There could be no disputing that I had got a thorough fright, but after a few weeks 1 had so far got the better of it that I went out again on the same quest. One of the poachers, who was a keenly observant fellow, knew a meadow where a Hare came off the hills to feed every night, and we accordingly started about eight o'clock one evening to try to catch her. When we arrived at the gateway by which she entered, a recently-fallen shower of snow showed plainly that she was in the field. littleA net was hung lightly across by means of a bob of sheep's wool thrust into the interstices of the stone wall on either side. I remained crouched down behind the fence with one of my companions, whilst the other and a rough-haired cur went by a circuitous route to the far side of the field.

In about ten minutes we heard a scuffling kind of rush, and an instant afterwards the net flew oif the gateway in a great brown ball and rolled several

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feet along the ground, and the still night air was rent by the most piteous child-like skirling I ever had the ill-fortune to hear. The noise was of short duration, however, for the poacher with whom I stood threw himself upon the Hare and net and ended poor Pussy's squealing for ever. The dog

HARE-NET ON GATE.

never uttered a sound of any kind, and I only saw it once as it peeped between the bars of the gate through which the victim had come until we all met behind an old barn in a lonely place half a mile away.

Hares will often take a net set in this way in broad daylight if they are hard pressed by a swift dog, and the accompanying pictures, taken by special arrangement with the man in them, illustrate how the trick is done.

FT^rsrnArixa the poach khs. it.",

I knew a cininiiii;' old ^-amekeeper in Yorksliiic who usod to frustrate the efforts of people who practised this kind oi poacliino- by what he called " mistetching '' the Hares on his beat every autumn. He netted as many of them as he could himself, and then turned them k)Ose au'ain. The consequence was that a Hare that had once struiziiled within the meshes of a net would rarely go through a gateway or sheep-creep (a hole in a stone wall to let sheep through from one tield to another) unless absolutely forced to do so by an exceedingly swift dog-. I have seen a Hare which this man had had in a net leap a stone fence quite six feet high. She bounded on to it sideways, and then leapt quietly down (m the other side.

These animals have a peculiar habit which they

always practise just before j^oin^- on to their forms. It looks like a reasoned action deliberately executed to mislead prowling* enemies that track them by the scent left in their foot^^rints. It consists of travelling- almost straight for a given distance, and then doubling back right along their own path again thirty or forty yards, suddeidy leaving it altogether by a tremendous side-bound, and going away at right angles to their original })ath for some distance before retiring to rest. This curious |)er-formance is generally gone through only once. However, I have known it repeated two or three times before a fastidious animal had become satisfied with its daylight tpuirters. When snow lies thick upon the ground and the wind lias drifted it, Hares often make their forms in a peculiar maimer. It is called in the North of England "coaving" (undoubtedly a corruption of caving), and consists of driving a tunnel almost through a sloping drift of snow and then sitting-all day at the end of it.

Many snowdrifts do n(jt touch the wall they are driven against, and there is frequently room for a man to walk in comfort between them.

I once saw a Hare in a burrow of this kind, and she had made a small hole as big as a man's waistcoat button through the front of the drift, and it. Poachershad one eye tixed close up against sometimes succeed in throwing a net over the poor creatures as they sit in these snow l)iu-rows.

Occasionally Hares are shot on l)riglil moonlight nights as they feed upon the snow; and 1 knew one old poacher who, though in easy circumstances, had the spirit of the thing so strongly in his blood that, even when bent doubU' with rheumatism, he would leave the warm lii-eside of his farmhouse.

and iiuluce one of the men-servants to carry his g-un for him v.'hilst lie hobbled })ainfully alon*;- on two sticks. As soon as the old fellow got a shot his younger companion used to bolt with the dead Hare and gun at the top of his speed, and leave his employer to crawl home at his leisure and without sign of guilt. This was, of course, before the Ground Game Act placed Hares in the hands of farmers.

