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When the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new and shorter routes to many points, but nes from their surfaces of the familiar landscape around them When I crossed Flint&039;s Pond, after it was covered with snow, though I had often paddled about and skated over it, it was so unexpectedly wide and so strange that I could think of nothing but Baffin&039;s Bay The Lincoln hills rose up around me at the extremity of a snowy plain, in which I did not remember to have stood before; and the fisher slowly about with their wolfish dogs, passed for sealers, or Esquimaux, or in misty weather loomed like fabulous creatures, and I did not knohether they were giants or pygmies I took this course when I went to lecture in Lincoln in the evening, travelling in no road and passing no house between my own hut and the lecture room In Goose Pond, which lay in my way, a colony of h above the ice, though none could be seen abroad when I crossed it Walden, being like the rest usually bare of snow, or with only shallow and interrupted drifts on it, was my yard where I could walk freely when the snoas nearly two feet deep on a level elsewhere and the villagers were confined to their streets There, far fro intervals, froh-bells, I slid and skated, as in a vastby oak woods and sole with icicles

For sounds in winter nights, and often in winter days, I heard the forlorn butowl indefinitely far; such a sound as the frozen earth would yield if struck with a suitable plectruua vernacula of Walden Wood, and quite fah I never saw the bird while it waswithout hearing it; Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer, hoo, sounded sonorously, and the first three syllables accented soht in the beginning of winter, before the pond froze over, about nine o&039;clock, I was startled by the loud honking of a goose, and, stepping to the door, heard the sound of their wings like a tempest in the woods as they fle over ly deterred fro all the while with a regular beat Suddenly an unmistakable cat-owl from very near me, with the most harsh and tremendous voice I ever heard froular intervals to the goose, as if deterrace this intruder froreater compass and volume of voice in a native, and boo-hoo hi the citadel at this tiht napping at such an hour, and that I have not got lungs and a larynx as well as yourself? Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo! It was one of thediscords I ever heard And yet, if you had a discri ear, there were in it the elements of a concord such as these plains never saw nor heard

I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, reat bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and had drearound by the frost, as if so would find a crack in the earth a quarter of aand a third of an inch wide

Soed over the snow-crust, in as, as if laboring with soht and to be dogs outright and run freely in the streets; for if we take the ages into our account,brutes as well astheir transformation Soht, barked a vulpine curse at me, and then retreated

Usually the red squirrel (Sciurus Hudsonius) wakedover the roof and up and down the sides of the house, as if sent out of the woods for this purpose In the course of the winter I threw out half a bushel of ears of sweet corn, which had not got ripe, on to the snow-crust bythe motions of the various aniht the rabbits ca the red squirrels came and went, and afforded me much entertainment by their h the shrub oaks, running over the snow-crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces this onderful speed and waste of energy,inconceivable haste with his "trotters," as if it were for a wager, and now asonwith a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe were eyed on him -- for all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, i more time in delay and circumspection than would have sufficed to walk the whole distance -- I never saw one walk -- and then suddenly, before you could say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top of a young pitch pine, winding up his clock and chiding all i to all the universe at the same time -- for no reason that I could ever detect, or he hith he would reach the corn, and selecting a suitable ear, frisk about in the saonometrical way to the topmost stick of my wood-pile, before my here he lookedhi at first voraciously and throwing the half-naked cobs about; till at length he grewonly the inside of the kernel, and the ear, which was held balanced over the stick by one paw, slipped froround, when he would look over at it with a ludicrous expression of uncertainty, as if suspecting that it had life, with a ain, or a new one, or be off; now thinking of corn, then listening to hear as in the wind So the little impudent felloould waste er and pluer than hi it, he would set out with it to the woods, like a tiger with a buffalo, by the sa with it as if it were too heavy for hional between a perpendicular and horizontal, being deterularly frivolous and whiet off with it to where he lived, perhaps carry it to the top of a pine tree forty or fifty rods distant, and I would afterwards find the cobs strewn about the woods in various directions

At length the jays arrive, whose discordant screa their approach an eighth of amanner they flit from tree to tree, nearer and nearer, and pick up the kernels which the squirrels have dropped Then, sitting on a pitch pine bough, they atte for their throats and chokes thee it, and spend an hour in the endeavor to crack it by repeated bloith their bills They were manifestly thieves, and I had not h at first shy, went to work as if they were taking as their own

Meanwhile also ca up the cru and, placing them under their claws, hammered away at them with their little bills, as if it were an insect in the bark, till they were sufficiently reduced for their slender throats A little flock of these titmice came daily to pick a dinner out oflisping notes, like the tinkling of icicles in the grass, or else with sprightly day day day, or -like days, a wiry summery phe-be frohted on an ar in, and pecked at the sticks without fear I once had a sparrow alight upon arden, and I felt that I was uished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn The squirrels also grew at last to be quite familiar, and occasionally stepped upon my shoe, when that was the nearest way

When the ground was not yet quite covered, and again near the end of winter, when the snoas melted on es ca to feed there Whichever side you walk in the woods the partridge bursts away on whirring wings, jarring the snow fro down in the sunbeaolden dust, for this brave bird is not to be scared by winter It is frequently covered up by drifts, and, it is said, "so into the soft snohere it remains concealed for a day or two" I used to start them in the open land also, where they had come out of the woods at sunset to "bud" the wild apple trees They will co to particular trees, where the cunning sportsman lies in wait for them, and the distant orchards next the woods suffer thus not a little I aets fed, at any rate It is Nature&039;s own bird which lives on buds and diet drink

