It is the inevitable, if regretful, duty of the recorder of the past to
have to inscribe “Obiit” over the mention of many an individual who comes
under his notice, and this applies to the four-footed animals, as well as
to the birds and the wild flowers, of Woodhall. Of some of the most
interesting, it must be said that they are gone, and their place knoweth
them no more.
The first I may mention is the Badger. This animal used to be fairly
common in these parts; whether it is now quite extinct is difficult to
say, because its nocturnal habits, and very retiring disposition, prevent
it coming much under the observation of man. It is supposed still to
harbour in the rocks at Holbeck, some nine miles from Woodhall. A
specimen was captured at Woodhall about the year 1885, frequenting some
rabbit holes in a bank, at that time belonging to myself, and within 100
yards of the present blacksmith’s shop on the Stixwould-road. Another
was captured a few years before in the adjoining parish of Martin, which
I have stuffed. At an earlier date one was taken by a man named Thomas
Norris, at Well Syke Wood, some two miles from Woodhall Spa.
About the year 1889 one was seen for some months in the Northern Dar
Wood, in Woodhall. The keeper, doubtless with murderous intent, tried to
find its burrow, but did not succeed. It was not killed so far as is
known, but disappeared. Another was killed in June, 1898, at Mavis
Enderby. In 1903, two badgers were killed at Asgarby, and one at Asterby
in 1904. In 1899 our local pack of hounds, the South Wold, ran a badger,
instead of a fox, over several fields, until he took to ground, and was
afterwards killed by one of the party, as he kept his head out of the
hole. It should hardly be a moot point whether the extermination of the
badger is an advantage or not, although a good deal has been written on
both sides of the subject. Its skin makes the “sporran” of the kilted
Highlander, and its hair makes our shaving brushes. Though it may be
found occasionally in an enlarged rabbit burrow, it is not there to prey
on the rabbit; for (as Major Fisher assures us in his interesting work,
“Out-door Life in England,” 1896) its diet is mainly vegetarian, and what
animal food it indulges in is mice, frogs, an occasional hedgehog, with
beetles, snails, and worms; and especially it is very partial to the
grubs of the wasp. It is very cleanly in its habits; sometimes occupying
the same “earth” with the fox, to the great advantage of the latter, as
it clears away the putrid matter brought in by Reynard, and so prevents
his contracting the mange, to which he is very liable, from his own
untidy propensities. {53a} Being thus not only comparatively harmless,
but also serviceable to the sportsman, it is much to be regretted that
continued war should be waged against these creatures. {53b}
Unfortunately, old prejudices are but slowly overcome. By a statute
enacted in the 8th year of Queen Elizabeth, chap. 15, and confirmed by
subsequent statutes, provision was made for the destruction of what were
then deemed “noysome foule and vermine,” and the price of 1s. was set on
the head of every “fox and grey,” i.e., badger. This act continued in
force down to 1863. But the old ideas concerning the badger have been
long exploded among those who know anything of its habits. The badger,
further, is the only representative of the bear family in this country.
