"Sketches of Natural History and Rural Life" (continued 2)

Boys steal these eggs by scores, yet it makes no difference apparently to the endless numbers of these birds, who fill the wood with their peculiar hoarse notes, which some country people say resemble the words “Take two cows, Taffy.” The same good folk will have it that when the weather threatens rain the pigeon’s note changes to “Joe’s toe bleeds, Betty.” The boys who steal the eggs have to swarm up the ash-poles for the purpose, and in so doing often stain their clothes with red marks. Upon the bark of the ash are innumerable little excrescences which when rubbed exude a small quantity of red juice.

The keeper detests this bird’s-nesting; not that he cares much about the pigeons, but because his pheasants are frequently disturbed just at the season when he wishes them to enjoy perfect quiet. It is easy to tell from this post of vantage if any one be passing through the section of the wood within view, though they may be hidden by the boughs. The blackbirds utter a loud cry and scatter; the pigeons rise and wheel about; a pheasant gets up with a scream audible for a long distance, and goes with swift flight skimming away just above the ash-poles; a pair of jays jabber round the summit of a tall fir tree, and thus the intruder’s course is made known. But the wind, though light, is still too cold and chilly as it sweeps between the beech trunks to remain at this elevation; it is warmer below in the wood.

At the foot of the cliff a natural hollow has been further scooped out by labour of man, and shaped into a small cave large enough for three or four to sit in. It is partly supported by strong wooden pillars, and at the mouth a hut of slabs, thickly covered by furze-faggots, has been constructed, with a door, and with roof thatched with reeds from the lake. A rude bench runs round three sides; against the fourth some digging tools recline—strong spades and grub-axes for rooting out a lost ferret, left here temporarily for convenience. The place, rough as it is, gives shelter, and, throwing the door open, there is a vista among the ash-poles and the hazel bushes overtopped with great fir trees and more distant oaks. In the later spring this is a lovely spot, the ground all tinted with the shimmering colour of the bluebells, and the hazel musical with the voice of the nightingale.

Outside the wood, where the downland begins to rise gradually there stretches a broad expanse of furze growing luxuriantly on the thin barren soil, and a mile or more in width. It has a beauty of its own when in full yellow blossom—a yellow sea of flower, scenting the air with an almost overpowering odour as of a coarser pineapple, and full of the drowsy hum of the bees busy in the interspersed thyme. It has another beauty later on when the thick undergrowth of heath is in bloom, and a pale purple carpet spreads around. Here rabbits breed and sport, and hares hide, and the curious furze-chats fly to and fro; and lastly, but not leastly, my lord Reynard the Fox loves to take his ease, till he finally meets his fate in the jaws of clamouring hounds, or is assassinated with the aid of “villainous saltpetre.” He is not easily shot, and will stand a charge fired broadside at a short distance without the slightest injury or apparent notice, beyond a slight quickening of his pace. His thick fur and tough skin turn the pellets. Even when mortally wounded, life will linger for hours.

The ordinary idea of the fox is that of a flying frightened creature tearing away for bare existence; he is really a bold and desperate animal. The keeper will tell you that once when for some purpose he was walking up a deep dry ditch his spaniel and retriever suddenly “chopped” a fox, and got him at bay in a corner, when he turned, and in an instant laid the spaniel helpless and dying and severely handled the retriever. Seeing his dogs so injured and the fox as it were under his feet, the keeper imprudently attempted to seize him, but could not retain his hold, and got the sharp white teeth clean through his hand.

Though but once actually bitten, he recollects being snapped at viciously by another fox, whom he found in broad daylight asleep in the hollow of a double mound with scarcely any shelter and within sixty yards of a house. Reynard was curled up on the ivy which in the hedges trails along the ground. The keeper crawled up on the bank and stopped, admiring the symmetry of the creature, when, purposely breaking a twig, the fox was up in a second, and snarled and snapped at his face, then slipped into the ditch and away. The fox is, in fact, quite as remarkable for boldness as for cunning. Last summer I met a fine fox on the turnpike road and close to a tollgate, in the middle of the day. He came at full speed with a young rabbit in his jaws, evidently but just captured, and did not perceive that he was observed till within twenty yards, when, with a single bound he cleared the sward beside the road, alighting with a crash in the bushes, carrying his prey with him.

Hares will sometimes, in like manner, come as it were to meet people on country roads. Is it that the eyes, being placed towards the side of the head, do not so readily catch sight of dangers in front as on the flanks, especially when the animal is absorbed in its purpose? Hares are peculiarly fond of limping at dusk along lonely roads.

Foxes, when they roam from the woods into the meadow-land, prefer to sleep during the day in those osier-beds which are found in the narrow corners formed by the meanderings of the brooks. Between the willow-wands there shoots up a thick undergrowth of sedges, long coarse grass, and reeds; and in these the fox makes his bed, turning round and round till he has smoothed a place and trampled down the grass; then reclining, well sheltered from the wind. A dog will turn round and round in the same way before he lies down on the hearthrug.

These reeds sometimes grow to a great height, as much as ten or twelve feet. Along the Thames they are used, bound in bundles, to pitch the barges; when the hull has been roughly coated with pitch, one end of the bundle of reeds (thickest end preferred) is set on fire and passed over it to make it melt and run into the chinks. So, mayhap, the Saxon and Danish rovers may have used them to pitch the bottoms of their “ceols” when worn from constantly grounding on the shallows and eyots.

Here in the furze too is the haunt of the badger. This animal becomes rarer year after year—the disuse of the great rabbit-warrens being one cause; still he lingers, and may be traced in the rabbit “buries,” where he enlarges a hole for his habitation, sleeps during the day, and comes forth in the gloaming. In summer he digs up the wasps’ nests, not, as has been supposed, for the honey, but for the white larvae they contain: the wasp secretes no honey at all, and her nest is simply a series of cells in which the grubs mature. Some credit the fox with a fondness for the same food; and even the hornet’s nest is said to be similarly ravaged. It is the nest of the humble-bee which the badger roots up for the honey. The humble-bee uses a tiny hole in a dry bank, sometimes a crack made by the heat in the earth, and really deposits true honey in the comb. It is very sweet, like that of the hive-bee, but a little darker in colour and much less in quantity. The haymakers search for these nests along the hedgerows in their dinner-hour, and eat the honey. There seem to be several sub-species of humble-bee, differing in size and habit. One has its nest as deep as possible in a hole; another makes a nest with scarcely any protection beyond the thick moss of the bank, almost on the surface of the ground. The badger’s hole has before it a huge quantity of sand, which he has thrown out, and upon which the imprint of his foot will be found, a mark, perhaps, more like the spoor of the large game of tropical forests than that left by any other English animal. When seen it can ever afterwards be instantly identified by the most careless observer.

In the meadows lower down, bounding the wood, the hay is gone or is piled in summer ricks, which lean one one way and another the other, and upon whose roofs, sloping at an obtuse angle, the green snakes lie coiled in the sunshine. Often when the waggon comes, and the little rick is loaded, the “pitch” of hay on the prong as it is flung up carries with it a snake whirling in the air. He falls on the sward and is instantly pounced upon by the farmer’s dog, who worries him, seizes him by the middle and shakes him, while the snake twists and hisses in vain. Some dogs will not touch snakes, others seem to enjoy destroying them; but it is noticeable that a dog which previously has passed or avoided snakes, if once he kills one, never passes another without slaughtering it. A slime from the snake’s skin froths over the dog’s jaws, and the sight is very unpleasant.

I have often tried to discover how the snakes get upon these summer ricks. Solomon could not understand the “way of a serpent upon the rock,” and the way of a common snake up the summer rick seems almost as inexplicable. Though the roof or “top” is often very much out of the proper conical shape, and sometimes sinks down nearly to a level, the sides for a height of three or four feet are generally perpendicular, affording no projection of any kind whatever; hay is slippery, and the rick is, of course, too large for the snake to encircle it. Yet there they are commonly found to the intense alarm of the labouring women, who never can get over their dislike of snakes, though they see them so frequently. The only way I can imagine by which they climb up is by means of the holes, or galleries, used by field-mice. In summer ricks there are sometimes many mice, and in pursuit of these the snake may find its way up through their “runs.” Toads are also occasionally found on these ricks, and it is not exactly clear how they get there either; but their object is plain—i.e. the insects which swarm on the hay.

The thick hedgerows of these woodland meads are full of trees, and others stand out in groups in the grass, some of them hollow. Elms often become hollow, and so do oaks; the latter have such large cavities sometimes that one or more persons may easily crouch therein. This is speaking of an ordinary-sized tree; there are many instances of patriarchs of the forest within whose capacious trunks a dozen might stand upright.

