Hector and Louis remarked that the red and black squirrels never were to be found very near each other.

It is a common belief, that the red squirrels make common cause with the grey, and beat the larger enemy off the ground.
The black squirrel, for a succession of years, was very rarely to be met with on the Plains, while there were plenty of the red and grey in the "oak openings." _[FN: Within the last three years, however, the black squirrels have been very numerous, and the red are less frequently to be seen.

The flesh of the black squirrel is tender, white, and delicate, like that of a young rabbit.]_ Deer, at the time our young Crusoes were living on the Rice Lake Plains, were plentiful, and, of course, so were those beasts that prey upon them,--wolves, bears, and wolverines, besides the Canadian lynx, or catamount, as it is here commonly called, a species of wild-cat or panther.

These wild animals are now no longer to be seen; it is a rare thing to hear of bears or wolves, and the wolverine and lynx are known only as matters of history in this part of the country; these animals disappear as civilization advances, while some others increase and follow man, especially many species of birds, which seem to pick up the crumbs that fall from the rich man's board, and multiply about his dwelling; some adopt new habits and modes of building and feeding, according to the alteration and improvement in their circumstances.
While our young people seldom wanted for meat, they felt the privation of the tread to which they had teen accustomed very sensibly.

One day, while Hector and Louis were busily engaged with their assistant, Wolfe, in unearthing a woodchuck, that had taken refuge in his burrow, on one of the gravelly hills above the lake, Catharine amused herself by looking for flowers; she had filled her lap with ripe May-apples, _[FN: _Podophyllum peltatum_-May-apple, or Mandrake.