A scion of that race, whose bones are found in our fossiliferous caverns,
co-eval with the mammoth and prehistoric man, he, if any of our existing
animals, may boast of “blue blood in his veins.” The nobleman, whose
ancestry came over with the conqueror, is a _parvenu_ in comparison with
him. Surely the principle of _Noblesse oblige_ alone should ensure for
him a shelter in our woods and wastes. {54a}
The next to be mentioned of our _ferœ næturæ_, also the object of
constant persecution, and growing, consequently, rarer every year, is the
Otter. The parish of Thimbleby adjoins Woodhall Spa on the north,
indeed, a large slice of it is now included in the recently created civil
parish of Woodhall Spa. At the further end of Thimbleby an otter was
killed in the year 1898, at a water mill on the river Bain, the miller
erroneously supposing that it would kill his ducks. Shortly before,
another specimen had been shot by a keeper on the same river, at
Goulceby, its mate fortunately escaping. Soon after, a young specimen
was seen several times disporting itself in the Horncastle Canal. It
there escaped the vigilance of many would-be assassins, and gradually
worked its way towards our neighbouring river, the Witham; but there it
fell a victim to a gunner, who descried it in a drain near Tattershall
Bridge, in Billinghay Fen. Another specimen was afterwards shot among
the dykes of Walcot Dales, near the Witham, and still another in the
neighbouring parish of Martin, a few years ago. Here again this
persistent slaughter is much to be regretted. The otter is not the enemy
to the fisherman which it is too commonly supposed to be. In the
“Badminton Library,” the Honourable Geoffrey Hill says: “People are
beginning to find that the otters kill and keep down the coarser fish,
especially the eels, which live on the spawn and fry of the better
sorts.” Mr. E. Daubney, writing from the banks of the Dart, says: “They
eat frogs, rats, birds, fish, _et id genus omne_, but of nothing are they
more fond than the eel; for this they will give up the finest and most
fresh-run salmon.” {54b} In our own neighbourhood, in 1901, two young
otters were shot on a farm at Sturton; they were at a pond which abounded
in eels, and had doubtless by the eels been attracted from the river
Bain, a mile distant, where they could only get trout. A naturalist, who
watched some otters at their home, night and day, for more than two
months, says that he only saw them take three trout; the first fish taken
was an eel, the second a chub, or roach. (“Country Life,” illustrated,
Vol. VI., No. 134, July, 1899.) Another authority {55a} states that the
stomach of one specimen examined “was full of larvæ and earthworms”;
while a fourth writer {55b} says, “Otters will eat celery, potatoes,
young shoots from the hedges; and especially have they a liking for the
two first.” The writer has seen a dead salmon lying on a Highland river
bank with the shoulder eaten away by the otter, their peculiar habit
being to take only this part, and never to return to the body again.
{55c} But even their attacks on the salmon have indirectly a useful
effect, for, as one of the authorities already quoted (Mr. E. Daubney)
observes: “If a salmon pool is visited by otters, the salmon are hustled,
and so made to bestir themselves (often when sickly, and reluctant to
move), and so make the effort to get down to the sea, to return again
enormously increased in size and condition, and in this way the otter
does the sportsman a service in sending the salmon down to recruit in the
sea; just as, in turn, the sea-lice which fix upon the salmon when
recruited in the salt water, so harass the fish, as to drive it once more
up the river again into the fresh water, when it may afford sport to the
angler.” {55d} It is not generally known, and it has even escaped the
notice of our greatest naturalists, that the otter utters a shrill
whistle when calling to its mate or young, which might be easily mistaken
for the note of the kingfisher or sand-piper. This has been noticed by
Mr. F. B. Whitlock, in the “Naturalist” for 1895, p. 381. The great
stronghold of the otter is the broads of Norfolk, where, in the sluggish,
reedy water, he can get plenty of eels, snails, and so forth. In our own
neighbourhood, if the war and extirpation goes on, he will soon be a
memory only.
The next wild animal to be named as fairly common at Woodhall is the Fox.
The locality, indeed, has been for many years a stronghold {56} of
Reynard, as was to be expected, in a district where the woods are so
extensive, although by no means so extensive as they were within the
writer’s recollection. On one occasion, some 14 or 15 years ago, we had
the Burton hounds, and the South Wold, over the same ground, in the same
morning, within hearing, if not within sight, of each other. The Ostler
Ground, especially from the thick and warm cover afforded by the heather,
may be said to be a nursery for foxes for the supply of the
neighbourhood. Not long ago there were six earths; and there are still
three, which are carefully preserved; and the bark of the dog-fox or the
answering scream of the vixen may be heard almost any night, in different
directions, while out foraging. So thick is the cover, in parts, that
the hounds frequently fail to penetrate it; and, after the pack have gone
away without a find, I have almost trodden upon a fox, on one occasion
upon a brace of them, still lying snugly among the “ling” in security.
