In fact, the marmot resembles Harlequin's cloak, or rather, if it be permissible to compare little things with great, the Austrian Empire,—a composite of territories and races; and Buffon has described him very aptly. He has, he says, the nose, the lips, and the shape of the head of the hare; the hair and nails of the badger; the teeth of the beaver; the cat's whiskers; the eyes of the dormouse; the feet of the bear, with a short tail and truncated ears.
Add to this that the marmot—he is a little larger than a rabbit—is omnivorous like man and the bear, with whom he shares his aptitude for dance and sport. While he eats any and everything, he nevertheless prefers vegetable food to all other kinds; and with his orange-coloured incisors gnaws the bark of shrubs. He rarely drinks, but when he does drink takes a hearty draught; is particularly fond of milk; drinks it by raising his head at each mouthful, like a hen, and giving utterance to an audible murmur of contentment, just as if he were reciting his Benedicite. Will it be in allusion to this characteristic that the common French phrase has originated, Marmotter des prières?[20]
During the summer the marmots inhabit the snowy summits of the Alps. At the beginning of autumn they descend to a lower level, for the purpose of excavating the burrows in which they pass the winter, completely benumbed by the frost. This is the time when the hunters easily capture them; they have nothing to do but to dig (creuser is the technical word); and frequently they are found as many as ten or twelve in the same burrow, rolled up like balls, and buried in a litter of hay. Their sleep, says De Saussure, is so profound, that the hunter deposits them in his sack and carries them away without awakening them. The Chamounix hunters, he adds, have already entirely expelled or destroyed the goats formerly so abundant on their mountains; and it is probable that, in less than a century, we shall see neither chamois nor marmots.
This prophecy of De Saussure's is on the point of being realised. Still, even at the present day, marmots are not very rare in the Valais and the canton of Ticino (du Tissin), where they are called Mure montane (mountain rats); a phrase from which is derived, without doubt, the appellation marmot. They prefer as their abode the stony islets which rise here and there in the midst of the rocks. The ears of travellers who venture into the barrenest recesses of the Alps of the Bernese Oberland are sometimes struck by a very sharp whistling, for which, at first, they find it difficult to account. It is the young marmot's cry of alarm; for the old appear to be deprived of this strident faculty.
For a considerable period only a single species was known—the marmot properly so called (Arctomys marmotta, Gmelin); but four others must now be added:—1st, The marmot of the Caucasus (Arctomys musicus), still imperfectly known; 2d, The marmot of Canada (Arctomys empetra), who clambers up the trees like a cat, and is distributed throughout all North America, particularly in Hudson's Bay, and Alaska, on the north-west coast; 3d, The Arctomys monax, who appears to be peculiar to Maryland; 4th, The Russian marmot (Arctomys citillus), of the size of a field-mouse, and of a brown colour, spotted with white; 5th, The marmot of Siberia (Arctomys bobac), smaller than the common species, of a yellow gray, and building vast burrows shaped like a funnel.
Will the reader permit us an allusion, in passing, to a question which we do not see discussed in books of natural history? Formerly among the treasures of ancient druggists figured a kind of panacea, called "Graetz's balls." What were these "Graetz's balls," at one time esteemed as a universal medicine, but no longer included in our pharmacopeia?
This was their origin:—The subterranean dwellings which certain species of marmots construct with so much skill, are each composed of two galleries, which unite together like the arms of a Y, and terminate in a cul-de-sac. There are found the globules of clay known as "Graetz's balls." They are an industrial product of our rodents, as M. Oscar Schmidt established in 1866, by close observation of the Arctomys bobac of the Zoological Garden of Vienna. The marmot creates these balls by scratching up the earth, and appears to amuse himself—a child's amusement!—by rolling them to and fro in his galleries.
The Chamois.
"Even so
This way the chamois leapt."[21]