ground, or takes refuge in a den or hole, when pursued. If
caught in the open fields, he is much confused and easily overtaken
by the dog; but in the woods, he leaves him at a bound. In summer,
when first disturbed, he beats the ground violently with his feet,
by which means he would express to you his surprise or displeasure;
it is a dumb way he has of scolding. After leaping a few yards, he
pauses an instant, as if to determine the degree of danger, and then
hurries away with a much lighter tread.

His feet are like great pads, and his track has little of the
sharp, articulated expression of Reynard's, or of animals that
climb or dig. Yet it is very pretty like all the rest, and tells
its own tale. There is nothing bold or vicious or vulpine in it,
and his timid, harmless character is published at every leap. He
abounds in dense woods, preferring localities filled with a small
undergrowth of beech and birch, upon the bark of which he feeds.
Nature is rather partial to him, and matches his extreme local
habits and character with a suit that corresponds with his
surroundings,--reddish gray in summer and white in winter.

The sharp-rayed track of the partridge adds another figure to this
fantastic embroidery upon the winter snow. Her course is a clear,
strong line, sometimes quite wayward, but generally very direct,
steering for the densest, most 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 how rarely we see squirrels in winter! The naturalists say
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 providing against 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 beechnut, and left the burr on
the snow. How did he know where to dig? During an unusually severe
winter I have known him to make long journeys