To feel to the full the peace of the hills, one must choose his hills, and see to it that they are gentle and restful in character. Abruptness, jagged lines, sharp angles, frowning precipices, while they may add an element of picturesqueness, interfere with the feeling of ease and restfulness that the peace of the hills implies. The eye is disturbed by a confusion of broken and abrupt lines as is the ear by a volume of discordant sounds. Long, undulating mountain lines, broad, cradle-like valleys, easy basking hill-slopes, as well as the absence of loud and discordant sounds, are a factor in the restfulness of any landscape. My landscape is very old geologically, as old as the order of vertebrate animals, but young historically, having been settled only about one hundred and fifty years. The original forests still cover the tops of the mountains with a dark-green mantle, which comes well down upon their sides, where it is cut and torn and notched into by the upper fields of the valley farms. I call my place Woodchuck Lodge, as I tell my friends, because we are beleagured by these rodents. There is a cordon of woodchuck-holes all around us. In the orchard, in the meadows, in the pastures, these whistling marmots have their dens. Here one might easily have woodchuck venison for dinner every day, yea, and for supper and breakfast, too, if one could acquire a taste for it. I tried to dine on a woodchuck once when I was a boy, but never have felt inclined to repeat the experiment. If one were born in the woods and lived in the woods, maybe he could relish a woodchuck. Talk about being autocthonous, and savoring of the soil--try a woodchuck! The feeding habits of this animal are as cleanly as those of a sheep or a cow--clover, plantain, peas, beans, cucumbers, cabbages, apples--all sweet and succulent things go to the making of his flabby body; yet he spends so much of his time in pickle in the ground that his flesh is rank with the earth flavor. He is not lean like a rabbit or a squirrel, nor so firm of muscle as a ’coon or a ’possum; he is little more than a skin filled with viscera. He is busy all summer storing up fat in his loose pouch of a body for fuel during his long winter sleep. This sleep appears to begin in late September, or after the first white frost. This year I saw my last specimen on the twenty-eighth of the month as he was running in great haste to his hole. Evidently he does not like the pinch of the cold. He is a fair-weather animal and is the epicure of the meadows and pastures. While the apples are still mellow on the ground, while the red-thorn is still dropping its fruit, and the aftermath is still fresh in the meadows, my woodchucks turn their backs upon the world and retreat to their underground chambers for their six months’ slumber. I know of no other hibernating animal that retires from the light of day so early in the season. His active life stretches