These hollow trees, according to woodcraft, ought to come down by the axe without further loss of time. Yet it is fortunate that we are not all of us, even in this prosaic age, imbued with the stern utilitarian spirit; for a decaying tree is perhaps more interesting than one in full vigour of growth. The starlings make their nests in the upper knot-holes; or, lower down, the owl feeds her young; and if you chance to pass near, and are not aware of the ways of owls, you may fancy that a legion of serpents are in the bushes, so loud and threatening is the hissing noise made by the brood. The woodpecker comes for the insects that flourish on the dying giant; so does the curious little tree-climber, running up the trunk like a mouse; and in winter, when insect-life is scarce, it is amusing to watch there the busy tomtit. He hangs underneath a dead branch, head downwards, as if walking on a ceiling, and with his tiny but strong bill chips off a fragment of the loose dead bark. Under this bark, as he well knows, woodlice and all kinds of creeping things make their home. With the fragment he flies to an adjacent twig, small enough to be grasped by his claws and so give him a firm foothold. There he pecks his morsel into minute pieces and lunches on the living contents. Then, with a saucy chuckle of delight in his own cleverness, he returns to the larger bough for a fresh supply. As the bough decays the bark loosens, and is invaded by insects which when it was green could not touch it.

For the acorns the old oak still yields come rooks, pigeons, and stately pheasants, with their glossy feathers shining in the autumn sun. Thrushes carry wild hedge-fruit up on the broad platform formed by the trunk where the great limbs divide, and, pecking it to pieces, leave the seeds. These take root in the crevices which widen out underneath into a mass of soft decaying “touchwood;” and so from the crown of the tree there presently streams downwards long trailing briars, bearing in June the sweet wild roses and in winter red oval fruit. Ivy comes creeping up, and in its thick warm coverts nests are built. Below, among the powdery “touchwood” which lines the floor of this living hut, great fungi push their coloured heads up to the light. And here you may take shelter when the rain comes unexpectedly pattering on the leaves, and listen as it rises to a roar within the forest. Sometimes wild bees take up their residence in the hollow, slowly filling it with comb, buzzing busily to and fro; and then it is not to be approached so carelessly, though so ready are all creatures to acknowledge kindness that ere now I have even made friends with the inhabitants of a wasp’s nest.

A thick carpet of dark green moss grows upon one side of the tree, and over it the tall brake fern rears its yellow stem. In the evening the goat-sucker or nightjar comes with a whirling phantom-like flight, wheeling round and round: a strange bird, which will roost all day on a rail, blinking or sleeping in the daylight, and seeming to prefer a rail or a branch without leaves to one that affords cover. Here also the smaller bats flit in the twilight, and, if you stand still, will pursue their prey close to your head, wheeling about it so that you may knock them down with your hand if you wish. The labouring people call the bat “bat-mouse.” Here also come many beetles; and sometimes on a summer’s day the swallows will rest from their endless flight on the dying upper branches, for they too like a bough clear or nearly clear of leaves. All the year through the hollow tree is haunted by every kind of living creature, and therefore let us hope it may yet be permitted to linger awhile safe from the axe.

The lesser roots of the elm are porous like cane, and are sometimes smoked as cigars by the ploughboys. The leaf of the coltsfoot, which grows so luxuriously in many places and used to be regularly gathered and dried by the lower classes for the pipe, is now rarely used since the commoner tobaccos have become universally accessible.

Often and often, when standing in a meadow gateway partly hidden by the bushes, watching the woodpecker on the ant-hills, of whose eggs, too, the partridges are so fond (so that a good ant year, in which their nests are prolific, is also a good partridge year) you may, if you are still, hear a slight faint rustle in the hedge, and by-and-by a weasel will steal out. Seeing you he instantly pauses, elevates his head, and steadily gazes: move but your eyes and he is back in the hedge; remain quiet, still looking straight before you as if you saw nothing, and he will presently recover confidence, and actually cross the gateway almost under you.

This is the secret of observation: stillness, silence, and apparent indifference. In some instinctive way these wild creatures learn to distinguish when one is or is not intent upon them in a spirit of enmity; and if very near, it is always the eye they watch. So long as you observe them, as it were, from the corner of the eyeball, sideways, or look over their heads at something beyond, it is well. Turn your glance full upon them to get a better view, and they are gone.

When waiting in a dry ditch with a gun on a warm autumn afternoon for a rabbit to come out, sometimes a bunny will suddenly appear at the mouth of a hole which your knee nearly touches. He stops dead, as if petrified with astonishment, sitting on his haunches. His full dark eye is on you with a gaze of intense curiosity; his nostrils work as if sniffing; his whiskers move; and every now and then he thumps with his hind legs upon the earth with a low dull thud. This is evidently a sign of great alarm, at the noise of which any other rabbit within hearing instantly disappears in the “bury.” Yet there your friend sits and watches you as if spell-bound, so long as you have the patience neither to move hand or foot nor to turn your eye. Keep your glance on a frond of the fern just beyond him, and he will stay. The instant your eye meets his or a finger stirs, he plunges out of sight.

It is so also with birds. Walk across a meadow swinging a stick, even humming, and the rooks calmly continue their search for grubs within thirty yards; stop to look at them, and they rise on the wing directly. So, too, the finches in the trees by the roadside. Let the wayfarer pass beneath the bough on which they are singing, and they will sing on, if he moves without apparent interest; should he pause to listen, their wings glisten in the sun as they fly.

The meadows lead down to the shores of the mere, and the nearest fields melt almost insensibly into the green margin of the water, for at the edge it is so full of flags, and rushes, and weeds as at a distance to be barely distinguishable there from the sward. As we approach, the cuckoo sings passing over head; “she cries as she flies” is the common country saying.

I used to imagine that the cuckoo was fond of an echo, having noticed that a particular clump of trees overhanging some water, the opposite bank of which sent back a clear reply, was a specially favourite resort of that bird. The reduplication of the liquid notes, as they travelled to and fro, was peculiarly pleasant: the water, perhaps, lending, like a sounding-board, a fulness and roundness to her song. She might possibly have fancied that another bird was answering; certainly she “cried” much longer there than in other places. Morning after morning, and about the same time—eleven o’clock—a cuckoo sang in that group of trees, from noting which I was led to think that perhaps the cuckoo, though apparently wandering aimlessly about, really has more method and regularity in her habits than would seem.

Country people will have it that cuckoos are growing scarcer every year, and do not come in the numbers they formerly did; and, whether it be the chance of unfavourable seasons or other causes, it is certainly the fact in some localities. I recollect seeing as many as four at once in a tall elm—a tree they love—all crying and gurgling, as it were, in the throat together; this was some years since, and that district is now much less frequented by these birds.

There was a superstition that where or in whatever condition you happened to be when you heard the cuckoo the first time in the spring, so you would remain for the next twelvemonth; for which reason it was a misfortune to hear her first in bed, since it might mean a long illness. This, by-the-by, may have been a pleasant fable invented to get milkmaids up early of a morning.

The number of coarse fish in the brook which flows out of the shallow mere bounding one edge of the keeper’s domain of woods has, he thinks, very much decreased of recent years. When he first came here the stream seemed full of fish, notwithstanding very little care had till then been taken with their preservation. They used to net it once now and then, and he has seen a full hundredweight of fair-sized jack, perch, tench, etc, taken out of the water in a very short time, besides quantities of smaller fry which were put back again. But although the brook, so far as his jurisdiction goes, has since been comparatively well preserved, yet he feels certain the fish have diminished.

There are no chemical works to account for this with the subtle poison of their waste, neither are there mills to prevent the fish coming up—perhaps it would be better if there were some mills, as they would stop the fish going down. I have noticed that where old water-wheels have ceased working the fish have almost disappeared. This, of course, may be but a purely local phenomenon, but it is certainly the case in some districts. Comparatively little wheat now is ground in rural places; the greater portion is carried away to the towns and turned into flour by steam. So that in walking up a brook you will now and then come upon an ancient mill whose business has departed: the fabric itself is tenanted by two or three cottage families, and their garden covers the site of the old mill-pond. In the depths of that pool there were formerly plenty of fish, with deep, dark spots in which to hide. Their natural increase was not swept away by floods; neither could they wander, because of the dam and grating. They were also under the eye of the miller, and so preserved. But when the dam was levelled and the stream allowed to follow its course, this resting-place, so to say, was abolished, and the fish dispersed were lost or captured.

Upon the particular brook which I have now in view there are no mills; but there used to be several large ponds—distinct from the stream, yet communicating by a narrow channel. These likewise sheltered the fish, and were favourable to their propagation. Improvements, however, have swept them away; they are filled up, every inch of ground having become valuable for agricultural purposes. Then there were vast ditches running up beside the hedgerows, and ending in the brook; perfect storehouses these of all aquatic life. Fish used to go up them for shelter (they were as deep or deeper than the brook itself, and it was a good jump for a man across) and to feed on the insects blown off the overhanging trees and bushes or brought down by the streamlet draining the field above. Wild duck made their nests among the rushes, sitting there while their beautiful consorts, the mallards, swam lonely in the mere. Moorhens were busy in the weeds, or came out to feed upon the sward.

