gainst a time of need; their food-supply of bark and twigs is
constant, no matter how deep the snows. The birds of prey that
pass the winter in the north take on a coat of fat in the fall,
because their food-supply is so uncertain; the coat of fat is
also a protection against the cold.

Of course, all the wild creatures are in better condition in the
fall than in the spring, but in many cases the fat is distinctly
a substitute for food.

The skunk is in his den also from December till February, living
on his own fat. Several of them often occupy the same den and
conserve their animal heat in that way. The coon, also, is in his
den in the rocks for a part of the winter, keeping warm on
home-made fuel. The same is true of the bear in our climate. The
bats are hibernating in the rocks or about buildings. The
muskrats are leading hidden lives in the upper chambers of their
snow-covered houses in the marshes and ponds or in the banks of
streams, feeding on lily-roots and mussels which they get under
the ice.

The lean, bloodthirsty minks and weasels are on the hunt all
winter. Our native mice are also active. That pretty stitching
upon the coverlet of the winter snow in the woods is made by our
white-footed mouse and by the little shrew mouse. The former
often has large stores of nuts hidden in some cavity in a tree;
what supply of food the latter has, if any, I do not know. In the
winter the short-tailed meadow or field mice come out of their
retreat in the ground and beneath stones and lead gay, fearless
lives beneath the snow-drifts. Their little villages, with their
runways and abandoned nests, may be seen when the snow disappears
in the spring. Their winter life beneath the snow, where no
wicked eye or murderous claw can reach them, is in sharp contrast
to their life in summer, when cats and hawks, owls and foxes,
pounce upon them day and night. It is only in times of deep snows
that they bark our fruit-trees.

We have in this latitude but one species of hibernating
mouse--the long-tailed jumping mouse, or kangaroo mouse, as it is
sometimes called from its mode of locomotion. Late one fall,
while making a road near "Slabsides," we dug one out from its
hibernation about two feet below the surface of the ground. It
was like a little ball of fur tied with a string. In my hand it
seemed as cold as if dead. Close scrutiny showed that it breathed
at intervals, very slowly. The embers of life were there, but
slumbering