I recollect another old farmer whose greed rather than original instincts prompted him to set steel gins in watercourse-holes, through stone walls, on his farm for the Hares that used them; but he had the spirit of his enterprise l)roken by a good-natured keeper who, after playing off all sorts of tricks on the old fellow, ridiculed him into good behaviour itby hacking off a dead Sheep's leg and putting into one of his traps in such a way as to suggest that the animal had been caught and had torn

it off. A Hare's love of parsley is well known by most rural folks, and I rememljer a quarryman who turned to account this knowledge and a bit of the herb growing in his back garden which abutted on some good game ground. I i3elieve it is a popular belief that Rabbits do not leave their nesting burrows open during the daytime until their young ones, which are born blind and remain so for eight or nine days, can see, and that if they are touched by human hands before they have acquired the sense of sight the mother will forsake them. We have proved both these canons of rural natural history to have, at any rate, their exceptions.

In order to give some idea of the effectual manner in which a Rabbit can hide the whereabouts of its nest, we made a photograph of part of a hedge-

RABBIT BURROW (CLOSED).

RABBIT BURROW (OPEN).

hank with one in it before the mouth of the burrow luul been opened, and another after the owner had scratched the earth away. Rabbits open their nesting burrows and suckle their young by night, closing them tightly with earth again when they leave them. I had a nest under close observation last spring, and was much interested to tind that its owner scattered some old hay from a sheep foddering station close by over the mould with wdiicli she filled the entrance to the l)urrow every time she left it, a procedure which materially lessened its chances of being discovered.

When the small amount of earth lying patted down flat outside a Rabbit's nest, and the length and diameter of the burrow from which it has been excavated are compared, it always appears to me as if the owner must have taken some of the mould right away so as to lessen the conspicuousness of things, but I have not been able to gather any corroborative facts on this 2)oint.

During the early s})ring great numbers of young Rabbits are drowned in their nests through heavy ranifalls. Accidents of this kind no doubt conti'i-bute largely to keeping their nundjers in this country in check, for such is the remarkable fecundity of the aninud that it has been calculated a pair woidd, under the most favourable circumstances ])ossible, produce not less than 1,274,810 in the short space of four years.

I have proved that they will increase the length of their nesting bun'ows after young ones have been l)oi'ii, if an injury to the thin crust of earth immediately over them should ap])ear to j('()pardise their safety. A friend of mine, on whose farm a nundjer of Rabl)its l)reed every year, cut the sod innnediately over the n(\st of (jne away in

;

the.spring- of 1800 in order to show its downy little occupants to his wife. I visited the place a week later, and upon examination discovered that the burrow had been dug quite six inches further in, and most of the nest and young ones transferred to the new quarters. There was also a quantity of newly-excavated earth outside the mouth of the burrow. As the land in which the nest was situated was very wet, probably a leakage caused through the cutting of the sod directly over the young ones induced their mother to shift their quarters.

Rabbits are killed b}" poachers in various ways, most of which are well known to everybody. The animal's habit of using a fixed path in journeying between its burrow and feeding ground renders it liable to being caught in a snare during the night and although some poachers are punctilious in regard to the suitability of an evening for putting snares down, I have seen a Rabbit run leisurely into one in l)road daylight. I was walking quietly alongside a wood in the neighbourhood of Enfield one bright Sunday afternoon last year, when I observed three Rabbits run down the field I was in towards the hedge dividing it from a wood. When within eight or ten yards of their goal, I noticed one of them suddenly turn a somersault. I was somewhat surprised to see him stay and repeat this gymnastic performance after his companions had disajjpeared through the hedge. He continued to tumble head over heels until I got close uy) to him, when I discovered that he was in a snare. Although in very good condition Ijotli his ears were a black swarming mass of fleas. I do not think it is at all generally known that Rabbits will sometimes turn and bite their captors.

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I was once severely bitten by one when a boy, and was greatly afraid I should die from hydrophobia in consequence, until I discovered by diligent inquiry that it was an accident which occasionally fell to the lot of gamekeepers and poachers.

RABBITS AT PLAY

I also learned something of a still rarer accident which sometimes befalls an unlucky Ferret. If one be turned into a burrow, and finding a Rabbit fails to bolt it, a second is generally sent along to help him. Instead, however, of exerting their combined efforts to accomplish this, they probably, through jealousy, fall upon each other and one of them is generally dug out dead.

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