Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/327

Rh Is not January the hardest month to get through? When you have weathered that, you get into the gulf stream of winter, nearer the shores of spring.

Feb. 2, 1855. This last half inch of snow which fell in the night is just enough to track animals on the ice by. All about the Hill and Rock I see the tracks of rabbits which have run back and forth close to the shore repeatedly since the night. In the case of the rabbit, the fore feet are farther apart than the hind ones, the first, four or five inches to the stride, the last, two or three. They are generally not quite regular, but one of the fore feet a little in advance of the other, and so with the hind feet. There is an interval of about sixteen inches between each four tracks. Sometimes they are in a curve or crescent, all touching.

I saw what must have been a muskrat's or mink's track, I think, since it came out of the water; the tracks roundish, and toes much rayed four or five inches apart on the trail, with only a trifle more between the fore and hind legs, and the mark of the tail in successive curves as it struck the ice.—Another track puzzled me, as if a hare had been running like a dog (— $.$ . — $.$ . — $.$ . eighteen inches apart), and touched its tail, if it had one. This in several places.