bout two or three feet,
then makes a sharp upward turn and keeps nearly parallel with the
surface of the ground for a distance of eight or ten feet farther,
according to the grade. Here he makes his nest and passes the winter,
holing up in October or November and coming out again in March or April.
This is a long sleep, and is rendered possible only by the amount of fat
with which the system has become stored during the summer. The fire of
life still burns, but very faintly and slowly, as with the draughts all
closed and the ashes heaped up. Respiration is continued, but at longer
intervals, and all the vital processes are nearly at a standstill. Dig
one out during hibernation (Audubon did so), and you find it a mere
inanimate ball, that suffers itself to be moved and rolled about without
showing signs of awakening. But bring it in by the fire, and it
presently unrolls and opens its eyes, and crawls feebly about, and if
left to itself will seek some dark hole or corner, roll itself up again,
and resume its former condition.

IV

THE RABBIT AND THE HARE

With us the hare is of the remote northern woods, the rabbit is of the
fields and bushy margins of the woods. One retreats before man and
civilization, the other follows in their wake. The rabbit is now common
in parts of our State (New York) where in my boyhood only the hare was
found. The rabbit evidently loves to be neighbor to man and profits by
it. Nearly every winter one takes up her abode under my study floor, and
when the snow is deep and the weather is cold she usually finds every
night a couple of sweet apples on her threshold. I suppose she thinks
they grow there, or are blown there by the wind like the snow. At such
times she does not leave her retreat; the apples are good fortune
enough. If I neglect to put them there, in the morning I see where she
has gone forth over the lawn looking for them, or for some other food.

I wonder if that fox chanced to catch a glimpse of her the other night
when he stealthily leaped over the fence near by and walked along
between the study and the house? How clearly one could read that it was
not a little dog that had passed there! There was something furtive in
the track; it shied off away from the house and around it, as if eyeing
it suspiciously; and then it had the caution and deliberation of the
fox,--bold, bold, but not too bold; wariness was in every footprint. If
it had been a little dog that had chanced t