It was here that the skunk did his good work (I say “the skunk,” for there was only one on the farm that summer, I think). I would go into the field morning after morning to count the holes he had made during the night in his hunt for the grubs. One morning I got over a hundred holes, all of them dug since last sundown, and each hole representing certainly one grub, possibly more; for the skunk would hear or smell his prey at work in the soil before attempting to dig. A hundred grubs for one night, by one skunk! It took me only a little while to figure out the enormous number of grubs that a fair-sized family of skunks would destroy in a summer. A family of skunks would rid my farm of the pest in a single summer and make inroads on the grubs of the entire community. Ah! the community! the ignorant, short-sighted, nature-hating community! What chance had a family of skunks in this community? And the fire of my mission burned hot within me. And so did my desire for more skunks. My hay crop was short, was _nil_, in fact, for the hayfield was as barren of green as the hen-yard. I had to have it ploughed and laid down again to grass. And all because of this scarcity of skunks. Now, as the green of the springing blades began to show through the melting snow, it was with immense satisfaction that I thought of the three skunks under the stump. That evening I went across to my neighbor’s, the milkman’s, and had a talk with him over the desirability, the necessity indeed, of encouraging the skunks about us. I told him a good many things about these harmless and useful animals that, with all his farming and chicken-raising, he had never known. But these rural folk are quite difficult. It is hard to teach them anything worth while, so hopelessly surrounded are they with things--common things. If I could only get them into a college class-room--removed some way from hens and hoes--I might, at least, put them into a receptive attitude. But that cannot be. Perhaps, indeed, I demand too much of them. For, after all, it takes a naturalist, a lover of the out-of-doors, to appreciate the beautiful adjustments in nature. A mere farmer can hardly do it. One needs a keen eye, but a certain aloofness of soul also, for the deeper meaning and poetry of nature. One needs to spend a vacation, at least, in the wilderness and solitary place, where no other human being has ever come, and there, where the animals know man only as a brother, go to the school of the woods and study the wild folk, one by one, until he discovers them personally, temperamentally, all their likes and dislikes, their little whimseys, freaks, and fancies--all of this, there, far removed from the cankering cares of hens and chickens, for the sake of the right attitude toward nature.