“Yes, indeed. See the shape and size of the foot. Yes, that’s a fox.” “And this one?” “Oh, that’s a kitty.” (A cat, he meant to say.) “Strange how many cats are prowling about this country at night,” he continued. “I have caught two this season, and C---- has caught two.” “Do you skin them?” “Yes,” with a laugh. Here were red-squirrel tracks, and here a big dog’s, and here again a fox’s. At another point a bevy of quail had crossed the road. “One, two, three,” my farmer began to count. “Yes; there were twelve.” I had remarked, just before, that I hadn’t seen a quail for I didn’t know how long. “And look here,” he said, as we approached the farm on our return. He led the way to a diminutive chicken-coop sitting by itself in the orchard. A single hen, which had been ailing, was confined in it, he said. A fox had gone round and round it in the night, and once had stopped to scratch at the back side of it. “He knew what was in there,” said I. The farmer laughed. “Oh, he is an old fellow,” he answered. “I have a trap set for him just where he used to pass. Now he crosses the field, but he goes round that spot! I see his tracks. They say it is easy to trap foxes. Perhaps it is; but it isn’t for me.” Yet he has shown me--not this year--more than one handsome skin. Once, too, he showed me the fox himself. Hounds were baying in the distance as I came to the house on my Sunday morning walk, and we spoke of their probable course. He thought it likely that they would cross a certain field, and taking a by-road that would carry us within sight of it, we kept our eyes out till the dogs seemed to have diverged in the wrong direction. Then I was walking carelessly along, talking as usual (a bad habit of mine), when my companion seized me by both shoulders and swung me sharply about. “Look at that!” he said. And there stood the fox, five or ten rods away, facing us squarely. He had come up a little rise of ground, and had stopped as he saw us. But for my friend’s muscular assistance, I should have missed him, near as he was, for in one second he was gone; and though we scaled the wall instantly and ran up the slope, we got no further sight of him. Yes, if you are a discouraged, winter-killed nature lover, who has begun to think that Massachusetts woods--woods within sight of the State House dome--are pretty much devoid of wild life, go out after a light snowfall and read the natural history record of a single night. We shall not be without woods, nor will the woods be without inhabitants, for a good while yet. WINTER AS IT WAS With the wind howling from the northwest, and the mercury crouching below the zero mark, it seems a good time to sit in the house and think of winter as it used to be. What is the advantage of growing old, if one cannot find an hour now and then for the pleasures of memory?