(JULY)
Well said, old mole! Canst work i' the earth so fast?
--_Shakespere: "Hamlet."_
FARMERS WITH FOUR FEET
Before we start this chapter--it's going to be about the farmers with
four feet, you see--I want to say something, and that's this: _Don't let
anybody tell you moles eat roots._ They don't! They eat the cutworms
that do eat the roots. Haven't I been in mole runs often enough to know!
Of course, the moles do cut a root here and there occasionally when it
happens to be in the way, as they tunnel along, but what does that
amount to?
Why, in France they put Mr. Mole in vineyards--on purpose! He's one of
the regular hands about the place, just like the hired man.
I. MR. MOLE AND HIS RELATIONS
Moles do a lot of good work for the farmer. Not only were they ploughing
and ploughing and ploughing the soil--over and over again--thousands of
centuries before man came along to plant seed in it, but they are all
the time eating, among other things, destructive worms and insects in
the soil. They work all over the world, that is to say, in the upper
half of it--the Northern Hemisphere; and there's where the biggest half
of the land is, if I haven't forgotten my geography.
WONDERFUL LITTLE MACHINES ON FOUR LEGS
Closely related to the moles are the shrews--quaint little mouse-like
creatures with long, pointed heads and noses that they can twist about
almost any way in hunting their meals and finding out other things in
this big world that concern them. On these funny, long noses they have
whiskers like a pussy-cat; and that helps, too, when you want to keep
posted on what's going on around you. Like the moles the shrews are
found all over the Northern Hemisphere. What is known as the
"long-tailed shrew," is the very smallest of our relations among the
mammalia. Why, they're no bigger than the end of a man's little finger;
and the smallest watch _I_ ever heard of was a good deal bigger than
that. Yet, inside these wee bodies is as much machinery as it takes to
run any other mammal--an elephant, say.
[Illustration: THE COMMON AND THE SHORT-TAILED SHREW]
The shrews get around very fast, considering their size; and they're on
the go all the time. I never saw such busy-bodies; nosing about in the
old leaves and dead grass and under logs and boring into loose loam,
punky wood, decayed stumps--anywhere you'd be likely to find a worm, a
grub, a beetle, or a slug. Hard workers, these shrews, but _so_
quarrelsome! When two Mr. Shrews meet there's pretty sure to be trouble.
They're regular little swashbucklers among themselves; and--the queerest
thing, until you know why--they don't seem to be afraid even of cats.
Fancy telling Cousin Mouse that! But it isn't because the shrews
_wouldn't_ be afraid if the cats got after them, but because cats always
let shrews alone. They don't taste good!
[Illustration: THE CILIATED SHREW]
Shrews are so nimble on their tiny feet and so quick of hearing, they
are very hard to catch. And please don't try! You simply _can't_ tame
them, and in spite of the fact they're so fierce and bold at home--among
their own kind--they're easily frightened to death. A shock of fear and
that wonderful little heart engine of theirs stops short--never to go
again.
MR. MOLE'S PAWS AND HOW HE WORKS THEM
But while the shrews can get around so much faster above ground the
moles are the most remarkable travellers _under_ ground. The mole's
paws, you notice, are turned outward, as one's hands are when swimming.
In fact he does almost swim through the soft, loose soil--so fast does
he move along! His two shovels, with the muscles that work them, weigh
as much as all the rest of his body. Why, he has a chest like an
athlete! He pierces the soil with his muzzle and then clears it away
with his paws. His skull is shaped like a wedge. He has a strong, boring
snout and a smooth, round body.
This snout, by the way, has a bone near the tip. You see how handy that
would come in, don't you? At the same time, although it's so hard--this
snout of his--it's very sensitive, like the fingers of the blind; for
Mr. Mole must always be feeling his way along in the dark, you know.
[Illustration: SECTION OF MR. MOLE'S CASTLE
This is a cross-section of a mole-hill, showing the central chamber and
the rooms leading into it.]
The kind of moles you find in Europe live in what seem to be little
earthen fortresses, and the tops, sticking above ground, make hillocks.
In each of these little forts there is a central chamber; then outside
of this, running all the way around, are two galleries, one above the
other. The upper gallery has several openings into the central chamber.
The galleries are connected by two straight up-and-down shafts. From the
lower galleries several passages, usually from eight to ten, lead away
to where the moles go out to feed; and if there is a body of water near
by--a pond or a creek, say--there's a special tunnel leading to that.
