That pickpocket, Sir Mephitis, could solve the mystery.
Quietly has he approached, under cover of darkness, and, one by one,
relieved her of her precious charge. Look closely, and you will see
their little yellow legs and beaks, or part of a mangled form, lying
about on the ground. Or, before the hen has hatched, he may find her
out, and, by the same sleight of hand, remove every egg, leaving only
the empty blood-stained shells to witness against him. The birds,
especially the ground-builders, suffer in like manner from his
plundering propensities.

The secretion upon which he relies for defence, and which is the chief
source of his unpopularity, while it affords good reasons against
cultivating him as a pet, and mars his attractiveness as game, is by no
means the greatest indignity that can be offered to a nose. It is a
rank, living smell, and has none of the sickening qualities of disease
or putrefaction. Indeed, I think a good smeller will enjoy its most
refined intensity. It approaches the sublime, and makes the nose tingle.
It is tonic and bracing, and, I can readily believe, has rare medicinal
qualities. I do not recommend its use as eye-water, though an old farmer
assures me it has undoubted virtues when thus applied. Hearing, one
night, a disturbance among his hens, he rushed suddenly out to catch the
thief, when Sir Mephitis, taken by surprise, and, no doubt, much annoyed
at being interrupted, discharged the vials of his wrath full in the
farmer's face, and with such admirable effect, that, for a few moments,
he was completely blinded, and powerless to revenge himself upon the
rogue; but he declared that afterwards his eyes felt as if purged by
fire, and his sight was much clearer.

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,--travelling 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 April, I have found the young of the previous
year creeping about the fields, so reduced by starvation as to be quite
helpless, and offering no resistance to my taking them up by the tail,
and carrying them home.

But with March our interest in these phases of animal life, which winter
has so emphasized and brought out, begins to decline. Vague rumors are
afloat in the air of a gre