The fox does much less harm than is commonly supposed. It will not
disturb other game if it can get rabbits, and it will not take rabbits if
it can get rats. A very old sporting farmer has repeatedly assured me
that although he had a rabbit warren near his farmstead, the rabbits were
left undisturbed, and even his chickens were safe, so long as there were
rats to be captured in his corn-stacks, or in the banks about his
farm-buildings. {57} The first fox which the writer ever saw, was brought
by a Woodhall man, named Hare, to his father. It had been caught in a
trap by the leg, and had attempted to bite its own foot off, in order to
effect its escape. It was kept until the injured limb had recovered, and
was then sent to his friend, the M.F.H. The writer’s own recollections
of fox-hunting go back to the days of the famous Jack Musters, the Squire
of Colwick and Annesley, who married Mary Chaworth, the object of Lord
Byron’s passionate admiration. Sometime in the forties he hunted our own
South Wold country. He was indeed “a character.” Though said by the
Prince Regent to be “the most perfect gentleman he had ever met,” yet, in
the hunting field, his language and his actions were most violent. The
writer has still clearly impressed on his memory an occasion at Woodhall,
when, as a boy of 12 years old, mounted on a small pony, and with the
hounds running hard, he endeavoured to open a gate for the impatient
M.F.H., and, on his not being able to accomplish this quickly enough, he
was assailed with such a flood of invective, and torrent of oaths, that
he was forced to withdraw from the attempt in confusion and bewilderment.
But, if the sportsman who crossed his path was not spared by “Jack,” as
he was familiarly called, neither was any unfortunate hound which
offended him. On one occasion, a young hound, at High-hall Wood, near
Woodhall, was guilty of chasing a hare. The whole “field” was in
consequence pulled up; one of the whips was ordered to bring the
delinquent forward. The thong of his hunting crop was twisted round the
hound’s neck, and while he on foot held the poor brute in this way, the
other whip dismounted and belaboured it with his whip until he was
himself too exhausted to flog any more. The whole field were kept
looking on at this display of wholesome (?) discipline, and when it was
over the hound was left lying on the ground, almost strangled and a mass
of contused weals, to recover its consciousness and limp after the
departing pack, as best it could. The painful impression made upon the
young mind of one devoted to animals, and tender of their feelings,
remains still as an unpleasant memory, from which it recoils.
At one of our meets, a fox was found in Bracken Wood, which, after giving
us a good run round the neighbourhood, eventually took refuge in a
cottage near High-hall Wood. Entering by the open door, it mounted the
ladder which formed the staircase to the one bedroom above; there it
crept under the bed. The hounds hunted all round the premises, but the
door having been shut by the occupier, an aged, retired keeper, and there
being a strong wind which blew the scent from the door, his retreat was
not discovered. He remained in this place of concealment until the
hounds had gone to a safe distance, and then, descending by the ladder,
bolted out of the door and made off, verifying the adage of Erasmus
(older than “Hudibras”),
That same that runnith a awaie
Againe maie fighte ane other daie.
The well-known cunning of the fox is shewn in the following:—A favourite
“find” for many yeans has been Thornton Wood, some three miles from
Woodhall Spa; and a frequent line for the fox to take was (and is) from
that covert to Holme Wood, near Scrivelsby. To accomplish this the
Horncastle Canal and the small river Bain have to be crossed. The
writer, as a boy, has swum the canal on his pony, at the tail of the
pack; but usually riders have to make a detour by a bridge, between the
first and second locks on the canal. During the intervals of ten minutes
or a quarter of an hour required for this, the hounds are left to
themselves. It happened on two or three occasions that in this interval
the scent suddenly failed, and the fox was lost; casts were made up and
down the river, but without success. On one occasion, a labourer,
working in the grass field between the canal and the Bain, saw the fox
cross the canal by the lock doors, over which there was a narrow
plank-bridge for foot-passengers. It then made across the field for the
Bain. He saw it pass out of sight down the banks of the river, close by
a willow tree, overhanging the water; but it did not emerge on the other
side. With the lack of quick wit, characteristic of the clod-hopper, it
did not occur to him to mention this at the time. He told it, however,
afterwards to his master, a hunting man; and, on a subsequent occasion,
when the same incident occurred again, one of the whips dismounted and
went into the water, and, poking about the roots of the willows,
dislodged Reynard, concealed under the hollow bank, and immersed under
water, except his nose and mouth, by which he was hanging suspended from
a fang of the tree roots. Surely Reynard’s clever ruse deserved a better
fate than the death which speedily followed.