Mr. Mole works hard and he sleeps hard. The big middle room in his home
is the bedchamber of Mr. Mole and his family. Usually he sleeps soundly
all night, but occasionally, on fine Summer nights, he comes out and
enjoys the air.
[Illustration: THE COMMON AND THE STAR-NOSED MOLE]
You'd think he'd get awfully dirty, wouldn't you, boring his way along
in the ground all the time? But he doesn't. His hair is always as spick
and span as if he'd just come out of the barber-shop. Do you know why?
It's because he wears his hair pompadoured. It grows straight out from
the skin. So you see he can go backward and forward--as he is obliged to
do constantly in the day's work--without mussing it up at all. If it
lay down, like yours or like pussy-cat's, it would get into an _awful_
mess! In France the children call Mr. Mole "The Little Gentleman in the
Velvet Coat."
II. FOUR-FOOTED FARMERS THAT WEAR ARMOR
But, speaking of coats, I want to introduce you to a still more rapid
worker in the soil, who wears a coat of mail. He is called the
armadillo. There used to be a species of armadillo in western Texas.
Whether there are any there still I don't know,[19] but go on down to
South America and you'll find all you want. The woods are full of them,
and so are those vast prairies--the pampas. The plates in the
armadillo's coat of mail are not made of steel, of course, but of bone.
These bony plates are each separate from the other on most of his body
but made into solid bucklers over the shoulders and the hips. The
armadillos have very short, stout legs and very long, strong claws, and
how they can dig! They can dig fast in any kind of soil, but in the
loose soil of the pampas they dig so fast that if you happen to catch
sight of one when out riding and he sees _you_, you'll have to start
toward him with your horse on the run if you want to see anything more
of him. Before you can get to him and throw yourself from the saddle,
he'll have buried himself in the ground. And you can't catch him; not
even if you have a spade and dig away with all your might. He'll dig
ahead of you, faster--a good deal faster--than you can follow.
[19] One of my friends in the faculty of the University of Chicago
tells me there are still a good many armadillos in Texas.
MR. ARMADILLO'S REMARKABLE NOSE DRILL
For all he looks so knightly, so far as his armor is concerned, the
armadillo is timid, peaceful, and never looking for trouble with
anybody, but once aroused fights fiercely and does much damage with his
long hooked claws. His chief diet is ants. These he finds with his nose.
He locates them by scent and then bores in after them. You'd think he'd
twist it off, that long nose of his; he turns it first one way and then
the other, like a gimlet. And so fast!
The armadillo dislikes snakes as much as all true knights disliked
dragons. That is, he doesn't like them socially; although he's quite
fond of them as a variation in diet. He'll leap on a snake, paying not
the slightest attention to his attempts to bite through that coat of
mail, and tear him into bits and eat him.
Another armored knight that eats snakes and that other animals seldom
eat--much as they'd like to--is the hedgehog. If you were a fox, instead
of a boy or girl, I wouldn't have to tell you about how hard it is to
serve hedgehog at the family table. One of the earliest things a little
fox learns in countries where there are hedgehogs is to let the hedgehog
alone.
"Hedgehogs would be very nice--to eat, I mean--if they weren't so ugly
about not wanting to be eaten."
We can imagine Mamma Fox saying that to the children. Then she goes on:
"The whole ten inches of a hedgehog--he's about that long--are covered
with short, stiff, sharp, gray spines. He's easy to catch--just ambles
along, hardly lifting his short legs from the ground. And he goes about
at night--just when we foxes are out marketing. That would be so handy,
don't you see; but the trouble is about those nasty spines of his. Try
to catch him and he rolls up into a ball with all his spines--they're
sharp as needles--sticking out everywhere, and every which way.
And--well, you simply can't get at him, that's all. So just don't have
anything to do with him. It's only a waste of time."
Hedgehogs live in hedges and thickets and in narrow gulches covered with
bushes. They do their share of ploughing when nosing about with their
pig-like snouts for slugs, snails, and insects, and when they dig places
for their home nests. These homes they line with moss, grass, and
leaves, and in them spend the long Winter, indifferent to the tempests
and the cold.
But there's another place to look for hedgehogs, and you never would
guess! In people's kitchens. If you ever go to England you'll find them
in many country homes, helping with the work. They're great on
cockroaches, and they're perfectly safe from the cat and the dog. Both
Puss and Towser know all about those spines, just as well as Mrs. Fox
does.
When they've eaten all the cockroaches, give them some cooked
vegetables, porridge, or bread and milk, and they'll be perfectly
content. They're easy to tame and get very friendly.
