clearing and along 
the brook that comes down from North’s marsh, 
then back across the hill and sunned ourselves 
for a while on a warm bank overlooking the 
Bozenkill. Down and across the valley High 
Point in the He’derbergs shone dimly in the 
subdued sunlight. Even Rip Van Winkle, newly 
awakened, could never mistake this December 
plucked a bouquet of the little, silver-tufted heads 
of the fall dandelion, long since out of bios- 
som, but not yet ready to release their seeds; 
that he had the same interest with myself in the 
tiny, faded-yellow cups of the witchhazel on 
Bill Williams hill, and the same delight in the 
reddening soft maple buds and the poplar tips 
already pointed with down. 
So Christmas passed and the benign influences 
continued until the 27th. That night we heard 
the wind roaring louder than the creek, and 
when morning came the snow looked good to 
us after the long autumn. 
I am reminded of Christmas days green and 
mild in past years, that of 1889 being the most 
noteworthy when the maximum temperature 
reached 66 degrees in the shade according to 
the official record at Albany. I remember the 
day well, a serene and golden one, though snow 
lingered in the shade of the evergreens until 
nearly noon. I chatted with a plowman at the 
end of his furrow as I crossed the Duanesburg 
hills and saw a woodchuck sunning himself at 
the opening of his burrow as in spring. This 
was the only time that I ever saw the wood¬ 
chuck leave his hibernaculum in December. I 
succumbed. Jack rabbits have gathered around 
the ranches to feed upon the alfalfa. As the 
snow is light, the rabbits sink to the ground at 
every jump and become easy prey for dogs and 
coyotes. 
I notice an account of a hunt at Garden City 
in the last number of Forest and Stream at 
which great numbers of jack rabbits were killed 
and shipped to Topeka for distribution among 
the poor. These rabbits are poor and most of 
them afflicted with swellings filled with a watery 
fluid which makes them a very questionable food. 
About holiday time these hunts are a common 
occurrence and the rabbits are shipped to the 
large cities for distribution. It may be that there 
is danger in this charitable movement. 
In Utah in the 8o’s I assisted in “rabbit drives" 
when thousands were killed with clubs. They 
were afflicted as are the rabbits here, but were 
not used as food. Since my experience in Utah 
I have omitted rabbit from my bill of fare. 
Can anyone tell me the nature of this disease? 
The swellings are just under the skin and often 
there are several of them on either side. Some 
of them contain four ounces of fluid. 
F. T. Webber. 