The following incident occurred under my own observation. I was out
shooting in Woodhall. In a certain field I had put up a hare, which went
away, without a shot. Passing, in due course, to the next field, I
observed an object sitting, so far as I could make out, in a crouching
position, in the middle of the field, and it looked in the distance like
a man. I proceeded towards it, and soon perceived that it was a fox,
sitting up on his hindquarters. At this moment a hare, presumably that
which I had put up just before, entered the field and cantered leisurely
in the direction of the fox. As sportsmen are aware, the hare, though
able to see behind it, or on either side, does not, from the peculiar
position of the eyes, see so well straight in front. In this case, the
hare never perceived the fox until it was within a few feet of it;
whereupon it stopped short, and the two sat up facing each other,
evidently mutually fascinated, as the bird is said to be by the snake.
They thus remained motionless, or powerless to move, for some minutes,
until my nearer approach attracted their attention and broke the spell,
whereupon they both bounded off in different directions. This, I am told
by an authority, was a case of neurasthenia, or nerve-paralysis. A not
quite similar occurrence was recorded some little time ago. A farmer saw
a pheasant go to roost in a tree, standing alone in the field. Presently
he saw a fox approach, go to the tree, and look up at the pheasant.
After pausing for a moment, regarding the bird, he proceeded to run
rapidly round the tree in a narrow circle. This he did for some time,
continuing his circuit without intermission; when, to the farmer’s
astonishment, the pheasant fell from its roost, and before it reached the
ground was seized by the fox, who went off with his prey to a
neighbouring plantation. This would seem to have been a case of
hypnotism, rather than neurasthenia. The bird was mesmerised, or made
giddy, by the fox’s circular motion, and literally fell into the
operator’s arms.—(“Spectator,” January, 1898). The writer, when
travelling in Germany, once met a German gentleman, who had visited
country houses in England, and had conceived a great admiration for the
English sport of fox-hunting. “Ah,” he said, “we have nothing like it in
Germany. It is a grand institution. It makes you good horsemen, good
soldiers, good judges of country and distance.” To those who would
object to fox-hunting on the score of its cruelty, I would quote words
used at a church congress, by Colonel Hornby, master of the Devon and
Somerset Staghounds. Speaking on “The Ethics of Amusements,” he said:
“The exercise of hunting is productive of the most beneficial effects on
both mind and body. There could be no hunting without suffering to the
animal hunted, but this was greatly exaggerated. These animals were born
to be hunted by other wild animals; we had destroyed the latter, and our
hunting was more merciful. The pain inflicted was no equivalent to the
pleasure afforded to hounds and horses, leaving men out of the question.
The true lover of sport was a lover of mercy as well. Every sportsman,
in the true sense of the word, did all in his power to lessen the
suffering.”—Quoted, “Guardian,” Oct. 17, 1894, p. 1,620.
The days are gone by when gentlemen “of the cloth” were common in the
hunting field. Yet I have known some of the hardest working clergymen,
and the most sincere, earnest Christians, who saw no excessive cruelty in
the chase. We have no “Jack Russels” among us now; the last of the type
who lived in our neighbourhood found a dead fox in his pulpit, when he
ascended it to preach his sermon one Sunday morning; and though he did
not deliver a funeral oration over it, it was said that he buried it with
as much loving reverence and genuine grief, as if it had been a Christian
parishioner.
A meet of the foxhounds at that favourite tryst, the “Tower on the Moor,”
near to Woodhall Spa, presents a pretty and lively scene. Besides the
red-coated sportsman, there are riders, with horses of every degree, from
the barebacked, or rudely saddled “screw,” to the 100 guinea or 200
guinea hunter; and from the “weedy” hack to the long, elastic-legged
animal of racing blood. There are numerous vehicles, two-wheeled and
four-wheeled, with their varied occupants, from the butcher’s light cart
to the phaeton or the drag. There are numbers on foot, of both sexes;
some of the men, staid of mein and beyond middle life, have already
walked their miles; townsmen, for once, breaking away from their trade,
or their business, and bent once more on breathing the fresh air on the
heather, and listening again to the “echoing horn,” as it vibrates
through the woods. There are ladies, on horseback, eager for the burst
across country “in the first flight”; there are ladies on cycles, not yet
arrived at the degree of perfection to enable the fair riders to take a
“bee-line,” but yet, from the speed attainable, able to make rapid
detours, and if they study the wind, and are familiar with the “lay” of
the country, likely to see almost as much of the sport as the
best-mounted. All are bent on the healthy enjoyment of this thoroughly
English pastime. Their thoughts might find echo in the old hunting song,
Tally-ho! Tally-ho!
