and dig under the thick white blanket into the black soil. Here are
bulbs and buds, corms and tubers, rootstalks and rhizomes, which were
pumped full of starch and albumen in the hot days of last August. So
far as modern science is able to tell, chemical changes are in
constant progress in all these forms of underground life, preparing
for the coming glory of the living green. Nature never dies. She
scarcely sleeps.

Tracks on the all-revealing snow tell of an equal abundance of animal
life. These rabbit tracks, scarcely two feet apart, tell how happily
bunny was going. But farther on a dog came across at an angle and gave
chase. The tracks are now farther apart, three feet, four feet, as up
bunny goes to his burrow under the shelving rock. One last bound,
nearly five feet, and he was safe. That was once when "heaven was
gained at a single bound."

Bunny was too far away from home that time. Here is his usual runway
from the burrow to the brook, and the nibbled barks of the saplings
tell of a tender breakfast before he went prospecting. Rabbits usually
run in beaten paths.

These narrow tracks where dainty feet printed a double line of
opposite dots across the snow were made by the whitefooted mouse, and
the little continuous line between them was made by his dragging tail.
The legend is like this, :-:-:-:-:-. Farther on are similar tracks,
but alternate instead of opposite, like this,',',','. They were made
by the short-tailed shrew. Still farther along a queer little ridge is
seen in the snow across the wood road. It is the tunnel of the meadow
mouse. Part of its fragile roof has fallen in and you may stoop and
look into the little round tunnel which ran from the burrow to some