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!