Let the foreigner know
We are Englishmen: so,
Tally-ho! Tally-ho!
And who shall say that the pleasure is confined to them? Someone has
said: “The horses enjoy it, the hounds enjoy it, and no one can say from
experience that the fox does not enjoy it as well.” Then comes the
M.F.H., with his beauties, all in “the pink” of condition. A moment’s
delay for pleasant greetings between all and sundry, and the hounds are
quickly thrown in for business; their tails, and little more, wave above
the long ling and the tall bracken. The whips gallop to their points of
observation. Presently a whimper or two is heard; then the deeper tone
of an old hound takes it up; the rest rally about him, and soon the whole
pack join in full chorus. A halloo is heard from a ride, as the fox
crosses it; a distant hat is held up to show the line he is taking in the
cover, and then a more distant shout of “gone away,” and the whole field
are off, helter skelter, as though riding for their lives, _sauve qui
peut_. Such are “the pleasures of the chase,” for which we are indebted
to the Little Red Rover: “The sport of kings, the image of war, without
its guilt.” (Somerville, “The Chase,” Book I.)
The neighbourhood of Woodhall combines lands of a wild unreclaimed
nature, such as the Ostler Ground and other moorlands, in the parishes of
Thornton, Martin, Roughton, Kirkby and Tattershall, and closely
contiguous, and even mixed up with these, lands which are in an advanced
state of cultivation. I have already mentioned a tract of waste, boggy
ground, lying between the Tower on the Moor and Bracken Wood, formerly
the haunt of wild fowl, and still called “The Bogs Neuk.” The origin of
this ground was probably the following:—The old antiquary, Leland,
writing of “The Tower,” {61} says, “one of the Cromwelles builded a
pretty turret, caullid the Tower on the Moore, and thereby he made a
faire greate pond or lake, bricked about. The lake is commonly called
the Synkker.” This “lake,” and all trace of it, have entirely
disappeared; but it is probable that the decay of its “bricked” walls, or
of whatever the environment may really have been, led to the escape of
the water, and the creation of the tract of swamp, which remained until
recent years. Similarly the Ostler Ground was, within the writer’s
recollection, a much wilder tract, and its woods more extensive than at
present. Some 300 acres of wood were destroyed by fire, through
accident, about the year 1847. This happened at night, and, seen from a
distance, it looked like a vast American prairie conflagration, the
heavens being tinged with a lurid light far and wide. At that time the
plantations opposite the Tower were of Scotch fir, so dense that the rays
of the sun could scarcely penetrate. The roads, as I have previously
stated, were little more than cart tracts, often shifting; and the whole
tract was almost as little frequented, or disturbed, as if it had been in
the heart of the Black Forest of Germany. In the centre of this wild
were two or three fields belonging to another property, {62a} where
roamed a herd of small, shaggy cattle, which, shut out as they were from
the rest of the world, became almost wild; and when, on occasions, the
foxhounds penetrated to their haunts, they frantically broke through all
bounds, and for some days afterwards would be found scattered about the
open country around. This tract of wood and moor has been for many years
the prettiest bit of wild shooting anywhere in this neighbourhood for
many miles round. There is not, at the present time, anything like the
amount of game upon it which was to be found only a few years ago;
drainage and several very dry seasons, as also two or three accidental
fires, having killed much of the ling, and reduced very considerably the
amount of cover. Still, to the genuine sportsman who thinks more of a
varied bag than of the slaughter of numbers, it affords great
attractions, and the writer has enjoyed many a happy day of healthy
relaxation, with dog and gun, upon it. {62b} The variety of birds now,
or formerly, to be seen, have been described already. The ground game
upon it now, apart from the fox, are the hares and rabbits; of these I
shall speak more at length presently. If the Moor ground has afforded
fair sport of a wild and varied character, the shooting in the adjoining
domain of Kirkstead, in hares and partridges, has been also much superior
to the rest of the neighbourhood, with the one exception of Tattershall,
which has been nearly as good. On one occasion, being one of a party of
five, the writer was stationed at the north-east corner of “The Arbours
Wood,” in Kirkstead, to shoot the hares which passed that point, while
the rest of the sportsmen walked the wood with the beaters. In the space
of about one hour and a quarter, without moving from his position, he
shot 56 hares. At one moment he had 16 hares lying dead before him; and
he could have shot many more, but that, from the rapid firing, his gun
barrels became, at times, so hot that he was afraid to load, and the
hares were allowed to pass him, and escape unmolested. {63}
We occasionally find on the Ostler Ground an unusual hybrid between hare
and rabbit, a notice of which may be of some interest to the naturalist.
