impenetrable places,--leading you over logs and
through brush, alert and expectant, till, suddenly, she bursts up a few
yards from you, and goes humming through the trees,--the complete
triumph of endurance and vigor. Hardy native bird, may your tracks never
be fewer, or your visits to the birch-tree less frequent!

The squirrel-tracks--sharp, nervous, and wiry--have their histories
also. But who ever saw squirrels in winter? The naturalist says they are
mostly torpid; yet evidently that little pocket-faced depredator, the
chipmunk, was not carrying buckwheat for so many days to his hole for
nothing;--was he anticipating a state of torpidity, or the demands of a
very active appetite? Red and gray squirrels are more or less active all
winter, though very shy, and, I am inclined to think, partially
nocturnal in their habits. Here a gray one has just passed,--came down
that tree and went up this; there he dug for a beech-nut, and left the
bur on the snow. How did he know where to dig? During an unusually
severe winter I have known him to make long journeys to a barn, in a
remote field, where wheat was stored. How did he know there was wheat
there? In attempting to return, the adventurous creature was frequently
run down and caught in the deep snow.

His home is in the trunk of some old birch or maple, with an entrance
far up amid the branches. In the spring he builds himself a summer-house
of small leafy twigs in the top of a neighboring beech, where the young
are reared and much of the time passed. But the safer retreat in the
maple is not abandoned, and both old and young resort thither in the
fall, or when danger threatens. Whether this temporary residence amid
the branches is for elegance or pleasure, or for sanitary reasons or
domestic convenience, the naturalist has forgotten to mention.

The elegant creature, so cleanly in its habits, so graceful in its
carriage, so nimble and daring in its movements, excites feelings of
admiration akin to those awakened by the birds and the fairer forms of
nature. His passage through the trees is almost a flight. Indeed, the
flying-squirrel has little or no advantage over him, and in speed and
nimbleness cannot compare with him at all. If he miss his footing and
fall, he is sure to catch on the next branch; if the connection be
broken, he leaps recklessly for the nearest spray or limb, and secures
his hold, even if it be by the aid of his teeth.

His career of frolic and festiv