Such great ditches are now filled up, and drains take their place. It is better so, no doubt, in a purely utilitarian sense, but the fish haunt the spot no more. Some of the reaches of the brook, where the ground was flat and boggy, used to resemble a long narrow lake, extremely shallow, with the deeper current running yards away from the shore: and here the snipe came in the winter. But the banks are now made up higher by artificial means, and the marsh is dry. All these changes diminish those aquatic nooks and corners in which fish love to linger.

Finally came the weed said to have been imported from America, pushing its way up-stream, and filling it with an abominable mass of vegetable matter that no fish could enter. Hereabouts, however, this pest has of late shown signs of exhaustion—it does not grow with its former vigour, and its progress seems checked. The brook, after winding for several miles, the lower course being beyond the keeper’s boundaries, empties itself into a canal; before the canal was made it ran much further, and itself increased in volume almost to a river. Now this canal is fished day and night by people on the tow-path: there is nominally a close time, but no one observes it, and the riparian owners, having discovered that they had a right so to do, net it mercilessly. The consequence is that the fish which go down the stream and enter the canal are speedily destroyed, while the canal on its part sends no fish to the upper waters. This is how the decrease of fish is accounted for, and it is the same with perhaps half-a-dozen other brooks in the same locality, all of which now fall into the canal, which is so incessantly plied with rod and net and nightline that little escapes.

Chapter Five.

Some of his Subjects: Dogs, Rabbits, “Mice, and such Small Deer.”

When a dog, young and yet unskilled, follows his master across the meadows, it often happens that he meets with difficulties which sorely try the capacity of the inexperienced brain. The two come to a broad deep brook. The man glances at the opposite bank, and compares in his mind the distance to the other side with other distances he has previously leaped. The result is not quite satisfactory; somehow a latent doubt develops itself into a question of his ability to spring over. He cranes his neck, looks at the jump sideways to get an angular measurement, retires a few paces to run, shakes his head, deliberates, instinctively glances round as if for assistance or advice, and presently again advances to the edge. No; it will not do. He recalls to mind the division of space into yards, feet, and inches, and endeavours to apply it without a rule to the smooth surface of the water. He can judge a yard on the grass, because there is something to fix the eye on—the tall bennet or the buttercup yonder; but the water affords no data.

On second thoughts, yes—even the smooth flowing current has its marks. Here, not far from the steep bank, is a flag, bowed or broken, whose pennant-like tongue of green floats just beneath the surface, slowly vibrating to and fro, as you wave your hand in token of farewell. This is mark one—say three feet from the shore.

Somewhat farther there is a curl upon the water, not constant, but coming every few seconds in obedience to the increase or decrease of the volume of the stream, which there meets with some slight obstacle out of sight. For, although the water appears level and unvarying, it really rises and sinks in ever so minute a degree with a rhythmic alternation. If you will lie down on the sward, you may sometimes see it by fixing a steady gaze upon the small circular cave where the gallery of a water-rat opens on this the Grand Canal of his Venice. Into it there rises now and again a gentle swell—barely perceptible—a faint pulse rising and falling. The stream is slightly fuller and stronger at one moment than another; and with each swell the curl, or tiny whirlpool, rotates above the hidden irregularity of the bottom. If you sit by the dam higher up the brook, and watch the arch of the cataract rolling over, it is perhaps more visible. Every now and then a check seems to stay the current momentarily: and at night, when it is perfectly still, listening to the murmur of the falling water from a distance. Under the apple-trees in the garden it runs a scale—now up, then down; each variation of volume changing the musical note. This faint undulation is more visible in some brooks than others.

A third mark is where a branch, as it was carried along, grounded on a shallow spot; and one mast, as it were, of the wreck protruding upwards, catches the stray weeds as they swim down and holds them. Thus, step by step, the mind of the man measures the distance, and assures him that it is a little beyond what he has hitherto attempted; yet will not extra exertion clear it?—for having once approached the brink, shame and the dislike of giving up pull him forward. He walks hastily twenty yards up the brook, then as many the other way, but discovers no more favourable spot; hesitates again; next carefully examines the tripping place, lest the turf, undermined, yield to the sudden pressure, as also the landing, for fear of falling back. Finally he retires a few yards, and pauses a second and runs. Even after the start, uncertain in mind and but half resolved, it is his own motion which impels the will, and he arrives on the opposite shore with a sense of surprise. Now comes the dog, and note his actions; contrast the two, and say which is instinct, which is mind.

The dog races to the bank—he has been hitherto hunting in a hedge and suddenly misses his master—and, like his lord, stops short on the brink. He has had but little experience in jumping as yet; water is not his natural element, and he pauses doubtfully. He looks across earnestly, sniffs the air as if to smell the distance, then whines in distress of mind. Presently he makes a movement to spring, checks it, and turns round as if looking for advice or encouragement. Next he runs back a short way as if about to give it up; returns, and cranes over the brink; after which he follows the bank up and down, barking in excitement, but always coming back to the original spot. The lines of his face, the straining eye, the voice that seems struggling to articulate in the throat, the attitude of the body, all convey the idea of intense desire which fear prevents him from translating into action. There is indecision—uncertainty—in the nervous grasp of the paws on the grass, in the quick short coursings to and fro. Would infallible instinct hesitate? He has no knowledge of yards, feet and inches—yet he is clearly trying to judge the distance. Finally, just as his master disappears through a gateway, the agony of his “mind” rises to the highest pitch. He advances to the very brink—he half springs, stays himself, his hinder paws slip down the steep bank, he partly loses his balance, and then makes a great leap, lights with a splash in mid-stream, and swims the remainder with ease. There is, at least, a singular coincidence in the outward actions of the two.

The gamekeeper, with dogs around him from morning till night, associated with them from childhood, has no doubts upon the matter whatever, but with characteristic decision is perfectly certain that they think and reason in the same way as human beings, though of course in a limited degree. Most of his class believe, likewise, in the reasoning power of the dog: so do shepherds; and so, too, the labourers who wait on and feed cattle are fully persuaded of their intelligence, which, however, in no way prevents them throwing the milking-stool at their heads when unruly. But the concession of reason is no guarantee against ill-usage, else the labourer’s wife would escape.

The keeper, without thinking it perhaps, affords a strong illustration of his own firm faith in the mind of the dog. His are taught their proper business thoroughly; but there it ends. “I never makes them learn no tricks,” says he, “because I don’t like to see ’em made fools of.” I have observed that almost all those whose labour lies in the field, and who go down to their business in the green meadows, admit the animal world to a share in the faculty of reason. It is the cabinet thinkers who construct a universe of automatons.

No better illustration of the two modes of observation can be found than in the scene of Goethe’s “Faust” where Faust and Wagner walking in the field are met by a strange dog. The first sees something more than a mere dog; he feels the presence of an intelligence within the outward semblance—in this case an evil intelligence, it is true, but still a something beyond mere tail and paws and ears. To Wagner it is a dog and nothing more—that will sit at the feet of his master and fawn on him if spoken to, who can be taught to fetch and carry or bring a stick; the end, however, proves different. So one mind sees the outside only; another projects itself into the mind of the creature, be it dog or horse or bird.

Experience certainly educates the dog as it does the man. After long acquaintance and practice in the field we learn the habits and ways of game—to know where it will or not be found. A young dog in the same way dashes swiftly up a hedge, and misses the rabbit that, hearing him coming, doubles back behind a tree or stole; an old dog leaves nothing behind him, searching every corner. This is acquired knowledge. Neither does all depend upon hereditary predisposition as exhibited in the various breeds—the setter, the pointer, the spaniel, or greyhound—and their especial drift of brain; their capacity is not wholly confined to one sphere. They possess an initiating power—what in man is called originality, invention, discovery: they make experiments.

I had a pointer that exhibited this faculty in a curious manner. She was weakly when young, and for that reason, together with other circumstances, was never properly trained: a fact that may perhaps have prevented her “mind” from congealing into the stolidity of routine. She became an outdoor pet, and followed at heel everywhere. One day some ponds were netted, and of the fish taken a few chanced to be placed in a great stone trough from which cattle drank in the yard—a common thing in the country. Some time afterwards, the trough being foul, the fish—they were roach, tench, perch, and one small jack—were removed to a shallow tub while it was being cleansed. In this tub, being scarcely a foot deep though broad, the fish were of course distinctly visible, and at once became an object of the most intense interest to the pointer. She would not leave it; but stood watching every motion of the fish, with her head now on one side now on the other. There she must have remained some hours, and was found at last in the act of removing them one by one and laying them softly, quite unhurt, on the grass.

I put them back into the water, and waited to see the result. She took a good look, and then plunged her nose right under the surface and half-way up the neck completely submerging the head, and in that position groped about on the bottom till a fish came in contact with her mouth and was instantly snatched out. Her head must have been under water each time nearly a minute, feeling for the fish. One by one she drew them out and placed them on the ground, till only the jack remained. He puzzled her, darting away swift as an arrow and seeming to anticipate the enemy. But after a time he, too, was captured.

