Groundhog

“ It was not often that the little Ground Hogs were left alone in the daytime. Before they were born their mother had been heard to say that she had her opinion of any Ground Hog who would be seen out after sunrise. Mr. Ground Hog felt in the same way, and said if he ever got to running around by daylight, like some of his relatives, people might call him a Woodchuck. He thought that any one who ate twigs, beets, turnips, young tree-bark, and other green things from sunset to sunrise ought to be able to get along until the next sunset without a lunch. ”

“ When talking, the Ground Hog rested by the edge of his burrow, sitting on his haunches, and waving his queer little forepaws whenever he told anything especially important. And this was the story:
"Perhaps you may have heard me speak of my grandfather. Ah, he was a Ground Hog worth seeing! He was large, and, although when I knew him the black fur on his back was streaked with gray, he was still handsome. He was clever, too. I have often heard my father say that he could dig the deepest and best burrow in the forest. ”

“ Since I left Connecticut I have hardly seen a clear stream of water. The Croton and Hudson Rivers were both very roily from the heavy spring rains, and farther West the streams are muddy the year round. Many times I have longed to strip and take a bath, but the water was unfit for anything but hog wallows. I wonder if the black soil and the consequently black muddy waters of these Western States has had anything to do with the color of the hair on the hogs. A white hog here in the West is as uncommon as a black hog in the East. ”

“ Hedge-hogs abound in my gardens and fields. The manner in which they eat their roots of the plantain in my grass-walks is very curious: with their upper mandible, which is much longer than their lower, they bore under the plant, and so eat the root off upwards, leaving the tuft of leaves untouched. In this respect they are serviceable, as they destroy a very troublesome weed; but they deface the waffles in some measure by digging little round holes. It appears, by the dung that they drop upon the turf, that beetles are no inconsiderable part of their food. ”

“ VERY similar in its bodily structure to the marmot, of which it is said to be the nearest American relative, is the woodchuck or ground-hog (Arctomys monax) . It is about eighteen inches in length, including the tail. The body is stout, the head broad and flat, the legs short and thick, the fur blackish or grizzled on the upper portion and of a chestnut red on the under surface of the body.
The ground-hog is found in all parts of the region extending from the Atlantic coast west to the Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota. ”

“ To this the Professor adds:"I have met with some satisfactory instances of the association of fossil remains of a species of hog with those of the mammoth, in the newer pliocene fresh-water formations of England."
The most usual situations however, in which the fossilized bones of the hog are met with, are in peat-bogs, often at the depth of many feet, and in association with the remains of the wolf, the beaver, the roebuck, and a gigantic red-deer; generally they underline the bed of peat, and rest on shell-marl or alluvium. ”

“ But fattening the lean hogs takes too much corn. We must have a grass that the hogs will relish, and on which they will both grow and fatten. They will do this on clover, orchard grass, bluegrass, and other tame grasses. But we have not got any of these, nor do we know how to get them. Hundreds of bushels of tame grass seeds are sold every spring by our implement dealers. A few have succeeded in getting some grass, but nine out of ten lose their seed. We either do not know how to grow it, or the seed is not good, or the soil is too new. ”

“ Put hogs into a pasture containing all the tame grasses, with one corner in crab grass, and the last named grass will all be consumed before the other grasses are touched.
Not only do they prefer it to any other grass, but on no grass will they thrive and fatten so well. Last spring I fenced twelve acres of old stalk ground well seeded to crab grass. With the first of June the field was green, and from then until frost pastured sixty large hogs, which, with one ear of corn each, morning and evening, became thoroughly fat. ”

“ The ground hog’s call is a clear, distinct whistle, not greatly unlike the singing of a canary bird, only much louder and even sweeter in tone. It is interesting to observe a full-grown ground hog, weighing several pounds, emitting a melodious warble that might well belong to a feathered songster. ”

