rm,
but the injury which he inflicts on the farmer in the hay-fields is
generally much exaggerated. In the "south field" that year, there were
two acres of red clover, where not less than seven or eight wood-chucks
dug new holes and threw out mounds of yellow earth, which in some places
crushed down the crop. Then, too, in feeding and running about, they
trampled on plats of the thick clover, particularly where it had
"lodged" from its own rank growth. There were, in all, five or six
square rods of the grass which it was not deemed worth while to attempt
to mow at all, and the loss of which was due in part, but not wholly, to
the wood-chucks. The hired men scolded about it, and Gramp himself, who
had a farmer's natural aversion to wood-chucks, fretted over it. We
boys, too, magnified the damage and discussed ingenious plans for
exterminating them. But after all, I do not believe that we really got
two hundred weight of hay less in the field, in consequence of
wood-chucks; and certainly the clover as it stood was not worth sixty
cents a hundred. A dollar and twenty cents would probably have made good
the entire loss; and I suspect that one-half of the damage from
trampling on the clover was done by us boys, in pursuit of the chucks,
rather than by the chucks themselves. At least, I still remember running
through the grass in a very reckless manner on several occasions.

I am keenly aware that to write anything in defense of the wood-chuck
will prove unpopular with farmers and farmers' boys. Still, I venture to
ask whether we are not, perhaps, a little too much inclined to deem the
earth and everything that grows out of it our own particular property.
The wood-chuck is undoubtedly an older resident on this continent than
men, certainly a far older resident than white men, who came here less
than three hundred years ago. Moreover, he is a quiet, inoffensive
resident, never becomes a pauper, never gets intoxicated, nor creates
any disturbance, minds his own business, and only "whistles" when
astonished or suddenly attacked by man and his dogs. May it not be
possible that he is honestly entitled to a few stalks of clover which
grow in the country which he and his ancestors had inhabited for
centuries before white men knew there was any such place as America?

The writer now owns a farm in Maine, or at least holds a deed of it,
given him, for a consideration, by another man who in turn had bought it
of a previous incumbent w