They were not injured—not the mark of a tooth was to be seen—and swam as freely as ever when restored to the water. So soon as they were put in again the pointer recommenced her fishing, and could hardly be got away by force. The fish were purposely left in the tub. The next day she returned to the amusement, and soon became so dexterous as to pull a fish out almost the instant her nose went under water. The jack was always the most difficult to catch, but she managed to conquer him sooner or later. When returned to the trough, however, she was done—the water was too deep. Scarcely anything could be imagined apparently more opposite to the hereditary intelligence of a pointer than this; and certainly no one attempted to teach her, neither did she do it for food. It was an original motion of her own: to what can it be compared but mind proceeding by experiment? They can also adjust their conduct to circumstances, as when they take to hunting on their own account: they then generally work in couples.

If a spaniel, for instance, one of those allowed to lie loose about farmhouses, takes to hunting for herself, she is almost always found to meet a canine friend at a little distance from the homestead. It is said that spaniels when they go off like this never bark when on the heels of a rabbit, as they would do if a sportsman was with them and the chase legitimate. This suppression of what must be an almost uncontrollable inclination shows no little intelligence. If they gave tongue, they would be certainly detected, and as certainly thrashed. To watch the sneaking way in which a spaniel will come home after an unlawful expedition of this kind is most amusing. She makes her appearance on the road or footpath so as not to look as if coming from the hedges, and enters at the back; or if any movement be going on, as the driving of cattle, she will join in it, displaying extraordinary zeal in assisting: anything to throw off suspicion.

Of all sport, if a man desires to widen his chest, and gain some idea of the chase as it was in ancient days, let him take two good greyhounds and “uncouple at the timorous flying hare,” following himself on foot. A race like this over the elastic turf of the downs, inhaling with expanded lungs air which acts on the blood as strong drink on the brain, stimulating the pulse, and strengthening every fibre of the frame, is equal to another year of life. Coursing for the coursing’s sake is capital sport. A hare when sorely tried with the hot breath from the hounds’ nostrils on his flanks, will sometimes puzzle them by dashing round and round a rick. Then in sweeping circles the trio strain their limbs, but the hare, having at the corners the inner side and less ground to cover, easily keeps just ahead. This game lasts several minutes, till presently one of the hounds is sharp enough to dodge back and meet the hare the opposite way. Even then his quick eye and ready turn often give him another short breathing space by rushing away at a tangent.

Rabbits, although of “low degree” in comparison with the pheasant, really form an important item in the list of the keeper’s charges. Shooting generally commences with picking out the young rabbits about the middle or towards the end of the hay harvest, according as the season is early or late. Some are shot by the farmers, who have the right to use a gun, earlier than this, while they still disport in the mowing grass. It requires experience and skill to select the young rabbit just fit for table from the old bucks, the does which may yet bring forth another litter, and those little bunnies that do not exceed the size of rats.

The grass conceals the body of the animal, and nothing is visible beyond the tips of the ears; and at thirty yards distance one pair of ears is very like another pair. The developed ear is, however, less pointed than the other; and in the rabbit of a proper size they are or seem to be wider apart. The eye is also guided by the grass itself and the elevation of the rabbit’s head above it when lifted in alarm at a chance sound: if the animal is full grown of course the head stands higher. In motion the difference is at once seen; the larger animal’s back and flanks show boldly, while the lesser seems to slip through the grass. By these signs, and by a kind of instinct which grows upon one when always in the field, it is possible to distinguish between them even in tall grass and in the gloaming.

This sort of shooting, if it does not afford the excitement of the pheasant battue, or require the alertness necessary in partridge killing, is not without its special pleasures. These are chiefly to be attributed to the genial warmth of the weather at that season, when the reapers have only just begun to put the tall corn to the edge of their crooked swords, and one can linger by the hedge-side without dread of wintry chills.

The aftermath in which the rabbits feed is not so tall as the mowing grass, and more easy and pleasant to walk through, though it is almost devoid of flowers. Neither does it give so much shelter; and you must walk close to the hedge, gliding gently from bush to bush, the slower the better. Rabbits feed several times during the day—i.e. in the very early morning, next about eleven o’clock, again at three or four, and again at six or seven. Not that every rabbit comes out to nibble at those hours, but about that time some will be seen moving outside the buries.

As you stroll beside the hedge, brushing the boughs, a rabbit feeding two hundred yards away will lift his head inquiringly from the grass. Then stop, and remain still as the elm tree hard by. In a minute or two, reassured, the ears perked up so sharply fall back, and he feeds again. Another advance of ten or twenty yards, and up go the ears—you are still till they drop once more. The rabbit presently turns his back towards you, sniffing about for the tenderest blades; this is an opportunity, and an advance of forty or fifty paces perhaps is accomplished. Now, if you have a rook-rifle you are near enough; if a smooth-bore, the same system of stalking must be carried farther yet. If you are patient enough to wait when he takes alarm, and only to advance when he feeds, you are pretty sure to “bag” him.

Sometimes, when thus gliding with stealthy tread, another rabbit will suddenly appear out of the ditch within easy reach; it is so quiet he never suspected the presence of an enemy. If you pause and keep quite still, which is the secret of all stalking, he will soon begin to feed, and the moment he turns his back towards you up goes the gun; not before, because if he sees your arm move he will be off to the ditch. True, a snap-shot might be made as he runs, which at first sight would appear more sportsmanlike than “potting;” but it is not so, for it is ten chances to one that you do not kill him dead on the spot in the short distance he has to traverse. Perhaps the hind legs will be broken; well, then he will drag them along behind him, using the fore paws with astonishing rapidity and power. Before the second barrel can be emptied he will gain the shelter of the fern that grows on the edge of the bank and dive into a burrow, there to die in misery. So that it is much better to steadily “pot” him. Besides which, if a rabbit dies in a burrow all the other animals in that particular burrow desert it till nature’s scavengers have done their work. A dog cannot well be taken while stalking—not that dogs will not follow quietly, but because a rabbit, catching sight of a dog, is generally stricken with panic even if a hundred yards away, and bolts immediately.

I have seen a rabbit whose back was broken by shot drag itself ten yards to the ditch. If the forelegs are broken, then he is helpless: all the kicks of the hind legs only tumble him over and over without giving him much progress. The effects of shot are very strange, and sometimes almost inexplicable: as when a hare which has received a pellet through the edge of the heart runs a quarter of a mile before dropping. It is noticed that hares and rabbits, hit in the vital organs about the heart, often run a considerable distance, and then, suddenly in the midst of their career, roll head over heels dead. Both hares and rabbits are occasionally killed with marks of old shot wounds, but not very often, and they are but of a slight character—the pellets are found just under the skin, with a kind of lump round them. Shot holes through the ears are frequently seen, of course doing no serious harm.

Now and then a rabbit hit in the head will run round and round in circles, making not the slightest attempt to escape. The first time I saw this, not understanding it, I gave the creature the second barrel; but next time I let the rabbit do as he would. He circled round and round, going at a rapid pace. I stood in his way, and he passed between my legs. After half a dozen circles the pace grew slower. Finally, he stopped, sat up quite still for a minute or so, and then drooped and died. The pellet had struck some portion of the brain.

I once, while looking for snipe with charges of small shot in the barrels, roused a fine hare, and fired without apparent effect. But after crossing about half of the field with a spaniel tearing behind, he began to slacken speed, and I immediately followed. The hare dodged the spaniel admirably, and it was with the utmost difficulty I secured him (refraining from firing the second barrel on purpose). He had been stopped by one single little pellet in the great sinew of the hind leg, which had partly cut it through. Had it been a rabbit he would certainly have escaped into a bury, and there, perhaps died, as shot wounds frequently fester: so that in stalking rabbits, or waiting for them behind a tree or bush, it is much better to take a steady aim at the head, and so avoid torturing the creature.

“Potting” is hardly sport, yet it has an advantage to those who take a pleasure in observing the ways of bird and animal. There is just sufficient interest to induce one to remain quiet and still, which is the prime condition of seeing anything; and in my own case the rabbits so patiently stalked have at last often gone free, either from their own amusing antics, or because the noise of the explosion would disturb something else under observation. In winter it is too cold; then you step quietly and yet briskly up to a fence or a gateway, and glance over, and shoot at once; or with the spaniels hunt the bunnies from the fern upon the banks, yourself one side of the hedge and the keeper the other.

In excavating his dwelling, the rabbit, thoughtless of science, constructs what may be called a natural auditorium singularly adapted for gathering the expiring vibrations of distant sound. His round tunnel bored in a sandy bank is largest at the opening, like the mouth of a trumpet, and contracts within—a form which focusses the undulations of the air. To obtain the full effect the ear should listen some short way within; but the sound, as it is thrown backwards after entering, is often sufficiently marked to be perceptible when you listen outside. The great deep ditches are dry in summer; and though shooting be not the object, yet a gun for knocking over casual vermin is a pleasant excuse for idling in a reclining position shoulder-high in fern, hidden like a skirmisher in such an entrenchment. A mighty root bulging from the slope of the bank forms a natural seat. There is a cushion of dark green moss to lean against, and the sand worked out from the burrows—one nearly on a level with the head and another lower down—has here filled up the ditch to some height, making a footstool.