As its occurrence has led to a good deal of correspondence, I will give
here a summary of the observations made upon it as they were stated by me
at a meeting of the Lincolnshire Naturalists’ Union. Among other persons
who made enquiry about it was Mr. Walter Heape, of Cambridge, who has
made the subject of hybrids a special study. He asked my reasons for
supposing the animal to be such a cross. My reply was as follows:—
(1) The animal is the size of a hare.
(2) Its fur is the rabbit grey.
(3) The head is the shorter, and the ears the more pricked and shorter,
of the rabbit.
(4) One which I shot at, and missed in the ling, bolted straight for a
hole, as though accustomed to it, and I never knew a hare to go to ground
in that ready way.
(5) A tradition has long attached to the Moor that the hare and rabbit
do occasionally inter-breed.
Mr. Heape replied:—“I am aware that many naturalists deny that hares and
rabbits will breed together. I am not, however, myself of that opinion,
but I never had satisfactory proof of such a cross occurring.” Further
enquiry led to the following facts:—In the year 1773 the Abbe Domenico
Gagliari got two litters from a female hare by a male rabbit. Richard
Thursfield also got hybrid’s of these two species. M. Roux, in 1847,
established a breed of “Leporides” in Angonleme, where he bred largely
hybrids of hares and rabbits, and these hybrids were fertile with both
parent species and among themselves. Baron de Gleichen states that at
Hoching, Canton de la Prusse, Polonaise, hybrids of hare (female), and
rabbits (male) are generally known. He says, however, that M. Brocca,
the French savant, states that there are anatomical differences between
hare and rabbit which make it, antecedently, improbable that they should
inter-breed. I have myself shot three of these hybrids on the Ostler
Ground, and have one of them stuffed. In the year 1897 Sir Henry Hawley
shot a similar specimen in Haltham Wood, some five miles from Woodhall;
more recently (Oct. 4th, 1898), the Rev. C. E. Chapman, then rector of
Scrivelsby, shot another in New York Fen; one was occasionally seen on
the Ostler Ground in 1898, and one was mentioned in “Land and Water,”
March 5, 1892, as having been shot on the Moors, at Parkend, in
Northumberland. I may add that a cross between a rabbit and guinea pig
is in the possession of a person at Horncastle; and I have lately heard
of a cross between black game and the capercailzie in Scotland. But the
following somewhat analogous cases have created special interest.
Professor Ewart, of Edinburgh, has bred a cross between a male Berchell’s
zebra and a mare pony, of the Isle of Rum breed, half wild, lent for the
experiment by Lord Arthur Cecil. The pony was jet black; the foal
resulting, except over the hind quarters, had as many stripes as the
zebra sire, the stripes being fawn colour, with background nearly black.
In form it closely resembled a well-bred foal. As another interesting
case of a similar kind, Lord Morton has bred a cross between a male
quagga and a nearly pure-bred Arab mare; and Lord Tankerville has, more
than once, bred a cross between the famous wild Chillingham bull (Bos
Urus Primigenius) and a shorthorn cow.