In the wild state, besides the insects and things I mentioned, they eat
snakes; and poison snakes, too! The poison never seems to bother them at
all. Their table manners are interesting, also, when it comes to eating
snakes. They always begin at the tail.[20] They'd no more think of
eating a snake any other way than one would of picking up the wrong fork
at a formal dinner.
[20] Isn't that the way a toad swallows an angleworm? Or how _does_
he do it?
UNDER THE HEDGEHOG'S WATER-PROOF ROOF
That's one of the things about good manners Mamma Hedgehog teaches the
babies, I suppose. Of these she has from two to four, and she makes a
curious nest especially for them; a nest with a roof on it that sheds
rain like any other roof. Just as it is with puppies and kittens, the
babies are born blind; and not only that, but they can't hear at first,
either. While they are young their spines--I don't mean their
back-bones, but their other spines--are soft, but they become hard as
the babies grow and open their eyes and ears on the world. The muscles
on their backs get very thick and strong, so that when they don't want
to have anything to do with anybody--say a fox, or a dog, or a
weasel--they just pull the proper muscle strings and tie themselves up
into a kind of bag made of their own needle-cushion skins, with the
needles all sticking out, point up!
III. A VISIT TO SOME FARM VILLAGES
TWELVE LITTLE MARMOTS ALL IN ONE BED
Next I'd like you to visit with me certain other farmers who remind us
of the Middle Ages also; not because they wear armor, like the
armadillos and the hedgehogs and the lords of castles, but because they
live in farm villages as the farmer peasants used to do around the
castles of the lords. Moreover, one reason they live together in this
way is for protection--just as it was with the peasants--only among
these little democrats there's no overlord business; each one's home is
his castle. Another reason for this village arrangement is that it's
such a sociable way to live; and they're great society people, these
farm villagers. The marmots, for example, the largest and heaviest of
the squirrel family, just love company. In their mountain
country--they're mountain people, the marmots--they play together, work
together, and during the long, cold night of Winter snuggle together in
their burrows. Their burrows are close by each other among the rocks.
They have both Summer and Winter residences. In Summer they go away up
in the mountains, hollow out their burrows and raise their babies. When
the snows of late Autumn send them down the mountainsides, twelve or
fifteen of them, all working together, pitch in and make a tunnel in the
soil among the rocks, enlarging it at the end into a big room. Next they
put in a good pile of dry hay, carefully close the front door and lock
it up with stones caulked with grass and moss. Then they all cuddle down
together, as snug as you please, and stay there until Spring.
[Illustration: HIGHWAYS OF GROUND-SQUIRREL TOWN
Almost as crooked as the streets of London town, aren't they? And as
hard to find one's way about in--unless, of course, one were a
ground-squirrel. This is the burrow of a Richardson ground-squirrel
sketched by Thompson Seton, near Whitewater, Manitoba.]
Another member of the marmot family who is very fond of good company is
the prairie-dog. There may be thousands in a prairie-dog town. Each
little prairie-dog home has in front of it a mound something like an
Eskimo's hut. The prairie-dogs make these mounds in digging out their
burrows. They pile the dirt right at the front door. This may not look
neat to us, but you'll see it's just the thing--this dirt pile--when you
know what the prairie-dog does with it. He uses it as a watch-tower.
When, from this watch-tower, he spies certain people he doesn't want to
meet, you ought to see how quickly he can make for his front door and
into the house! The times are still lawless where the prairie-dog lives,
and he has to be on the lookout all the while for coyotes, for foxes,
for badgers, for the black-footed ferret and the old gray wolf; to say
nothing of hawks and brown owls.
SUCH NEAT CHAMBERMAIDS!
The prairie-dogs like sandy or gravelly soil for their homes, and in
making them they do a lot of ploughing. And besides they supply this
same soil with a great deal of humus--the grass that they use for
bedding. They're very particular about changing their beds every day;
always clearing out the old bedding and putting in new. They do this
along about sundown. You can see them do it right in New York City, for
there is a flourishing colony of them at the zoo.
[Illustration: THIS MUST BE A PLEASANT DAY
In nice weather the Prairie Dog's front door stands wide open like this,
but before a rain he stuffs it tight with grass because, when it _does_
rain in the arid regions where he lives, it comes down in bucketfuls!]
