back again, and go another way, then make the circle back very near to the starting place. When tired out he will stay in a hole whether it suits him well or not.

The last of January or first of February skunks like to run on cloudy, damp, foggy and warming nights, when there is a light fall of snow. Some make large tracks. These are generally males, and the general opinion is that they are white ones, though this is not always true.

The gait of a skunk is slow. The tail is carried rainbow fashion, always ready, for the essence is secreted by and thrown direct from the glands, through the anus, and it comes straight, as many a hunter has found to his sorrow.

A farmer told me of a skunk family which he saw one cloudy day in late April traveling through the woods from one retreat to another. The old ones went ahead and coaxed and called the young. The sounds resembled those of a drove of hogs, and the eleven young ones caused the old ones a good deal of trouble. They made so much noise that the gentleman wondered why a drove of hogs should be out there in his woods. He went to investigate and found the skunk family.

His explanation led me to the solution of another problem ; that of the white colors, for they serve as a guide for the young to follow in the twilight and night, when the parents take them on grub hunting trips.

THE MUSKRAT.

There is no other source of wealth to the small boy so valuable as a pond or stream where he can catch a few muskrats, and have a gambling for a mink, coon or skunk. Oftentimes this is a country boy's only source of spending money in the winter, and fortunate is the boy who can trap the best. He has learned to combat his knowledge against the cunning and wood wisdom of the four-footed travelers, and what boy, when he has become a man, does not remember with considerable pride his trapping days, and how he earned a nice bunch of money that was all his own, even if it was hard work sometimes.

The muskrat is the commonest of the furbearing animals found