An interesting variety of the hare is also found in Woodhall and the
neighbourhood. This is the albino or white hare. Some 30 or more years
ago one was frequently seen in the parishes of Langton and Woodhall, and
eventually was shot in Thimbleby. They were then, so far as the writer
knows, in abeyance for some years. But within the last decade heredity
has asserted itself, and they have reappeared in increased numbers, and
would doubtless become an established variety if allowed to multiply. In
September, 1894, one of the Woodhall tenants killed, in the harvest
field, a three-quarter-grown white leveret. In 1896 the writer presented
to the Natural History Museum, at Lincoln, a fine albino specimen, also
shot in Woodhall, with two small white leverets, accidentally killed in
the harvest field at Langton. Since then, attention having been drawn to
their existence, a number of instances occurring in the neighbourhood
have been recorded. One was shot at Ranby as far back as Oct. 19, 1860;
two were seen in Clayworth in 1896; one was shot in Baumber, Sept. 17,
1896; one shot at Thorpe Tilney, in Timberland parish, with slight tinge
of brown on the ears, October, 1897; one shot in Timberland in 1895; one
being seen still at large in Thorne Tilney in May, 1898; one shot in
Branston, September, 1895, half grown; two shot at Bracebridge in 1893 or
1894; one shot in Wispington in 1896. {65} On one occasion, when
shooting in Kirkstead, the writer shot (right and left) a couple of hares
with white face and forelegs, one of which he has stuffed.
We commonly speak of the cunning of the fox, but Mr. E. A. Pease, M.P.,
in his recent book, “Hunting Reminiscences” (Thacker & Co., 1895, p.
119), says: “The hare is really a much more rusé animal than the fox; can
steal better away, and, once started, there is no end to her wiles and
dodges.” Of this cunning, with a view to self-preservation, I can give
instances. It has been maintained that hares never take to water, but a
correspondence was carried on in the newspaper a few years ago (see
“Morning Post,” Nov. 14, 1892), in which instances were given of their
doing so. I have myself seen a hare, which has eluded the greyhounds,
swim across a moat, almost surrounding the house in which I am writing;
and then steal away to the cover of some large ferns in a sheltered nook
in the garden. Some years ago a baronet visited a relative of mine in
this neighborhood, and brought with him a pack of beagles. We used to
run on foot after these in pursuit of hares. It is known that a hare,
when getting exhausted, has not the strong scent of one just started. As
we ran over a rough ploughed field, I have seen a hare, when nearly tired
out, thrust another sitting hare out of her “form,” and take her place.
The pack of beagles passed over the worn-out hare squatting in the
furrow, and rushed forward with a fresh burst of music in their rich deep
tones, on the strong scent of the hare just set on foot. I passed the
squatting hare, but had not the heart to betray her, feeling that she
deserved to reap the reward of her cleverness. When hunted by harriers,
hares often “double” on their track, and so throw the hounds out. I here
give a very clever instance of this, which I myself once witnessed. On
one occasion, sitting on the South Downs, watching the movements of a
pack of harriers in the distance, I saw “puss” gradually approaching me.
In a hilly country like the Downs, a hare, from the great length and
propelling power of her hind legs, gains considerably upon the pack in
running up hill, and loses ground in a descent. The hare in question had
just descended a steep Down side, the hounds gaining rapidly upon her.
It was what may be termed “a squeak” for her life, when, in the “dean”
below, {67} she reached, just in time, the shelter of a clump of gorse.
Working her way through this, she stole out on the opposite side to the
pack, and at a tremendous pace faced the hill, near the top of which I
was sitting, by a chalk quarry. In the ascent she distanced the hounds
once more, but she was getting done, and, in the gentle breeze which
floated towards me, I distinctly heard her panting as she bounded upward.
