that stone and I will show you my way with
minks." This I quickly did, and the dog sprang for the game, but he as
quickly withdrew with a cry of pain as if he had touched something
red-hot. The mink had got in the first blow or bite, and then effected
his escape between my feet and the dog's, as if he had vanished in the
air. Where he went to was a mystery. There was no hole; no depth of
water; no hiding-place anywhere that I could discover or that the dog
could discover, and yet the mink had disappeared. It was like some
conjurer's trick.

Minks are fond of fish, and can capture them in the water. This makes
them very destructive along small trout streams and ponds. I once saw a
trout with an ugly gash in its side, which was doubtless the work of a
mink. With a friend, I once had a camp by a trout stream in the
Catskills that we named "Mink Camp," by reason of the number of minks
that came every night as soon as it was dark, to devour the fish-heads
and entrails that we threw over on the opposite bank. We could often
hear them disputing over the spoils, and in the dim light of the
camp-fire could sometimes see them.

You may know the mink's track upon the snow from those of the squirrels
at once. In the squirrel-track the prints of the large hind feet are
ahead, with the prints of the smaller fore feet just behind them, as in
the case of the rabbit. The mink, in running, usually plants his hind
feet exactly upon the track of his fore feet, and closer together than
the squirrel, so that his trail upon the snow is something like this:--

[Illustration]

The squirrel's track, as well as those of the rabbit and the
white-footed mouse, is in form like this:--

[Illustration]

One winter day I had a good view of a mink running upon the snow and ice
along the edge of a stream. He had seen or heard me, and was making a
little extra speed. He bounded along with his back much arched, in a
curiously stiff and mechanical sort of way, with none of the grace and
ease of the squirrel. He leaped high, and cleared about two and a half
feet at a bound.

X

THE RACCOON

In March that brief summary of a bear, the raccoon, comes out of his den
in the ledges, and leaves his sharp digitigrade track upon the
snow,--traveling not unfrequently in pairs,--a lean, hungry couple, bent
on pillage and plunder. They have an unenviable time of it,--feasting in
the summer and fall, hibernating in winter, and starving in spring. In