In dark winter s, or in short winter afternoons, I so all the woods with hounding cry and yelp, unable to resist the instinct of the chase, and the note of the hunting-horn at intervals, proving that ain, and yet no fox bursts forth on to the open level of the pond, nor following pack pursuing their Actaeon And perhaps at evening I see the hunters returning with a single brush trailing fro their inn They tell me that if the fox would remain in the bosom of the frozen earth he would be safe, or if be would run in a straight line away no foxhound could overtake hi left his pursuers far behind, he stops to rest and listen till they come up, and when he runs he circles round to his old haunts, where the hunters await him Sometimes, however, he will run upon a wall many rods, and then leap off far to one side, and he appears to know that water will not retain his scent A hunter told me that he once saw a fox pursued by hounds burst out on to Walden when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, run part way across, and then return to the sa the hounds arrived, but here they lost the scent So by themselves would pass my door, and circle roundcould divert them from the pursuit Thus they circle until they fall upon the recent trail of a fox, for a wise hound will forsake everything else for this One day a ton to inquire after his hound thatfor a week by himself But I fear that he was not the wiser for all I told him, for every time I atte, "What do you do here?" He had lost a dog, but found a man

One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to come to bathe in Walden once every year when the water armest, and at such tio he took his gun one afternoon and went out for a cruise in Walden Wood; and as he walked the Wayland road he heard the cry of hounds approaching, and ere long a fox leaped the wall into the road, and as quick as thought leaped the other wall out of the road, and his swift bullet had not touched him Some way behind ca on their own account, and disappeared again in the woods Late in the afternoon, as he was resting in the thick woods south of Walden, he heard the voice of the hounds far over toward Fair Haven still pursuing the fox; and on they ca nearer and nearer, now fro time he stood still and listened to their music, so sweet to a hunter&039;s ear, when suddenly the fox appeared, threading the sole pace, whose sound was concealed by a sy the round, leaving his pursuers far behind; and, leaping upon a rock a, with his back to the hunter For a moment compassion restrained the latter&039;s arht can follow thought his piece was levelled, and whang! -- the fox, rolling over the rock, lay dead on the ground The hunter still kept his place and listened to the hounds Still on they cah all their aisles with their deth the old hound burst into vieiththe air as if possessed, and ran directly to the rock; but, spying the dead fox, she suddenly ceased her hounding as if struck dumb with amazement, and walked round and round him in silence; and one by one her pups arrived, and, like their mother, were sobered into silence by the mystery Then the hunter came forward and stood in their midst, and the mystery was solved They waited in silence while he skinned the fox, then followed the brush a while, and at length turned off into the woods again That evening a Weston squire cae to inquire for his hounds, and told how for a week they had been hunting on their own account from Weston woods The Concord hunter told him what he knew and offered him the skin; but the other declined it and departed He did not find his hounds that night, but the next day learned that they had crossed the river and put up at a far been well fed, they took their departure early in the

The hunter who told , who used to hunt bears on Fair Haven Ledges, and exchange their skins for rue; who told hi had a faine -- which my informant used to borrow In the "Wast Book" of an old trader of this toas also a captain, town-clerk, and representative, I find the following entry Jan 18th, 1742-3, "John Melven Cr by 1 Grey Fox 0--2--3"; they are not now found here; and in his ledger, Feb, 7th, 1743, Hezekiah Stratton has credit "by 1/2 a Catt skin 0--1--4+"; of course, a wild-cat, for Stratton was a sergeant in the old French war, and would not have got credit for hunting less noble gaiven for deerskins also, and they were daily sold One man still preserves the horns of the last deer that was killed in this vicinity, and another has told ed The hunters were foraunt Nimrod ould catch up a leaf by the roadside and play a strain on it wilder and -horn

At ht, when there was aabout the woods, which would skulk out of my way, as if afraid, and stand silent amid the bushes till I had passed

Squirrels and wild mice disputed for my store of nuts There were scores of pitch pines around my house, fronawed by ian winter for theed to e proportion of pine bark with their other diet These trees were alive and apparently flourishing at h coirdled; but after another winter such ithout exception dead It is rele mouse should thus be allowed a whole pine tree for its dinner, gnawing round instead of up and down it; but perhaps it is necessary in order to thin these trees, which are wont to grow up densely

The hares (Lepus Americanus) were very familiar One had her form under , and she startled an to stir -- thuainst the floor timbers in her hurry They used to cos which I had thrown out, and were so nearly the color of the ground that they could hardly be distinguished when still Soht of one sitting motionless under , off they would go with a squeak and a bounce Near at hand they only excitedone sat bywith fear, yet unwilling to ed ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws It looked as if Nature no longer contained the breed of nobler bloods, but stood on her last toes Its large eyes appeared young and unhealthy, almost dropsical I took a step, and lo, away it scud with an elastic spring over the snow-crust, straightening its body and its lith, and soon put the forest between or and the dignity of Nature Not without reason was its slenderness Such then was its nature (Lepus, levipes, light-foot, some think)

What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are aenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground -- and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as e and the rabbit are still sure to thrive, like true natives of the soil, whatever revolutions occur If the forest is cut off, the sprouts and bushes which spring up afford them concealment, and they become more numerous than ever That must be a poor country indeed that does not support a hare Our woods teem with thee or rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fences and horse-hair snares, which some cow-boy tends