The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-01-27

of shrew to the best advantage, the conditions must be just so. The snow should be firm, with just a sprinklfng of poWdery flakes on the surface; then the delicate tracery wrought by the feet of these very small quadrupeds will delight the eye of the student who searches for it.
 The trails of white-footed mice were visible everywhere I went, but even these were much less conspicuous than they would have been in softer snow.
 A few minutes later I crossed an- other trail of quite different charac- ter. It consisted of two parallel lines of holes. Each hole was dumb-bell- shaped; a man might make such a hole by plunging his clenchad fist into the snow twice, making two round inn pressions, one directly in front of the other, and then connecting these by drawing a walking stick through the snow between. Plainly enough this trail had been made by deer. Each forefoot had made two holes-one where it went into the snow and the other where it came out; between was a line made by the slender leg as it moved forward before it was with drawn. The hind feet of course had followed in practically the same tracks. An elk makes a similar trail, but much larger. As I was going nowhere in par ticular, I decided to follow the trail of the deer, and I walked cautiously i'll order not to spoil my chances of seeing any wild creatures which migI1t be abroad
 For a time I saw nothing. Then a red squirrel, which had attracted my attention for several minutes by his chattering, suddenly appeared on top of a snow covered rock, surrounded by the empty shells of nuts he had eaten. He was just beginning another when he caught sight of me. With an ap- pearance of terror and dismay which am sure he was far from feeling, he dropped the nut and clasped his breast with his paws. If I had not known him so we'll I might have thought he had been suddenly stricken with heart fail- ure. But he soon recovered what lit- tie composure he had lost, picked up the nut he had dropped and began to chisel the she'll Then, to give him a taste of real fright, stamped with my snowshoes and took few strides towards him. He dropped the nut again and after stopping just long enough to make sure that I was really coming, he jumped into tree and did not pause ag2iiI until he was well out of reach ii the top of it. l walked up and examined the empty nut-shells-- tYp.eal red squirrel workmanship in every case. The greater part of each shell was one piece but the cutting was zig-zag, and of the irregular char acter one might expect from Little Scatterbrains, the red squirrel.
 1 Taking up the trail of the deer again I soon reached a belt of young spruces l through wilich the animal had passed was walking as quietly as possible | and as I parted the branches with my hands, two mice darted almost from under my snow-shoes, and leaped away at high speed across the snow. Both made straight Tor a particular white pine growing not far away, and ran nimbly up the trunk of it. Then lost sight of one while watching the other which ran out onto branch, twined his long silky tail splrally round a twig and sat peering at me from be- hind bunch of pine needles All this was more or lesssof an old story; what I wanted to know was what mischief they were up to when I almost step ped on them, stopped down, and part ing the lower branches of 8 young spruce I found, close to the toe of my snow-shoe, the antler of white-tailed deer. It had five points, some oi which were partly buried In the snow It had probably belonged to the animal l was trailing, and having become ready to drop, 1t had doubtless done so at the touciS of the spruce boughs | On the beam" there were few par allel cuts, evidently made by the teeth of mice; the little rascals had begun tC eat 1t, though 1t could no thave beer on the snow more than a few hours And yet, how often are we asked, "It it Is true that deer shed their antler' every year, why don't we find tht antlers that are shed?'
 | Ernest Harold Baynes.