But here her instinctive cunning came into play. The hill top was a few
feet above me, some twenty yards away. I sat motionless, and, in her
anxiety about her pursuers, she never observed me. She passed me,
breathing heavily, and sprang along as far as the hill top; there, just
at the brow, she paused, then cantered forward a few yards, returned, and
repeated this more than once. Then, turning suddenly towards me, she
made four or five huge bounds, only just touching the ground, and dropped
into the chalk quarry a few feet below me, and crept under the shelter of
some dwarf thorn bushes. Her object was manifest. By passing more than
once over her own tracks, on the hill top, she created a strong scent,
which the breeze, just catching it at the brow, would carry further
forward. By her leaps towards the quarry, she had left but a slight
scent, and under those thorn bushes she was doubtless waiting tremblingly
the result of her ruse. I remained motionless, watching the issue. The
pack came somewhat laboriously up the hill side, keeping close to the
line she had taken; and a pretty sight it was, as a large sheet would
almost have covered them, as they held on compactly together. They
passed, as the hare had done, within a few yards of the chalk quarry;
pressed on to the brow of the hill, and thence followed the scent which
had been blown on beyond it. Presently there was a check, and the music
ceased. The master never thought of “harking back,” his pack having
followed a strong scent beyond the brow; but pushed on to a spinney lying
on the slope of the next “dean.” I sat for a time longer by the quarry,
and presently I saw puss, having recovered her breath, emerge from her
hiding place and steal away, bent, doubtless, on reaching some distant
secure retreat before her limbs became stiff from the unwonted exertion.
I have known a hare, when hard pressed by the harriers, enter a tunnel
under a field gateway; but here instinct rather fails her; for, too
often, it is only avoiding one mode of death by courting another. If
there is water in the ditch, running through the tunnel, the obstruction
caused by her body makes the water rise, and she is drowned; or, if she
stays any time in the tunnel, her cramped limbs get so stiff after her
exertions, that she cannot get out.
There is one kind of foe which the hare finds more difficult to shake
off, or elude, than a pack of harriers or beagles. Stoats, foumarts,
polecats, _et id genus omne_, are becoming scarcer every year; although
the writer was recently told of a marten-cat—probably the Pine-marten
(martes abietum)—being killed in a tree, and sold for 10s. as a rarity.
I was a witness of the following:—Walking, in the small hours of the
morning, in a parish contiguous to Woodhall, on my way to a stream where
I was going to fish, I saw a hare in a field adjoining the road, which
was leaping about in a most extraordinary fashion, starting hither and
thither, plunging into the rushes, springing into the air, and performing
all sorts of strange antics, which I could only account for, had she been
“as mad as a March hare,” as the saying is; but this was in the month of
May. Presently she rushed forward, occasionally leaping into the air,
towards the fence which separated me from the fields. I expected to see
her appear through the hedge, in front of me; but she did not come. Out
of curiosity I got over the fence, when I saw the hare lying, a few yards
further on, stretched out as though dead. I went up to her, and found
that she was, indeed, quite dead; and fast on her neck was a weasel, so
gorged with her blood, that its usually slender body was quite bloated.
Following the proverbial national instinct, I killed the weasel; carried
the hare to a footpath, and left it there, that some labourer passing by
might take it home to regale his family.
This incident leads me to speak of the pertinacity of our weasels in
hunting their prey, say a hare, as above, or a rabbit. On one occasion,
as I was riding by the side of a strip of low whinbushes and long grass,
a rabbit rushed out just in front of me, its fur apparently curled with
perspiration, uttering a kind of suppressed cry, and evidently in a state
of the greatest terror. I pulled up in order to discover the cause of
this alarm. The rabbit re-entered the cover a few yards further on; but
presently, where it had emerged, I saw a weasel; and then I became aware
that a number of these creatures were working through the grass. I
watched their movements, following them at a distance, till they had
about reached the spot where the rabbit re-entered. Then, feeling a keen
sympathy for the poor persecuted rabbit, I charged into the midst of the
pack, and by dint of plunging up and down among the startled company, and
striking at them with my whip, I succeeded in dispersing them. At the
same moment the rabbit, which had no doubt been crouching near, half
paralysed with fear, darted out, and passing by me, went away at a great
pace, as if rejoicing in the rescue. I pursued the weasels for some
distance, and should say there was not less than a dozen. I was much
astonished at the enormous leaps which they made in their flight, their
long, lithe bodies contracting, and then expanding with a sudden jerk
which threw them forward several feet at a time. As to the habit of
weasels hunting in a pack, Waterton, the naturalist, mentions that he has
seen two old stoats with five half-grown young ones hunting together.
{69} Richard Jefferies, in his book, “Round about a Great Estate,”
mentions having seen a pack of five stoats hunting in company, and says
that a poacher told him that he had seen as many as fourteen so engaged.
In the above case, which came under my own observation, the weasels were
all apparently full grown and equally agile.