“ The little animal whose name dignifies the caption of this article, though it may be better known to many of my readers by the title of ground-hog, or wood-chuck, is usually regarded as a terror, or a pest, to the farmer. Contributing in no appreciable degree to the comfort or advantage of man, and seemingly created solely for the purpose of digging unsightly holes in the ground, eating corn, and diffusing an odour by no means agreeable; it is commonly hated or despised, according to the profession of those who honor it with notice. ”

“ The effect, in ancient years, has been that the sand is carried off, grain by grain, till a deep ravine or gorge is formed. The sides of this gorge being composed of mixed earth and some mould, and free from the aridity of the surface, bear a dense and vigorous growth of hard wood trees and shrubbery, and are often found to be encumbered with immense trunks of fallen pines and other forest rubbish, which renders it very difficult to penetrate them. It is into these dark gorges that the wolves retreat, after scouring the plains and neighbouring farms for prey ”

“ They selected dry logs from the drift-wood, and lashed several of them together with cedar bark; for these boys were apt scholars, and had learned from their elders the backwoods arts. The raft was long in proportion to its breadth, and held together by crossbands about two feet apart. They had brought more than thirty bladders, nearly all belonging to the last year's crop of hogs, some from hogs killed the year before, a few having been given to their mothers to put lard and bear's grease in, and others to be used as syringes for cleansing wounds. ”

“ On the tree by the gate, there were peaches as large as walnuts. A drove of half-wild hogs from the woods went slowly along the village street, with one eye open for food and the other watching for a possible hole in a fence through which they might crawl into a grove or garden. For while no one seems to think it worth while to bolt or even shut a house door at night except for warmth, there must be barbed wire around every growing thing that a hog could fancy. ”

“ Two miles out of Gorgona you enter a mule path running through a dense forest, the branches interchanging overhead, forming an arbor sufficiently dense to exclude the sun. You sometimes pass through gullies in the side of the mountain, sufficiently wide at the bottom to admit the mule and his rider, and looking up, you find yourself in a chasm with perpendicular sides, twenty feet in depth, into which the sun has never shone. ”

“ With plenty of milk and mill-feed to mix with the corn, good hogs may be grown without grass. But with corn alone, the task of growing and fattening a hog without grass costs more than the hog is worth.
To make hog-growing profitable to the farmer, he must have grass. In the older States where the tame grasses are plenty, it is a very thoughtless farmer who has not his hog pasture. But out here in Kansas and Nebraska, where we have plenty of corn, but no grass, except the wild varieties, the most enterprising of us are at our wits' ends. ”

“ The fruits which he eats, are such as would otherwise rot on the ground and be wasted, or yield nutriment to vermin; and his digging for earth-nuts, &c., loosens the soil and benefits the roots of the trees. Hence, hogs in forest-land may be regarded as eminently beneficial, and it is only the abuse of it which is to be feared. ”

“ The hedge-hog of this country is, I think, little different from that of the old continent, being about eight or ten inches in length, covered over with pale yellow prickles, but with hair on the face and under the belly, which is rather softer and longer than in the hedge-hog of Europe. It has dark brown spots like eye-brows over its eyes, and no ears but auditory holes, and five toes with bended claws on each foot; its tail is very short, and its defence consists in forming itself into a round ball in the manner of the armadillo. Its food consists of fruit, roots, vegetables, insects, &c. ”

“ Nature in their formation seems to have adopted a smaller scale, and to have formed man alone in the same mould. But to proceed in our enumeration:—The hog, then, is not a native of America, but was carried thither; and he has not only increased in a domestic state but has even become wild, and multiplied in the woods without the assistance of man. A species of hog has also been transported from Guinea to Brasil, which has likewise multiplied; it is much smaller, and seems to form a distinct species from the European hog ”

“ In the grove yellow birch, some of large size, are common; toward the bottom of the slope hemlocks are also common; and near the edge of the bog there are a few arbor-vitae. Shrubs are almost absent, there being merely a few small seedlings of arbor-vitae, hemlock, and fir, mostly toward the bottom of the slope. A few scattered clumps of grass appear, but the forest floor is mostly covered only by a thick carpet of dry pine needles. Numerous dead limbs and sticks have fallen from the pines.
Wet hardwood forest habitat: The land adjoining much of Gogebic Lake is low and poorly drained. ”

