The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-04-07
FOOT PRINTS IN THE WOODS.
Continued from Fourth Page.)

| NCpIlllHued rom Fourth Bage.)
 a bear, each print is comparatively
 long. The coon was evidently out for
 food, too, and had done good deal of
 digging for mice. He had also visited
 number of brush and stones, perhaps
 in the hope of way-laying an early
 chipmunk, whose tracks I saw near such places occasionally. But up to
 the point at which left the trail there was no evidence that any game had 1 been captured.
 A red squirrel that I met little later ] had been more successful. He had
 found plentiful supply of food in a
 great hemlock tree, whose cones still retained their seeds. Under the tree, and on top of the snow, were several | little pyramids of cones from which
 the seeds dad been eaten, and about | these were several round holes opening into the squirrel galleries below. Pre-
 sently there appeared at one entrance
 the saucy face of squirrel, and as he saw nothing which seemed likely to
 harm him he popped out, scurried up
 the bark of the hemlock, and presently returned with a cone in his mouth.
 Taking seat on the snow he skillfully ate out the seeds, tossed away the emp ty fragments, and darted up the tree again. After eating several cones, which it cut from the tree with its sharp teeth, the squirrel retired to his subway, and saw him no more.
 Once or twice, in going along by the eagles abound, however, the mother side of an old stone wall I came upon
 the tracks of an ermine, though the little beast had stuck pretty close to the. crevices of the wall itself. Now and then it had crossed a gap, leaving a trail similar to that of a mink, but smaller. Sometimes it had made but one hole in the snow at each leap at others it had made two one slightly in front and little to the side of the other. Probably it was in pursuit of wild mice, but whether it captured any or not that day I could only guess, knowing the healthy appetite and the tireless energy of the weasel, and the abundance of mice hereabouts
 Trails of deer were numerous and they differed greatly in character ac- cording to the gait and the speed at which the animal which made them happened to be travelling. If the deer had been walking, the footprints were arranged alternately and in two lines, but if the animal had been leaping through the snow, they were in groups of four, separated by shorter or longer spaces, according to the speed at which he had been moving. The trails differed also with the depth of the snow. Where it was shallow, the marks of the toes were plain to see, followed, if the depth were a little greater by the marks of the dew claws, Where it was deep, the deers feet had made holes in it, and if you looked down ln- to the black depths of these and if the snow was not too light the footprints might be seen at the bottom. The openings at the top were roughly dumb- l bell shaped, shorn of outline if the snow was firm, but more ragged where it was fluffy. In cases where the snow was very deep the deer unable to lift | their feet clear at every stride, had dragged them, cutting furrows, clean- cut or irregular as tRle snow happened to be firm or feathery In places there was crust on which the deer could walk without breaking through, and here when the footprints were visible | at all, it was seen that the toes had | been spread far apart, that the feet might cover as great a surface as pos- sible. have watched deer spread | their toes thus, while the foot was in the air
 Thus 1t will be seen that the track of any animal is seldom twice the