In the ditch lie numbers of last year’s oak leaves, which so sturdily resist decay. All the winter and spring they were soaked by the water from the “land-springs”—as those which only run in wet weather are called—draining into it, and to that water they communicated a peculiar flavour, slightly astringent. Even moderate-sized streamlets become tainted in the latter part of the autumn by the mass of leaves they carry down, or filter through, in woodland districts. Often the cottagers draw their water from a small pool filled by such a ditch, and coated at the bottom with a thick layer of decomposing leaves. The taste of this water is strong enough to overcome the flavour of their weak tea, yet they would rather use such water than walk fifty yards to a brook. It must, however, be admitted that the brooks at that time are also tinctured with leaf, and there seems to be no harm in it.

Out from among these dead leaves in the ditch protrudes a crooked branch fallen long since from the oak, and covered with grey lichen. On the right hand a tangled thicket of bramble with its uneven-shaped stems closes the spot in, and on the left a stole of hazel rises with the parasitical “hardy fern” fringing it near the earth. The outer bark of the hazel is very thin; it is of a dark mottled hue; bruise it roughly, and the inner bark shows a bright green. The lowly ivy creeps over the bank—its leaves with five angles, and variegated with grey streaks. Through the hawthorn bushes above comes a faint but regular sound—it is the parting fibres of the grass-blades in the meadow on the other side as the cows tear them apart, steadily eating their way onwards. The odour of their breath floats heavy on the air. The sun is sinking, and there is a hush and silence.

But the rabbit-burrow here at my elbow is not silent; it seems to catch and heighten faint noises from a distance. A man is walking slowly home from his work up the lane yonder; the fall of his footsteps is distinctly rendered by the hole here. The dull thuds of a far-off mallet or “bitel” (beetle) driving in a stake are plainly audible. The thump-thump of a horse’s hoofs cantering on the sward by the roadside, though deadened by the turf, are reproduced or sharpened. Most distinct of all comes the regular sound of oars against the tholepins or rowlocks of a boat moving on the lake many fields away. So that in all probability to the rabbit his hole must be a perfect “Ear of Dionysius,” magnifying a whisper—unless, indeed, its turns and windings confuse the undulations of sound. It is observable that before the rabbit ventures forth he stays and listens just within the entrance of his burrow, where he cannot see any danger unless absolutely straight before him—a habit that may have unconsciously grown up from the apparent resonance of sound there.

Sitting thus silently on the root of the oak, presently I hear a slight rustling among the dead leaves at the bottom of the ditch. They heave up as if something was pushing underneath; and after a while, as he comes to the heap of sand thrown out by the rabbits, a mole emerges, and instantly with a shiver, as it were, of his skin throws off the particles of dust upon his fur as a dog fresh from the water sends a shower from his coat. The summer weather having dried the clay under the meadow turf and made it difficult to work, he has descended into the ditch, beneath which there is still a certain moistness, and where he can easily bore a tunnel.

It is rather rare to see a mole above ground; fortunately for him he is of diminutive size, or so glossy a fur would prove his ruin. As it is, every other old pollard willow tree along the hedge is hung with miserable moles, caught in traps, and after death suspended—like criminals swinging on a gibbet—from the end of slender willow boughs. Moles seem to breed in the woods: first perhaps because they are less disturbed there, next because under the trees the earth is usually softer, retains its moisture longer, and is easier to work. From the woods their tracks branch out, ramifying like the roads which lead from a city. They have in addition main arteries of traffic, king’s highways, along which they will journey one after the other; so that the mole-catcher, if he can discover such a road, slaughters many in succession. The heaps they throw up are awkward in mowing grass, the scythe striking against them; and in consequence of complaints of their rapid multiplication in the woods the keeper has to employ men to reduce their numbers. It is curious to note how speedily the mole buries himself in the soil; it is as if he suddenly dived into the earth.

Another slight rustling—a pause, and it is repeated; this time on the bank, among the dry grass. It is mice; they have a nervous habit of progressing in sharp, short stages. They rush forward seven or eight inches with lightning-like celerity—a dun streak seems to pass before your eye; then they stop short a moment or two, and again make another dash. This renders it difficult to observe them, especially as a single dead brown leaf is sufficient to hide one. It is so silent that they grow bold, and play their antics freely, darting to and fro, round and under the stoles, chasing each other. Sometimes they climb the bushes, running along the upper surface of the boughs that chance to be nearly horizontal. Once on a hawthorn branch in a hedge I saw a mouse descending with an acorn; he was, perhaps, five feet from the ground, and how and from whence he had got his burden was rather puzzling at first. Probably the acorn, dropping from the tree, had been caught and held in the interlacing of the bush till observed by the keen, if tiny, eyes below.

Mice have a magical way of getting into strange places. In some farmhouses they still use the ancient, old-fashioned lanterns made of tin—huge machines intended for a tallow candle, and with plates of thin translucent horn instead of glass. They are not wholly despicable; since if set on the ground and kicked over by a recalcitrant cow in the sheds, the horn does not break as glass would. These lanterns, having a handle at the top, are by it hung up to the beam in the kitchen; and sometimes to the astonishment of the servants in the quiet of the evening, they are found to be animated by some motive power, swinging to and fro and partly turning round. A mouse has got in—for the grease; but how? that is the “wonderment,” as the rustic philosophers express it; for, being hung from the beam, eight or nine feet from the stone-flagged floor, there seems no way of approach for the mouse except by “walking” on the ceiling or along and partly underneath the beam itself. If so, it would seem to be mainly by the propulsive power exerted previous to starting on the trip—just as a man can get a little way up the perpendicular side of a rick by running at it. Occasionally, no doubt, the mouse has entered when the lantern has been left opened while lighted on the ground, and so got shut in; but mice have been found in lanterns cobwebbed from long disuse.

Suddenly there peeps out from the lower rabbit-hole the stealthy reddish body of a weasel. I instinctively reach for the gun leaning against the bank, and immediately the spell is broken. The mice rush to their holes, the weasel darts back into the bowels of the earth, a rabbit that has quietly slipped out unseen into the grass bounds with eager haste to cover, and out of the oak overhead there rises, with a great clatter of wings, a wood-pigeon that had settled there.

When the pale winter sunshine falls upon the bare branches of an avenue of elms—such as so often ornament parks—they appear lit up with a faint rosy colour, which instantly vanishes on the approach of a shadow. This shimmering mirage in the boughs seems due to the myriads of lesser twigs, which at the extremities have a tinge of red, invisible at a distance till the sunbeams illuminate the trees. Beyond this passing gleam of colour, nothing relieves the blackness of the January landscape, except here and there the bright silvery bark of the birch.

For several seasons now in succession the thrush has sung on the shortest days, as though it were spring; a little later, in the early mornings, the blackbird joins, filling the copse with a chorus at the dawn. But, if the wind turns to east or north, the rooks perch on the oaks in the hedgerows in the middle of the day, puffing out their feathers and seeming to abandon all search for food as if seized with uncontrollable melancholy. Hardy as these birds are, a long frost kills them in numbers, principally by slow starvation. They die during the night, dropping suddenly from their roosting-place on the highest boughs of the great beech- rees, with a thud distinctly heard in the silence of the woods. The leaves of the beech decay so gradually as to lie in heaps beneath for months, filling up the hollows, so that an unwary passer-by may plunge knee-deep in leaves. Rooks when feeding usually cross the field facing the wind, perhaps to prevent the ruffling of their feathers.

Wood-pigeons have apparently much increased in numbers of recent years; they frequent sheltered spots where the bushes diminish the severity of the frost. Sometimes on the hills at a lonely farmhouse, where the bailiff has a long-barrelled ancient fowling-piece, he will lay a train of grain for them, and with a double charge of shot, kill many at a time.

Men have boasted of shooting twenty at once. But with an ordinary gun it is not credible; and the statement, without wilful exaggeration, may arise from confusion in counting, for it is a fact that some of the older uneducated country labourers cannot reckon correctly. It is not unusual in parishes to hear of a cottage woman who has had twenty children. Upon investigation the real number is found to be sixteen or seventeen, yet nothing on earth will convince the mother that she has not given birth to a score. They get hazy in figures when exceeding a dozen.

A pigeon is not easily brought down—the quills are so stiff and strong that the shot, if it comes aslant, will glance off. Many pigeons roost in the oaks of the hedges, choosing by preference one well hung with ivy, and when it is a moonlit night afford tolerable sport. It requires a gun on each side of the hedge. A stick flung up awakes the birds; they rise with a rush and clatter, and in the wildness of their flight and the dim light are difficult to hit. There is a belief that pigeons are partially deaf. If stalked in the daytime they take little heed of footsteps or slight noises which would alarm other creatures; but, on the other hand, they are quick of eye, and are gone directly anything suspicious appears in sight. You may get quite under them and shoot them on the bough at night. It is not their greater wakefulness but the noise they make in rising which renders them good protectors of preserves; it alarms other birds and can be heard at some distance.

