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 detour, 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 Hotel 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.
Then happens on a lesser scale exactly the same thing that travellers
describe of the burning prairies of the Far West--a stampede of the
thousands of living creatures, bird and beast: rabbits, hares, foxes,
weasels, stoats, badgers, wild cats, all rushing in a maddened frenzy of
fear they know not whither. Often, with a strange reversal of instinct,
so to say, they will crowd together right in the way of the flames,
huddling in hundreds where the fire must pass, and no effort of voice or
presence of man will drive them away. The hissing, crackling fire
sweeps over, and in an instant all have perished. No more miserable
spectacle can be witnessed than the terror of these wretched creatures.
Birds seem to fly into the smoke and are suffocated--they fall and are
burned. Hares, utterly beside themselves, wilt rush almost into the
arms of the crowd that assembles, and, of course, picks up what it can
seize. The flames blacken and scorch the firs and trees on the edge of
the wood, and the marks of their passage are not obliterated for years.
Apart from the torture of animals, the damage to sport--both hunting and
shooting--is immense, and takes long to remedy; for although furze and
fern soon shoot again, yet animal life is not so quickly repaired.
Sometimes a few sheep wandering from the downs are roasted alive in this
manner; and one or more dogs from the crowd watching are sure to run
into the flames, which seem to exercise a fascination over some canine
minds. The keeper's wrath bubbles up years afterwards as he recalls the
scene, and it would not be well for the incendiary if he fell into his
hands. But the mischief can be so easily done that it is rarely these
rascals are captured.