Mr. Prairie-Dog is about a foot long and as fat as butter. The reason
he's called a dog isn't because he is a dog or even looks like one, but
because he has a sharp little bark like a very much excited puppy. He
thinks he sees something suspicious: "Yap! Yap!"
Or he spies a neighbor down the street: "Yap! Yap! Hello, neighbor!
Looks like another fine day, doesn't it?"
"Yap! Yap!" says neighbor. (This "yap" passes for "yes," no
doubt--although it isn't quite the way Mr. Webster would say it,
perhaps.)
Then maybe a neighbor from away over on the avenue, that he hasn't seen
for some time, comes calling--as they're always doing, these neighborly
little chaps. Then it's:
"Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Why, how _are_ you? And what have you been doing?
And how are the little folks?"
And so it goes, all day long.
The prairie-dog's native home is on our Western plains, but he has a
cousin away off in South America--although he may never have heard of
him--called the viscacha.
The viscachas live on the great grassy plains of the La Plata in
colonies of twenty or more, in villages of deep-chambered burrows with
large pit-like entrances grouped close together; so close, in fact, that
the whole village makes one large irregular mound, thirty to forty feet
in diameter and two to three feet high. These villages being on the
level prairie, the viscachas are careful to build them high enough so
that floods will not reach them. They make a clear space all around the
town. In doing this these little people seem to have two purposes: (1)
To make it more difficult for enemies to slip up on them unnoticed, and
(2) to furnish a kind of athletic field for the community; for it is in
these open spaces that they have their foot-races, wrestling matches,
and the like.
If you ever happen down their way, the first thing that will strike you
is the enormous size of the entrances to the central burrows. You'd
think somebody as big as a bear lived in them. The entrance is four to
six feet across and deep enough for a tall man to stand in up to the
waist.
Like our prairie-dogs, the viscachas are very sociable, and little
paths, the result of neighborly calls, lead from one village to another.
They are neighborly indeed; and in the Bible sense. Of course, they like
to get together of an evening and talk things over and gossip and all
that, but that isn't the end of it. To take an instance: These South
American prairie-dogs, like our prairie-dogs up North, are not popular
with the cattlemen; and the cattlemen, to get rid of them, bury whole
villages with earth. Then neighbors from distant burrows come--just as
soon as the cattlemen go away--and dig them out!
[Illustration: MR. P. GOPHER AS THE MASTER PLOUGHMAN
Thompson Seton calls the pocket-gopher "the master ploughman of the
West," and this is how he illustrates the extent of his labors.]
Another ploughman besides the prairie-dog and the viscacha, who isn't
popular with farmers--although Thompson Seton calls him "The Master
Ploughman of the West"--is the pocket-gopher. He has farmed it from
Canada to Texas, all through the fertile Mississippi Valley. The reason
he has that queer expression on his face--you couldn't help noticing
it--is that each cheek has a big outside pocket in it; and, like the big
pockets in a small boy's trousers, they're there for business. On each
forefoot he has a set of long claws; and dig, you should see him! He's a
regular little steam-shovel. He sinks his burrow below the frost-line
and into this, stuffed in his two pockets, he carries food to eat when
he wakes up during the following Spring, before earth's harvests are
ripe.
[Illustration: POCKETS OF THE POCKET-MOUSE]
IV. THE HOME OF THE RED FOX
Another country gentleman, not as popular with his neighbors, I must
say, as he might be, but whose people, in the course of the ages, have
done a good deal of ploughing, is Brer Fox. I mean particularly the red
fox, for the gray fox usually lives in hollow trees or in ready-made
houses among the rocks of the mountainside.
THE THREE ROOMS IN THE FOX HOUSE
The red fox is the cunningest of his tribe. One of the ways he shows his
cunning--and also his lack of conscience, in dealings outside the fox
family--is in his way of getting a home. Whenever he can find a burrow
of a badger, for example, he drives the badger out and then enlarges
the place to suit his own needs. For Mr. Fox's residence is quite an
affair. Usually it has three rooms; the front room where either Mr. or
Mrs. Fox--depending on which is going marketing--stops and looks about
to see if the coast is clear; back of that the storeroom for food, and
behind this the family bedroom and nursery.
Mr. and Mrs. Fox are among the thriftiest folks I know. They not only
provide for to-day, but for to-morrow and the day after. For example,
when Mr. Fox visits a poultry-yard, he doesn't simply carry off enough
for one meal. He keeps catching and carrying off chickens, ducks, or
geese--whatever comes handy--all night; working clear up to daybreak.