When a great mound and hedgerow is grubbed up, the men engaged in the work often anticipate making a considerable bag of the rabbits, whose holes riddle it in every direction, thinking to dig them out even of those innermost chambers whence the ferret has sometimes been unable to dislodge them. But this hope is almost always disappointed; and when the grub-axe and spade have laid bare the “buries” only recently teeming with life, not a rabbit is found. By some instinct they have discovered the approach of destruction, and as soon as the first few yards of the hedge are levelled secretly depart. After a “bury” has been ferreted it is some time before another colony takes possession: this is seemingly from the intense antipathy of the rabbit to the smell of the ferret. Even when shot at and pressed by dogs, a rabbit in his hasty rush will often pass a hole which would have afforded instant shelter because it has been recently ferreted.

At this season the labourers are busy with “beetle” (pronounced “bitel”)—a huge mallet—and iron wedges, splitting the tough elm-butts and logs for firewood. In old times a cottager here and there with a taste for astrology used to construct an almanack by rule of thumb, predicting the weather for the ensuing twelve months from the first twelve days of January. As the wind blew on those days so the prevailing weather of the months might be foretold. The aged men, however, say that in this divination the old style must be adhered to, for the sequence of signs and omens still follows the ancient reckoning, which ought never to have been interfered with.

Chapter Six.

His Enemies—Birds and Beasts of Prey—Trespassers.

There are other enemies of game life besides human poachers whose numbers must be kept within bounds to ensure successful sport. The thirst of the weasel for blood is insatiable, and it is curious to watch the persistency with which he will hunt down the particular rabbit he has singled out for destruction. Through the winding subterranean galleries of the “buries” with their cross-passages, “blind” holes and “pop” holes (i.e. those which end in undisturbed soil, and those which are simply bored from one side of the bank to the other, being only used for temporary concealment), never once in the dark close caverns losing sight or scent of his victim, he pursues it with a species of eager patience. It is generally a long chase. The rabbit makes a dash ahead and a double or two, and then halts, usually at the mouth of a hole: perhaps to breathe. By-and-by the weasel, baffled for a few minutes, comes up behind. Instantly the rabbit slips over the bank outside and down the ditch for a dozen yards, and there enters the “bury” again. The weasel follows, gliding up the bank with a motion not unlike that of the snake; for his body and neck are long and slender and his legs short. Apparently he is not in haste, but rather lingers over the scent. This is repeated five or six times, till the whole length of the hedgerow has been traversed—sometimes up and down again. The chase may be easily observed by any one who will keep a little in the background. Although the bank be tenanted by fifty other rabbits, past whose hiding-place the weasel must go, yet they scarcely take any notice. One or two whom he has approached too closely bolt out and in again; but as a mass the furry population remain quiet, as if perfectly aware that they are not yet marked out for slaughter.

At last, having exhausted the resources of the bank the rabbit rushes across the field to a hedgerow, perhaps a hundred yards away. Here the wretched creature seems to find a difficulty in obtaining admittance. Hardly has he disappeared in a hole before he comes out again, as if the inhabitants of the place refused to give him shelter. For many animals have a strong tribal feeling, and their sympathy, like that of man in a savage state, is confined within their special settlement.

With birds it is the same: rooks, for instance, will not allow a strange pair to build in their trees, but drive them off with relentless beak, tearing down the half-formed nest, and taking the materials to their own use. The sentiment, “If Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, what good shall my life do me?” appears to animate the breasts of gregarious creatures of this kind. Rooks intermarry generation after generation; and if a black lover brings home a foreign bride they are forced to build in a tree at some distance. Near large rookeries several such outlying colonies may be seen.

The rabbit, failing to find a cover, hides in the grass and dry rushes; but across the meadow, stealing along the furrow, comes the weasel; and, shift his place how he may, in the end, worn out and weary, bunny succumbs, and the sharp teeth meet in the neck behind the ear, severing the vein. Often in the end the rabbit runs to earth in a hole which is a cul-de-sac, with his back towards the pursuer. The weasel, unable to get at the poll, which is his desire, will mangle the hinder parts in a terrible manner—as will the civilised ferret under similar conditions. Now and then the rabbit, scratching and struggling, fills the hole in the rear with earth, and so at the last moment chokes off his assailant and finds safety almost in the death-agony. In the woods, once the rabbit is away from the “buries,” the chase really does resemble a hunt; from furze-bush to bracken, from fern to rough grass, round and round, backwards, doubling, to and fro, and all in vain.

At such times, eager for blood, the weasel will run right across your path, almost close enough to be kicked. Pursue him in turn, and if there be no hedge or hole near, if you have him in the open, he will dart hither and thither right between your legs, uttering a sharp short note of anger and alarm, something composed of a tiny bark and a scream. He is easily killed with a stick when you catch him in the open, for he is by no means swift; but if a hedge be near it is impossible to secure him.

Weasels frequently hunt in couples, and sometimes more than two will work together. I once saw five, and have heard of eight. The five I saw were working a sandy bank drilled with holes, from which the rabbits in wild alarm were darting in all directions. The weasels raced from hole to hole and along the sides of the bank exactly like a pack of hounds, and seemed intensely excited. Their manner of hunting resembles the motions of ants; these insects run a little way very swiftly, then stop, turn to the right or left, make a short détour, and afterwards on again in a straight line. So the pack of weasels darted forward, stopped, went from side to side, and then on a yard or two, and repeated the process. To see their reddish heads thrust for a moment from the holes, then withdrawn to reappear at another, would have been amusing had it not been for the reflection that their frisky tricks would assuredly end in death. They ran their quarry out of the bank and into a wood, where I lost sight of them. The pack of eight was seen by a labourer returning down a woodland lane from work one afternoon. He told me he got into the ditch, half from curiosity to watch them, and half from fear—laughable as that may seem—for he had heard the old people tell stories of men in the days when the corn was kept for years in barns, and so bred hundreds of rats, being attacked by those vicious brutes. He said they made a noise, crying to each other, short sharp snappy sounds; but the pack of five I myself saw hunted in silence.

Stoats, though not so numerous as weasels, probably do quite as much injury, being larger, swifter, stronger, and very bold, sometimes entering sheds close to dwelling-houses. The labouring people—at least, the elder folk—declare that they have been known to suck the blood of infants left asleep in the cradle upon the floor, biting the child behind the ear. They hunt in couples also—seldom in larger numbers. I have seen three at work together, and with a single shot killed two out of the trio. In elegance of shape they surpass the weasel, and the colour is brighter. Their range of destruction seems only limited by their strength: they attack anything they can manage.

The keeper looks upon weasel and stoat as bitter foes, to be ruthlessly exterminated with shot and gin. He lays to their charge deadly crimes of murder, the death of rabbits, hares, birds, the theft and destruction of his young broods, even occasional abstraction of a chicken close to his very door, despite the dogs chained there. They are not easily shot, being quick to take shelter at the sight of a dog, and when hard hit with the pellets frequently escaping, though perhaps to die. Both weasel and stoat, and especially the latter, will snap viciously at the dog that overtakes them, even when sore wounded, always aiming to fix their teeth in his nose, and fighting savagely to the last gasp. The keeper slays a wonderful number in the course of a year, yet they seem as plentiful as ever. He traps perhaps more than he shoots.

It is not always safe to touch a stoat caught in a trap; he lies apparently dead, but lift him up, and instantly his teeth are in your hand, and it is said such wounds sometimes fester for months. Stoats are tough as leather: though severely nipped by the iron fangs of the gin, struck on the head with the butt of the gun, and seemingly quite lifeless, yet, if thrown on the grass and left, you will often find on returning to the place in a few hours’ time that the animal is gone. Warned by experiences of this kind, the keeper never picks up a stoat till “settled” with a stick or shot, and never leaves him till he is nailed to the shed. Stoats sometimes emit a disgusting odour when caught in a trap. The keeper has no mercy for such vermin, though he thinks some of his feathered enemies are even more destructive.

Twice a year the hawks and other birds of prey find a great feast spread before them; first, in the spring and early summer, when the hedges and fields are full of young creatures scarcely able to use their wings, and again in the severe weather of winter when cold and hunger have enfeebled them.

It is difficult to understand upon what principle the hawk selects his prey. He will pass by with apparent disdain birds that are within easy reach. Sometimes a whole cloud of birds will surround and chase him out of a field; and he pursues the even tenour of his way unmoved, though sparrow and finch almost brush against his talons. Perhaps he has the palate of an epicure, and likes to vary the dish of flesh torn alive from the breast of partridge, chicken, or mouse. He does not eat all he kills; he will sometimes carry a bird a considerable distance and then drop the poor thing. Only recently I saw a hawk, pursued by twenty or thirty finches, and other birds across a ploughed field, suddenly drop a bird from his claws as he passed over a hedge. The bird fell almost perpendicularly, with a slight fluttering of the wings, just sufficient to preserve it from turning-head-over-heels, and on reaching the hedge could not hold to the first branches, but brought up on one near the ground. It was a sparrow, and was not apparently hurt—simply breathless from fright.

