In New England Fields and Woods

ing his name proverbial for blackness, is an old acquaintance of the angler and the sp

became the fashion for other folk to wear his coat, wh

ssional and amateur trappers and hunters, till the fate of his greater cousin the otter seemed to overtake him. But the fickle empress who raised him to such perilous estate, changing

. Yet weary enough would you be if you attempted to follow the track of but one night's wandering along the winding brook, through the tangle of windfalls, and across the rugged ledges that part stream from stream. When you go fishing in the first days of summer, you may see the fruits of this

ntinued shade of leafage, in whose midday twilight the red flame of the cardinal flower burns as a beacon set to guide the dusky wanderer home. Others have adventured far down the winding brook to the river, and follow

l, and dusky duck, and, all the year round, fat muskrats, which furni

sed trunks of elms, or in the hollow boles of old water maples, and hi

e lake, whose translucent depths reveal to him all who swim beneath him, fry innumerable; perch displaying their scales of gold, shiners like silver arrows shot through the green water, the lesse

roots, or venturing forth from a cranny of the rocks down to the brink, and launching himself so silently that you doubt

n a grace that is the smooth and even flow of the poetry of motion. Now he dives, or r

es or progress through his established domain, and vanishes from sight be

ur chickens and your share of trout, partridges, and wild ducks, he too may be spare