And the fresh meat he thus gets for the family table he buries--each
fowl in a separate place--not so very far away from the poultry-yard.
Then later he comes and gets this buried treasure and takes it home to
be shared with mother and the babies.
Of these babies there are from three to five. Young foxes are very
playful and think there's no such sport as chasing each other about in
the sunshine, while mother sits in the doorway keeping an eye out for
possible danger and watching their antics with a complacent smile, as
much as to say: "_Aren't_ they the little dears!"
If just one little fox wants to play while his brothers and sisters want
to sleep--and that sometimes happens--he goes off by himself and chases
his own tail around, just like a kitten.
Little foxes are very nice and polite that way.
[Illustration: THE KANGAROO RAT AND THE POCKET-MOUSE
The kangaroo rat and the pocket-mouse live in the arid regions of the
United States. Both have pockets in their cheeks, but the mouse is named
for his pockets and the rat for his long kangaroo hind legs.]
V. WORK AND PLAY IN CHIPMUNKVILLE
It isn't often one gets a chance to see little foxes at play, except
occasionally in the big city zoos, for foxes are now so scarce; and,
besides, their papas and mammas in the wild state are suspicious of
human spectators, but there are certain nimble four-legged babies to be
found all over the country that play in much the same way.
If, along in July, you should see a certain little body in a lovely
striped suit chasing another little body in a striped suit, exactly like
it, along the old rail fence or over the boulder wall or across the
meadow, ten to one, it will be two baby chipmunks playing tag. When one
bites the other's tail--they're always trying to do that in these tag
games--it means he's "it," I think. In fact, I'm quite sure, for always,
when one little Mr. Chipmunk bites another little Mr. Chipmunk on the
tail, little Mr. Chipmunk No. 2 turns right around and chases little Mr.
Chipmunk No. 1, and tries to bite _his_ tail.
They keep this up on sunshiny days all through July and along into early
August. Then the serious business of life begins. They sober down, these
chipmunk children--they were only born last May--and learn to make homes
for themselves. You never would think the way they love the sunshine
that the homes of all the chipmunks are under the ground, and as dark as
can be. But they are. You notice the chipmunks have rather large feet,
considering what dainty little creatures they are. These feet, like the
feet of the mole, are for digging. The chipmunk digs deep under the
roots of trees and stone walls, if there happens to be either handy by,
but, so far as I've seen, he's quite contented to make his burrows in
the open meadows. The round nest at the end of the burrow is lined with
fine grass. It has two entrances, one right opposite the other, like
front and back doors. Sometimes there are as many as three doors; four,
maybe, in case of a chipmunk of a particularly nervous disposition. All
chipmunks are easily frightened and dive into their holes, quick as a
wink, when there's any danger; and often when there's really nothing to
be scared at at all.
WHEN THOSE EXTRA DOORS COME HANDY
But you can't blame them. There are times when it's no fun being a
chipmunk, I tell you. The hawks get after you, and the minks and the
foxes and the weasels. Those extra doors into the nest are very useful
places to dodge into when you're outside and a savage old hawk swoops
down on you, or a fox makes a jump at you. And they're just as
handy--these extra doors--to run _out_ of when a mink or a weasel
follows you in. They'll do that, if you're a chipmunk; chase you right
into your own house!
When a pair of grown-up chipmunks start housekeeping for
themselves--that is to say when they are about ten weeks old--they first
dig a little tunnel, almost straight down for several feet. Then they
make a hall that runs along horizontally--like anybody's hall--for a few
yards. Then, supposing you're Mr. or Mrs. Chipmunk in your new place,
after it's all done--you go up a slant--a flight of stairs, you might
say, although, of course, there aren't any stairs--and there you are in
the family bedroom, the nest.
Not long after the chipmunks stop their outdoor games in the Fall you
might think it was because they had the mumps; they go around with their
faces all swelled out in such a funny way. The reason is they have their
cheeks full of nuts and seeds that they are storing for the Winter. They
don't put these stores in the nest--for then where would they sleep, the
nest is so small--but in special cellars that they build near the nest,
with connecting passages. These cellars, like the nests, are well below
frost-line, so that Jack can't get the nuts or nip the noses of the
chipmunks while they are asleep.
[Illustration: PICTURESQUE HOME OF A CONNECTICUT WOODCHUCK
This is the truly artistic residence of a Connecticut woodchuck which I
found in a rocky knoll by the wayside during a summer vacation at Kent
and reproduced as well as I could with my fountain-pen. Mr. W. as he
often does in digging his burrows, had availed himself of the protection
of the roots of a tree. Here there were two projecting roots, forming a
curious arch over the doorway, which was tastily decorated by a little
overhanging vine, on its way up the knoll, along the stones, and up the
foot of the tree.]