All kinds of birds are sometimes seen with the tail feathers gone: have they barely escaped in this condition from the clutches of the hawk? Blackbirds, thrushes, and pigeons are frequently struck: the hawk seems to lay them on the back, for if he is disturbed that is the position his victim usually remains in. Though hawks do not devour every morsel, yet as a rule nothing is found but the feathers—usually scattered in a circle. Even the bones disappear: probably ground vermin make away with the fragments.

The hawk is not always successful in disabling his prey. I have seen a partridge dashed to the ground, get up again, and escape. The bird was flying close to the ground when struck; the hawk alighted on the grass a few yards further in a confused way as if overbalanced, and before he could reach the partridge the latter was up and found shelter in a thick hedge.

The power to hover or remain suspended in one place in the air does not, as some have supposed, depend upon the assistance of the wind, against which the hawk inclines the plane of his wings like an artificial kite. He can accomplish the feat when the air is quite still and no wind stirring. Nor is he the only bird capable of doing this, although the others possess the power in a much less degree. The common lark sometimes hovers for a few moments low down over the young green corn, as if considering upon what spot to alight. The flycatcher contrives to suspend itself momentarily, but it is by a rapid motion of the wings, and is done when the first snap at the insect has failed. It is the rook that hovers by the assistance of the wind as he rises with his broad, flat wings over a hedge and meets its full force, which counterpoises his onward impetus and sustains him stationary, sometimes compelling him to return with the current.

Hawks have a habit of perching on the tops of bare poles or dead trees, and are there frequently caught in the gin the keeper sets for them. The cuckoo, which so curiously resembles the hawk, has the same habit, and will perch on a solitary post in the middle of a field, or on those upright stones sometimes placed for the cattle to rub themselves against. Though “wild as a hawk” is a proverbial phrase, yet hawks are bold enough to enter gardens, and even take their prey from the ivy which grows over the gable of the house. The destruction they work among the young partridges in early summer is very great. The keeper is always shooting them, yet they come just the same, or nearly; for, if he exterminates them one season, others arrive from a distance. He is particularly careful to look out for their nests, so as to kill both the old birds and to prevent their breeding. There is little difficulty in finding the nest (which is built in a high tree) when the young get to any size; their cry is unmistakable and audible at some distance.

Against sparrow-hawk and kestrel, and the rarer kinds that occasionally come down from the mountains of the north or the west—the magazines of these birds—the keeper wages ceaseless war.

So too with jay and magpie; he shoots them down whenever they cross his path, unless, as is sometimes the case, specially ordered to save the latter. For the magpie of recent years has become much less common. Though still often seen in some districts, there are other localities where this odd bird is nearly extinct. It does not seem to breed now, and you may ask to be shown a nest in vain. A magpie’s nest in an orchard that I knew of was thought so great a curiosity that every now and then people came to see it from a distance. In other places the bird may be frequently met with, almost always with his partner; and so jays usually go in couples, even in winter.

The jay is a handsome bird, whose chatter enlivens the plantations, and whose bright plumage contrasts pleasantly with the dull green of the firs. A pair will work a hedge in a sportsmanlike manner, one on one side, the second on the other; while the tiny wren, which creeps through the bushes as a mouse through the grass, cowers in terror, or slips into a knot-hole till the danger is past. When the husbandman has sown his field with the drill, hardly has he left the gateway before a legion of small birds pours out from the hedgerows and seeks for the stray seeds. Then you may see the jay hop out among them with an air of utter innocence, settling on the larger lumps of clay for convenience of view, swelling out his breast in pride of beauty, jerking his tail up and down, as if to say, Admire me. With a sidelong hop and two flaps of the wing, he half springs, half glides to another coign of vantage. The small birds, sparrows, chaffinches, greenfinches—instantly scatter swiftly right and left, not rising, but with a hasty run for a yard or so. They know well his murderous intent, and yet are so busy they only put themselves just out of reach, aware that, unlike the hawk, he cannot strike at a distance. This game will continue for a long time; the jay all the while affecting an utter indifference, yet ever on the alert till he spies his chance. It is the young or weakly partridges and pheasants that fall to the jay and magpie.

The keeper also destroys owls—on suspicion. Now and then some one argues with the keeper, assuring him that they do not touch game, but this he regards as pure sentimentalism. “Look at his beak,” is his steady reply. “Tell me that that there bill weren’t made to tear a bird’s breast to bits? Just see here—all crooked and pointed: why, an owl have got a hooked bill like an eagle. It stands to reason as he must be in mischief.” So the poor owls are shot and trapped, and nailed to the side of the shed.

But upon the crow the full vials of the keeper’s wrath are poured, and not without reason. The crow among birds is like the local professional among human poachers: he haunts the place and clears everything—it would be hard to say what comes amiss to him. He is the impersonation of murder. His long, stout, pointed beak is a weapon of deadly power, wielded with surprising force by the sinewy neck. From a tiny callow fledgling, fallen out of the thrush’s nest, to the partridge or a toothsome young rabbit, it is all one to him. Even the swift leveret is said sometimes to fall a prey, being so buffeted by the sooty wings of the assassin and so blinded by the sharp beak striking at his eyes as to be presently overcome. For the crow has a terrible penchant for the morsel afforded by another’s eyes: I have seen the skull of a miserable thrush, from which a crow rose and slowly sailed away, literally split as if by a chisel—doubtless by the blow that destroyed its sight. Birds that are at all diseased or weakly, as whole broods sometimes are in wet unkindly seasons, rabbits touched by the dread parasite that causes the fatal “rot,” the young pheasant straying from the coop, even the chicken at the lone farmstead, where the bailiff only lives and is in the fields all day—these are the victims of the crow.

Crows work almost always in pairs—it is remarkable that hawks, jays, magpies, crows, nearly all birds of prey, seem to remain in pairs the entire year—and when they have once tasted a member of a brood, be it pheasant, partridge, or chicken, they stay till they have cleared off the lot. Slow of flight and somewhat lazy of habit, they will perch for hours on a low tree, croaking and pruning their feathers; they peer into every nook and corner of the woodlands, not like the swift hawk, who circles over and is gone and in a few minutes is a mile away. So that neither the mouse in the furrow nor the timid partridge cowering in the hedge can escape their leering eyes.

Therefore the keeper smites them hip and thigh whenever he finds them; and if he comes across the nest, placed on the broad top of a pollard-tree—not in the branches, but on the trunk—sends his shot through it to smash the eggs. For if the young birds come to maturity they will remain in that immediate locality for months, working every hedge and copse and ditch with cruel pertinacity. In consequence of this unceasing destruction the crow has become much rarer of late, and its nest is hardly to be found in many woods. They breed in the scattered trees of the meadows and fields, especially where no regular game preservation is attempted, and where no keeper goes his rounds. Even to this day a lingering superstition associates this bird with coming evil; and I have heard the women working in the fields remark that such and such a farmer then lying ill would not recover, for a crow had been seen to fly over his house but just above the roof-tree.

Trespassers give him a good deal of trouble, for a great wood seems to have an irresistible attraction for all sorts of semi-Bohemians, besides those who come for poaching purposes. The keeper thinks it much more difficult to watch a wood like this, which is continuous and all in one, than it is to guard a number of detached plantations, though in the aggregate they may cover an equal area. It is impossible to see into it any distance; to walk round it is a task of time. A poacher may slink from tree to tree and from thicket to thicket, and, unless the dogs chance to sniff him out, may lie hidden in tangled masses of fern and bramble, while the keeper passes not ten yards away. But plantations laid out in regular order with broad open spaces, sometimes with small fields between, do not afford anything like cover for human beings. If a man is concealed in one of these copses, and finds that the keeper or his assistants are about to go through it, he must move or be caught; and in moving he has to pass across an open space, and is nearly sure to be detected. In a continuous wood of large extent, if he hears the keepers coming he has but to slip as rapidly and silently as possible to one side, and often has the pleasure to see them pass right over the spot where only recently he was lying.

Therefore, although a wood is much more beautiful from an artistic point of view, with its lovely greens in spring and yellow and browns in autumn, its shades and recesses and fern-strewn glades, yet if a gentleman desires to imitate the monarch who laid out the New Forest and plant wood, and his object be simply game, the keeper is of opinion that the somewhat stiff and trim plantations are preferable. They are generally of fir; and fir is the most difficult of trees to slip past, being decidedly of an obstructive turn. The boughs grow so close to the ground that unless you crawl you cannot go under them. The trunks—unlike those of many other trees—will flourish so near together that the extremities of the branches touch and almost interweave, and they are rough and unpleasant to push through. To shoot or trap, or use a net or other poacher’s implement, is very difficult in a young fir plantation, because of this thickness of growth; so that in a measure the tree itself protects the game. Then the cover afforded is warm and liked by the birds; and so for many reasons the fir has become a great favourite, notwithstanding that it is of very little value when finally cut down.

