Very different from this is the track of mister skunk. He wanders aimlessly along, often as much sidewise as straight ahead. The skunk doesn’t know where he is going and he isn’t even on his way. I never see his tracks, whether on the pond shore or elsewhere, but I renew my doubts as to his habits. He is out much too late at night. His tracks show it. I think he had his drink before he came to the water. Probably he too knows how toothsome are the unios and is searching for them in his maudlin fashion. Then there are the muskrats. They do not have to wait for their clam banquets till the water is low. They are expert divers and gather the unios at such times as suit their fancy. You will see their tracks in regular runways in the shallow water of the muddy coves, whence they are apt to follow some trickling streamlet to the bank where the summer burrows are at high water. Later, along the marshy edges you will find their winter teepees, piled to conical heights with sods and roots, with a warm refuge above the ice and an exit below, whence they may swim in search of food. The tracks of the muskrats show every mark of the industrious villager. They stick close to well-traveled paths, and though the muskrats are out nights no one would for a moment question their temperance and industry. Their characters are excellent ones, beyond suspicion, and their tracks show it. On the pond shore at ebb tide the glaciers, too, have left their tracks, though it is probably several hundred thousand years since any have been this way. Where there are granite ledges you may know that these were here before even the glaciers stalked solemnly by, for they show where the ice in grumbling grandeur ground small stones against them and gradually wore out ruts in the enduring granite by force of attrition. The track of the glacier is like the trail of the serpent,--it leaves no toe-marks, but its sliding progress is unmistakable. Side by side with the ledge which shows these striæ you may see on the soft mud imprints of this year’s leaves, dropped a moment there by the wind, then whirled away again, but leaving their tracks behind them. This mark of the season may be obliterated by a breath, or it may be covered with sifting silt and finally harden into sandstone and bear the trail of the leaf as far down the ages as has come that of the glacier. Here are moments and æons elbowing one another for place.