When gathering its food it sits up squirrel-like and grasps the plant stem with one hand, a long projecting tubercle on the “heel” of the hand opposing the fingers like a thumb and giving a good grasp, so that it can pull plants down to be bitten off with the sharp front teeth. Sometimes it climbs up a few feet into a bush or small branching tree after succulent shoots. The mountain-beaver has the interesting habit of gathering stores of green plant food much like that of the cony on the mountain tops, but appears to be more methodical in its ways, gathering the stems of such plants as grasses, ferns, and lupins, as well as twigs of various bushes and carrying them in bundles as large as can be held in the mouth, the butts of the stems neatly laid together. These little bundles of “hay” are placed side by side about the entrances of the burrows, with the butts all parallel on sticks or other support to keep them as clear as possible from the ground. They are left thus for a day or more to cure before being carried into the subterranean store-rooms. Chief among the four-footed enemies of the mountain-beaver are the fisher and bobcat, and an eagle has been seen keeping close watch at the entrance of their burrows. =THE COMMON WOODCHUCK, OR AMERICAN MARMOT= (=Marmota monax= and its relatives) (_For illustration, see page 534_) The woodchuck or “groundhog” is a typical marmot, with coarse hair, heavy body, short neck, short, bushy tail, powerful legs, and feet armed with strong claws for digging. When fully grown it averages about ten pounds in weight. Its usual color is a grizzled brown, but in some districts black, or melanistic, individuals are not uncommon. Marmots are common to Europe, Asia, and North America. The group contains many species and geographic races varying in size and color. The Alpine marmot of Europe is probably the most familiar of the Old World species and the woodchuck the best known in America. North America contains several species of marmots, their joint territory extending from coast to coast over the northern parts of the continent and from southern Labrador, the southern shores of Hudson Bay and Great Slave Lake, and central Alaska southward to northern Alabama, and along the high mountains to New Mexico and the southern Sierra Nevada of California. The common woodchuck is well known to every dweller in the countryside of the Eastern States and Canada, where it occurs from sea-level to near the tops of the highest mountains, at altitudes of over 4,000 feet.