rm dog; the latter, attracted by
his baying, comes barking and snarling up through the fields bent on
picking a quarrel; he intercepts the hound, snubs and insults and annoys
him in every way possible, but the hound heeds him not; if the dog
attacks him he gets away as best he can, and goes on with the trail; the
cur bristles and barks and struts about for a while, then goes back to
the house, evidently thinking the hound a lunatic, which he is for the
time being--a monomaniac, the slave and victim of one idea. I saw the
master of a hound one day arrest him in full course to give one of the
hunters time to get to a certain runaway; the dog cried and struggled to
free himself and would listen neither to threats nor caresses. Knowing
he must be hungry, I offered him my lunch, but he would not touch it. I
put it in his mouth, but he threw it contemptuously from him. We coaxed
and petted and reassured him, but he was under a spell; he was bereft of
all thought or desire but the one passion to pursue that trail.

IV. THE WOODCHUCK

Writers upon rural England and her familiar natural history make no
mention of the marmot or woodchuck. In Europe this animal seems to
be confined to high mountainous districts, as on our Pacific slope,
burrowing near the snow line. It is more social or gregarious than the
American species, living in large families like our prairie-dog. In
the Middle and Eastern States our woodchuck takes the place, in some
respects, of the English rabbit, burrowing in every hillside and under
every stone wall and jutting ledge and large bowlder, from whence it
makes raids upon the grass and clover and sometimes upon the garden
vegetables. It is quite solitary in its habits, seldom more than one
inhabiting the same den, unless it be a mother and her young. It is not
now so much a wood chuck as a field chuck. Occasionally, however, one
seems to prefer the woods, and is not seduced by the sunny slopes and
the succulent grass, but feeds, as did his fathers before him, upon
roots and twigs, the bark of young trees, and upon various wood plants.

One summer day, as I was swimming across a broad, deep pool in the creek
in a secluded place in the woods, I saw one of these sylvan chucks amid
the rocks but a few feet from the edge of the water where I proposed to
touch. He saw my approach, but doubtless took me for some water-fowl,
or for some cousin of his of the muskrat tribe; for he went on with his
feeding, a