lle, that you
cannot, for a few moments, detect what kind of creature it is. The young
squat still and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, and mind
only their mother's directions given from a distance, nor will your
approach make them run again and betray themselves. You may even tread
on them, or have your eyes on them for a minute, without discovering
them. I have held them in my open hand at such a time, and still their
only care, obedient to their mother and their instinct, was to squat
there without fear or trembling. So perfect is this instinct, that once,
when I had laid them on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on
its side, it was found with the rest in exactly the same position ten
minutes afterward. They are not callow like the young of most birds,
but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The
remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene
eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They
suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by
experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval
with the sky it reflects. The woods do not yield another such a gem. The
traveller does not often look into such a limpid well. The ignorant or
reckless sportsman often shoots the parent at such a time, and leaves
these innocents to fall a prey to some prowling beast or bird, or
gradually mingle with the decaying leaves which they so much resemble.
It is said that when hatched by a hen they will directly disperse on
some alarm, and so are lost, for they never hear the mother's call which
gathers them again. These were my hens and chickens.

It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though secret in
the woods, and still sustain themselves in the neighborhood of towns,
suspected by hunters only. How retired the otter manages to live here!
He grows to be four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps without
any human being getting a glimpse of him. I formerly saw the raccoon in
the woods behind where my house is built, and probably still heard their
whinnering at night. Commonly I rested an hour or two in the shade at
noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and read a little by a spring
which was the source of a swamp and of a brook, oozing from under
Brister's Hill, half a mile from my field. The approach to this was
through a succession of descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch
pines, into