The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-02-27
UNDER THE SNOW.

AIlef a iSHl oilON -ldii eAAS "''e. lures going about their daily work, leave a very legible record behind them.
 Not only may their footprints be plain
 ly seen upon the surface, but each foot print will be about the same size as the
 foot which made it: and moreover the details of the the toes and toe-nails will all be present for examination. When
 the snow is deeper, the individual foot prints may still be there, but the flne
 details will be lost, and, as it becomes
 still deeper, even the separate foot
 prints will be lost beneath the snow which falls into and partly cbliterates the tracks, Eventually there is a point
 at which some of the animals no longer attempt to travel on the snow; they find it easier or more to the purpose to travel on the ground beneath it.
 After one of the recent heavy snow storms, I was walking by the side of the
 stream where rnuskets are abundant.
 and where their tracks are usually to be found either in the mud or the snow the whole year round. There was not
 sign of their having left the water and indeed the stream and the meadows on either side of it presented one unbroken 1 field of snow. However, knew that if l they were alive they must be getting
 food somewhere, as they do not store
 away supplies, as the beavers do; so I walked along to investigate. Without warning, I sank to the hips in a hole which proved to be the mouth of musl.ra. burrow. I cleared away some
 of the snow, and it became
 evident that the burrow was in daily use, and that it connect ed with a tunnel which ran out
 under the snow. Procuring a snow shovel from farm nearby. I remove l ed the upper surface of the snow from considerable section of the field, and un- covered a subway system which for complexity outdid the underground rail-
 ways in any of our large cities. The ! tunnels ran far out into the field, some times in long, irregular single loops, and
 sometimes crossing and recrossing other tunnels. until it was no easy matter to trace them. But all the tunnels led to l the hole into which had accidentally stepped, and this was very suggestive of a great railroad terminus. The whole represented no Insignificant engineering 1 feat on the part of the rats, which had 1 evidently been hunting for grains of
 corn, for it was eornfield they had
 been working in, and gnawed husks, l here and there, showed that they had probably had at least some success. 1 Later in the afternoon I came to an
 other corn-field where for some reason the shocks had been left since the sall. Many of them were still standing, but
 some had been blown over by wind. which had also swept away much of the snow. leaving in many places not more than an inch. The surface of this, 1 particularly between the shocks, was marked by narrow ridges, which indi- cated. as plainly as map could have done, the routes taken by some small
 animals in their journeys from one shock to another. By carefully scrap ing away the surface snow, I found I that the ridges were the roofs of tunnels
 made hy meadow mice, and I present. 1 ly verified the observation by suddenly opening one of the shocks, to see several dark brown. short-tailed thieves scur- rying away amongst the cornstalks. Under most of the shocks were little round holes in the ground; evidently the entrances to the subterranean homes of the mice.
 Going along country road, few days later, I came upon the track of a mink. The visible part of the trail end- ed abruptly at a hole in the snow, and some twenty yards further on reappear- I ed at another hole. Between the two
 holes there was tunnel, and the mink had evidently traversed the length of it, Now why had he gone in there? The surface was firm enough to bear his weight. Doubtless he knew that under 1 the deep snow are to be found many of the small creatures on which he preys, and doubtless he has enough success in hunting them, to pay him for his trouble. It would be interesting to know whether he captures the mice by running them down as they are tunnel 1 ing through the snow. It must be a fearful moment for mouse when he hears a mink steadily overriding him and at the same time blocking all re- treat. And the mink himself. what
 stories he might tell us if he spoke the
 English language. His accounts of his own deeds would dwarf the biogra-
 phies of Jesse James and the younger brothers, and of their imitators whose names appear from time to time in the foot-high scare-you stiff headings of the yellow journals. He could tell us of
 muskrats murdered in the darkness of their burrows; of rabbits tracked to their death in the moonlight, and of the pitiless cutting off of grouse imprisoned beneath the icy crust of the snow. Ay. little we know, as we tramp across the white country on our snow-shoes what
 problems are being solved, what lives are being led, what tragedies are being enacted beneath our feet. But each story which comes to light, no matter
 how full of pathos it may be- tells us
 more clearly than the last, that it is
 with animals as with men-those which
 are fit to survive, and those which are
 unfit will go to the wall
 ERNEST HAROLD BAYNES. 
 CAUGHT.