“ The Aard-vark, or Earth-hog, of the Cape colonists, is the most noted kind. This animal is a long, low-bodied creature, with sharp-pointed snout, and an immense whip-like tongue, which he is capable of projecting to a great distance, in the same manner as the tamanoir. His body is covered with a dense shock of reddish-brown hair; and he dwells in a burrow, which he can cleverly make for himself—hence his trivial name of Ground-hog.
The other African ant-eaters are usually called Pangolins, or Manis. These are covered with scales that resemble suits of ancient armour ”

“ Long before man came with his modern appliances, the hog was here. He owned the land and used it to raise acorns and grub-worms on. But the white man has entered on the fair domain, and, regardless of his solemn treaties, has taken this land and asks that the hog, the original owner of the soil, shall be penned up in a little reservation ten feet by twelve, made of cheap pine slabs. ”

“ All the door-yard of the little log cabin was bedaubed with the scum of the sorghum which Job Grinnell flung from his perforated gourd upon the ground. The idle dogs—and there were many—would find, when at last disposed to move, a clog upon their nimble feet. They often sat down with a wrinkling of brows and a puzzled expression of muzzle to investigate their gelatinous paws with their tongues, not without certain indications of pleasure, for the sorghum was very sweet ”

“ We crossed grassy plains bounded by sandhills on which grew pines (callitris) ; and open forests of goborro (or box-tree) prevailed very generally nearer the river. Where this tree grew we found the ground still good for travelling upon, notwithstanding the heavy rain, in consequence apparently of the argillaceous character of the soil; for in the plains of red earth, which before the last fall of rain we had found the best, the horses now sank above their fetlocks and the carts could scarcely be dragged along. ”

“ They build their own log huts (some of which are in the last stage of dilapidation) and make their own rough furniture. Having cleared as much land as they want, they grow patches of corn, cabbages, and such like; nuts, fruits and sorrel, and other kinds of green stuff which they use for food all grow plentifully in these uncultivated lands. Some own a cow and a few fowls, and wild hogs are numerous enough to supply them with all they need of animal food. ”

“ A large tract of jungle-covered hill stretches away from the Moon Plains at Newera Ellia toward the east, forming a hog's back of about three and a half miles in length. Upon the north side this shelves into a deep gorge, at the bottom of which flows, or rather tumbles, Fort M'Donald river on its way to the low country, through forest-covered hills and perpendicular cliffs, until it reaches the precipitous patina mountains, when, in a succession of large cataracts, it reaches the paddy-fields in the first village of Peréwellé (guava paddy-field) . ”

“ Such unsymmetrical ridges which surround the mountain area are often referred to as “hog backs” (plate 12 B) . The arrangement of the strata in the hog backs thus presents an overlapping series like the shingles upon a roof, except that the overlapping is here from the bottom instead of the top, and the exposed ends thus face toward the crest. Unlike a shingle roof the hog backs do not shed the water which descends to them from the higher levels, but, on the contrary, they cause it to flow in troughs parallel to the base of the slope except where outlets are found through them. ”

“ They will go a distance from a fence, take a run, and leap through the rails, three or four feet from the ground, turning themselves sidewise. These hogs suffer such hardships as no other animal could endure. It is customary to keep them in the woods all winter, as there is no thrashing or fold-yards; and they must live on the roots of trees, or something of that sort, but they are poor beyond any creature that I ever saw. ”

“ How to catch the hogs and put them back into the wagon was a difficult matter, for many of them weighed three hundred pounds, and moreover a live hog is a disagreeable animal to lay hands on. But, taking an axe, we cut young pine trees and constructed a fence round the wagon to serve as a hogpen. Leaving a gap at one end that could be stopped when the hogs were inside, we then set near the wagon the troughs we had brought, poured the dry corn into them and called the hogs as if it were feeding time. ”