when it was frozen. I laid it open with my hands. There were three or four channels or hollowed paths a rod or more in length, not merely worn but made in the meadow centering at the mouth of this burrow. They were three or four inches deep, and finally became indistinct, and were lost amid the cranberry vines and grass toward the river. The entrance to the burrow was just at the edge of the upland, here a gentle sloping bank, and was probably just beneath the surface of the water six weeks ago. It was about twenty-five rods distant from the true bank of the river. From this a straight gallery about six inches in diameter every way sloped upward about eight feet into the bank just beneath the turf, so that the end was about a foot higher than the entrance. Here was a somewhat circular enlargement about one foot in horizontal diameter and of the same depth as the gallery. In it was nearly a peck of coarse meadow stubble, showing the marks of the scythe with which was mixed accidentally a very little of the moss that grew with it. Three short galleries, only two feet long, were continued from this centre, somewhat like rays, toward the high land, as if they had been prepared in order to be ready for a sudden rise of the water, or had been actually made so far under such an emergency. The nest was of