For fox preserving firs are hardly so suitable, because the needles, or small sharp leaves, quite destroy all undergrowth—not only by the turpentine they contain, but by forming a thick mat, as it were, upon the earth. This mass of needles takes years, to all appearance, to decay, and no young green blade or shoot can get through it; besides which the fir-boughs above make a roof almost impenetrable to air and light, the chief necessities of a plant’s existence. Foxes like a close warm undergrowth, such as furze, sedges when the ground is dry, the underwood that springs up between the ash-stoles. Although constantly out of doors—if such a phrase be allowable—foxes seem to dislike cold and draught, as do weasels and all their kind, notably ferrets. But for pure game preserving, and for convenience of watching, the keeper thinks the detached plantations of fir preferable. Doubtless he is professionally right; and yet somehow a great wood seems infinitely more English and appeals to the heart far more powerfully, with its noble oaks and beeches and ash trees, its bramble-thickets and brake, and endless beauties which a life of study will not exhaust.

But the semi-Bohemians detested by the keeper do not prowl about the confines of a wood with artistic views; their objects are extremely prosaic, and though not always precisely injurious, yet they annoy him beyond endurance. He is like a spider in the centre of a vast spreading web, and the instant the most outlying threads—in this case represented by fences—are broken he is all agitation till he has expelled the intruder. Men and boys in the winter come stealing into the wood where the blackthorn thickets are for sloes, which are reputed to be improved by the first frosts, and are used for making sloe gin, etc. Those they gather they sell, of course; and although the pursuit may be perfectly harmless in itself, how is the keeper to be certain that, if opportunity offered, these gentry would not pounce upon a rabbit or anything else? Others come for the dead wood; and it does on the face of it seem hard to deny an old woman who has worked all her days in the field a bundle of fallen branches rotting under the trees. The accumulations of such dead sticks in some places are astonishing: the soil under the ash-poles must slowly rise from the mass of decaying wood and ultimately become greatly enriched by this natural manure.

When a hard clay soil is revealed by the operations for draining a meadow, and the crust of black or reddish mould on which the sweet green grass flourishes is seen to be but spade-deep, the idea naturally occurs that that thin crust must have been originated by some similar process to what is now going on in the ash wood. Those six or nine inches of mould perhaps represent several centuries of forest. But if the keeper admits the old woman shivering over her embers in the cottage to pick up these dead boughs, how can he tell what further tricks others may be up to? The privilege has often been offered and as often abused, until at last it has been finally withdrawn—not only because of the poaching carried on under the cloak of picking up dead wood, but because the intruders tore down fine living branches from the trees and spoiled and disfigured them without mercy. Sometimes gentlemen go to the expense of having wood periodically gathered and distributed among the poor, which is a considerate system and worthy of imitation where possible.

Occasionally men come to search for walking-sticks, for which there is now a regular trade. Just at present “natural” sticks—that is, those cut from the stem with the bark on—are rather popular, both for walking and for umbrella handles, which causes this kind of search to be actively prosecuted. The best “natural” sticks are those which when growing were themselves young trees, sprung up direct from seed or shoots—saplings, which are stronger and more pliant than those cut from a stole or pollard. To cut such a stick as this is equivalent to destroying a future tree, and of course a good deal of mischief may be easily done in a short time.

Another kind of ash stick which is in demand is one round which there runs a spiral groove. This spiral is caused by the bine of honeysuckle or woodbine, and in some cases by wild hops. These climbing plants grow in great profusion when they once get fixed in the soil, and twist their tendrils or “leaders” round and round the tall, straight, young ash-poles with so tight a grasp as to partly strangle the stick and form a deep screw-like groove in it. When well polished, or sometimes in its rough state, such a stick attracts customers; and so popular is this “style” of thing that the spiral groove is frequently cut by the lathe in more expensive woods than ash. Wild hops are common in many places, and will almost destroy a hedge or a little copse by the power with which they twine their coils about stem and branch. Young oak saplings, in the same way, are frequently cut; and the potential tree which might have grown large enough to form part of a ship’s timbers is sold for a shilling.

Holly is another favourite wood for sticks, and fetches more money than oak or ash, on account of its ivory-like whiteness when peeled. To get a good stick with a knob to it frequently necessitates a considerable amount of cutting and chopping, and does far more damage than the loss of the stick itself represents. Neither blackthorn nor crab-tree seem so popular as they once were for this purpose.

In the autumn scores of men, women, and children scour the hedges and woods for acorns, which bring a regular price per bushel or sack, affording a valuable food for pigs. Others seek elderberries to sell for making wine, and for a few weeks a trade is done in blackberries. Chair-menders and basket-makers frequent the shore of the little mere or lake looking for bulrushes or flags: the old rush-bottomed chairs are still to be found in country houses, and require mending; and flag-baskets are much used.

Hazel-nuts and filberts perhaps cause more trouble than all the rest; this fruit is now worth money, and in some counties the yield of nuts is looked forward to in the same way as any other crop—as in Kent, where cob-nuts are cultivated, and where the disorderly hop-pickers are great thieves. I have heard of owners of copses losing ten or fifteen pounds’ worth of nuts by a single raid. Here, in this wood, no attempt is made to obtain profit from the fruit, yet it gives rise to much trouble. The nut-stealers take no care in pulling down the boughs, but break them shamefully, destroying entire bushes; and for this reason in many places, where nutting was once freely permitted, it is now rigidly repressed. Just before the nuts become ripe they are gathered by men employed on the place, and thrown down in sackfuls, making great heaps by the public footpaths—ocular evidence that it is useless to enter the wood a-nutting.

The keeper thinks that these trespassers grow more coarsely mischievous year by year. He can recollect when the wood in a measure was free and open, and, provided a man had not got a gun or was not suspected of poaching, he might roam pretty much at large; while the resident labouring people went to and fro by the nearest short cut they could find. But whether the railways bring rude strangers with no respect for the local authorities, or whether “tramps” have become more numerous, it is certain that only by constant watchfulness can downright destruction be prevented. It is not only the game preserved within that closes these beautiful woodlands to the public, but the wanton damage to tree and shrub, the useless, objectless mischief so frequently practised. For instance, a column of smoke, curling like a huge snake round the limbs of a great tree and then floating away from the topmost branches, is a singular spectacle, so opposed to the ordinary current of ideas as to be certain of attracting the passer-by. It is the work, of course, of some mischievous lout who has set fire to the hollow interior of the tree.

Such a tree, as previously pointed out, is the favourite resort of bird and insect-life. The heedless mischief of the bird-keeping boys, or the ploughlads rambling about on Sunday, destroys this Hôtel de Ville of the forest or hedgerow, the central house of assembly of the birds. To light a fire seems one of the special delights of these lads, and sometimes of men who should have learned better; and to light it in a hollow tree is the highest flight of genius. A few handfuls of withered grass and dead fern, half a dozen dry sticks, a lucifer-match, and the thing is done. The hollow within the tree is shaped like an inverted funnel, large at the bottom and decreasing upwards, where at the pointed roof one thin streak of daylight penetrates. This formation is admirably adapted to “draw” a fire at the bottom, and so, once lit, it is not easily put out. The “touchwood” smoulders and smokes immensely, and a great black column rises in the air. So it will go on smouldering and smoking for days till nothing but a charred stump be left. Now and then there is sufficient sap yet remaining in the bark and outer ring of wood to check the fire when it reaches it; and finally it dies out, being unable to burn the green casing of the trunk. Even then, so strong is the vital force, the oak may stand for years and put forth leaves on its branches—leaves which, when dead, will linger, loth to fall, almost through the winter, rustling in the wind, till the buds of spring push them off.

Graver mischief is sometimes committed with the lucifer-match, and with more of the set purpose of destruction. In the vast expanse of furze outside the wood on the high ground the huntsmen are almost certain of a find, and, if they can get between the fox and the wood, of a rattling burst along the edge of the downs; no wonder, therefore, that both they and the keeper set store by this breadth of “bush.” To this great covert more than once some skulking scoundrel has set fire, taking good care to strike his match well to windward, so that the flames might drive across the whole, and to chose a wind which would also endanger the wood. Now nothing flares up with such a sudden fierceness as furze, and there is no possibility of stopping it. With a loud crackling and swaying of pointed tongues of flame visible miles away even at noontide, and a cloud of smoke, the rift rolls on, licking up grass and fern and heath; and its hot breath goes before it, and the blast rises behind it. As on the beach the wave seems to break at the foot and then in an instant the surf runs away along the sand, so from its first start the flame widens out right and left with a greedy eagerness, and what five minutes ago was but a rolling bonfire is now a wall of fire a quarter of a mile broad, and swelling as it goes.