When Winter finally sets in, the chipmunks get very drowsy and go up to
bed. And there they stay until Spring--one great long nap, except that
they wake up and stir around occasionally on bright days and if it
happens to warm up a little.
"Such sleepyheads!" you say. "And what about all those nuts? I should
think they'd be fine for Winter parties."
They would, I dare say. But you know a body doesn't have much of an
appetite when he doesn't get any outdoor exercise, and that's why the
chipmunks only take a few bites now and then, during the Winter. And,
besides, if they ate up everything in the Winter--you know how folks
eat at parties--what would they do in the Spring, with no good nuts
lying around on the ground, as there are in the Fall; and nothing else
to be had that chipmunks care about? So they keep most of the nuts and
seeds and things for the great Spring breakfast, and all the other
meals, until berries are ripe. The berries they eat until the next nut
harvest comes along.
Until then, you see, they haven't much of anything to do but play around
and sit in the sun and chat. So why shouldn't they?
HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY
You will find some most readable things about foxes in Burrough's
"Squirrels and Other Fur Bearers"; Comstock's "Pet Book"; Cram's
"Little Beasts of Field and Wood"; Wright's "Four-Footed
Americans"; Jordan's "Five Tales of Birds and Beasts"; Long's "Ways
of Wood Folk"; and Seton's "Wild Animals I Have Known."
Comstock's "Pet Book" also tells about the prairie-dog; and Seton,
in his "Wild Animals I Have Known," tells about "The Prairie Dog
and His Kin."
It's a very common superstition among English country folk that
shrews always drop dead if they attempt to cross a road. How do you
suppose such a strange idea ever got started? Allen, in his
"Nature's Work Shop," reasons it out, and his reasons seem very
plausible. It's a fact that their dead bodies are nearly always
found in roadways. You'll also find some interesting information
about shrews in Johonnott's "Curious Flyers, Creepers and Swimmers"
and Wright's "Four-Footed Americans."
There's some little dispute about squirrels as tree-planters; that
is to say as to just how they do it, for there's no question that
they _do_ plant oaks and other trees. Thoreau, in his "Walden,"
gives the squirrel credit for doing an immense amount of
tree-planting, but Ernest Ingersoll, in his article on squirrels in
"Wild Neighbors," thinks the squirrel leaves comparatively few
acorns or hickory-nuts, and that he doesn't forget where he puts
them, as other writers on nature say. "They seem to know precisely
the spot," says Mr. Ingersoll, "where each nut is buried, and go
directly to it; and I have seen them hundreds of times when the
snow was more than a foot deep, wade floundering through it
straight to a certain point, dive down, perhaps far out of sight,
and in a moment emerge with a nut in their jaws."
But _how_ the squirrel knows it's there--that's the mystery! Read
what Ingersoll says about it. The whole essay is extremely good
reading, and will tell you a number of things to watch out for in
squirrels that you perhaps never have noticed.
In Pliny's "Natural History" you will find, among other quaint
stories, one to the effect that mountain marmots put away hay in
the fall by one animal using itself as a hay-rack--lying on his
back with his load clasped close while he is pulled home by the
tail. "Animal Arts and Crafts" tells what a simple little thing
originated this idea. Many of the peasants of the Alps still
believe it.
Hornaday, in his "Two Years in the Jungle," gives an interesting
account of how one of the four-footed knights in armor--the
pangolin--does himself up in a ball, and how next to impossible it
is to "unlock" him.
Ingersoll, in discussing the various uses of tails in "Wild
Neighbors," tells how a gerboa kangaroo brings home grass for his
nest, done up in a sheaf of which his own little tail is the
binder.
An interesting four-footed burrower, when he can't rob a
prairie-dog of his hole--or some other body smaller than
himself--is the coyote. There is a long talk on the coyote and his
ways in "Wild Neighbors." This little book also gives pictures of
the different kinds of shrews in the United States, and a lot of
detail about them and their little paws and their noses and their
tails.
It's a queer thing how systematic and prompt shrews and moles are
in business. You can actually set your watch by them, as you will
see in the same book.
In the article on the gopher in the "Americana" you will find how
the gopher got his name. Can you guess, when I tell you it's from a
French word meaning "honeycomb"?