of Nature's wildlings--Vulp taught the vixen much of the lore he had
learned from his mother, while the vixen imparted to him the knowledge
she herself had gained when a cub. He taught her how to steal away from
the covert along the rough, rarely trodden paths between the
farm-labourers' cottages--where the scent lay so badly that the hounds
were unable to follow--directly the first faint notes of a horn, or the
dull thud of galloping hoofs, or the excited whimper of a "rioting"
puppy, indicated the approach of enemies. She taught him to baffle his
foes by chasing sheep across the stubbles, and then passing through a
line of strong scent where his own trail could not readily be
distinguished; also that to cross the river by leaping from stone to
stone in the ford was as sure a means of eluding pursuit as to swim the
pools and the shallows. He taught her, when hard pressed, to leap
suddenly aside from her path, run along the top rail of a fence, return
sharply on her line of scent, and follow, with a wide cast, a
loop-shaped trail, which, with a tangent through a ploughed field or dry
fallow, was usually sufficient to check pursuit till the scent became
faint and cold. And gradually each of these woodland rovers grew
acquainted with the peculiar whims and habits of the other. Vulp loved
to follow stealthily the trail of the rabbit, and then to lie in wait
till some imagined cause of alarm sent Bunny back through the "creep"
and almost straight into her enemy's open jaws. The vixen preferred to
hide in the brambles to leeward of a burrow till an unsuspecting rabbit
crept out into the open. Vulp, since his adventure with the polecat,
bristled with rage whenever he crossed the track of a weasel, but never
dreamed of following; polecat and weasel were the same animal for aught
he knew to the contrary. The vixen, however, was not daunted by the
unpleasant memory of any such adventure; having chanced to see a weasel
in the act of killing a vole, she had recognised a rival and acted
accordingly. And so Vulp's repeated warnings to his mate on this matter
produced no effect beyond making her slightly more careful than she had
hitherto been to obtain a proper grip when she pounced on her savage
little quarry. The vixen was exceedingly fond of snails, and would
eagerly thrust a fore-paw into the crannies of any old wall or bank
where they hibernated; but Vulp much preferred to scratch up the moss
in a deserted gravel-pit, and grub in the loosened soil for the drowsy
blow-flies and beetles that had chosen the spot for their winter abode.
This was the reason for such different tastes: the vixen, when a cub,
had often basked in the sun near a snails' favourite resort, and had
there acquired a liking for the snails; while the fox, on the other
hand, had times out of number amused himself, in the first summer of his
life, by leaping and snapping at the flies as they buzzed among the
leaves when the mid-day sun was hot, and at the beetles as they boomed
along the narrow paths in the thicket near the "earth" when the moon
rolled up above the hedge, and the dark, mysterious shadows of
intersecting boughs foreshortened on the grass. But Vulp knew well, from
an unpleasant experience, the difference between a fly and a wasp.
One day in August, as he lay in his outdoor lair, the brightness and
heat of the sunshine were such that his eyes, blinking in the drowsiness
of half-awakened slumber, appeared like mere slits of black across
streaked orbs of yellow, and gave no indication of the fiery glow that
lit the round, distended pupils when he peered at nightfall through the
tangled undergrowth. His tongue lolled out, and he panted like a tired
hound, but from thirst rather than weariness. The flies annoyed him
greatly, now settling on his brush, till with a flick of his paw he
drove them away, then, nothing daunted, alighting on his back, his ears,
his haunches, till his fur wrinkled and straightened in numberless
uneasy movements from the tormenting tickling of the little pests.
Presently, with a shrill bizz of rapid wings, a large, yellow-striped
fly passed close to his ears. He struck down the tormenting insect with
a random flip of his paws, snapped at it to complete the work of
destruction, and proceeded leisurely to eat his victim. To his utter
surprise, he seemed to have captured a living, angry thorn, which,
despite his most violent efforts to tear it away with his paws, stuck in
his lip, and produced a smarting, burning sensation that was
intolerable. He rolled on the ground and rubbed his muzzle in the grass,
but to no purpose. No wonder, then, that subsequently his manner
towards an occasional hibernating wasp among the moss-roots in the
gravel-pit was deferential in the extreme!
Vulp and his mate soon learned that in rabbit-hunting it was exceedingly
profitable to co-operate. Thus, while the vixen "lay up" near a warren,
Vulp skirted the copse and chased the conies home towards his waiting
spouse. After considerable practice, the trick paid handsomely, and food
was seldom lacking. The vixen possessed, perhaps, a slightly more
delicate sense of smell than the fox. Frequently she scented a rabbit in
a clump of fern or gorse after Vulp had passed it by; suddenly stopping,
she would tell her lord of her discovery by signs he readily understood,
and then, while he kept outside the tangle, would pounce on the coney in
its retreat, or start it helter-skelter into his very jaws. But of all
the tricks and the devices she taught him, the chief, undoubtedly, were
those concerned with the capture of hens and ducks from a neighbouring
farmstead. An adult fox, as a rule, does not pay frequent visits to a
farmstead; but Vulp, like his sire, was passionately fond of poultry,
and so, in after years, the vixen's instructions caused him to become
the dread of every henwife in the district. Undoubtedly he would have
been shot had he not been the prize most sought for by the Master of the
Hounds, who cared little for the frequent demands made on his purse by
the cottagers, so long as the fox that slaughtered the poultry gave
abundant sport when running fast and straight before the pack.
The months drifted by, and signs of spring became more and more abundant
in the valley. About the beginning of March, Vulp deserted the "earth"
prepared by himself and the vixen for their prospective family, and took
up his abode among the hazels and the hawthorns in a thick-set hedge
bounding the woods.
In preparing the "breeding earth," Vulp and the vixen observed the
utmost care in order that its whereabouts should not be discovered. The
chosen site was a shallow depression, scratched in the soil by a
fickle-minded rabbit that had ultimately fixed on another spot for her
abiding place. This depression was enlarged; a long tunnel was
excavated as far as the roots of an oak, and there broadened. Then
another long tunnel was hollowed out towards the surface, where it
opened in the middle of a briar-brake. The foxes worked systematically,
digging away the soil with their fore-paws, loosening an occasional
stubborn stone or root with their teeth, and thrusting the rubbish
behind them with their powerful hind-legs. As it accumulated, they
turned and pushed it towards the mouth of the den, where at last a
fair-sized mound was formed. When the burrow had been opened into the
thicket, the crafty creatures securely "stopped" the original entrance,
so that, when the grass sprouted and the briar sprays lengthened in the
woodlands, the "earth" would escape all notice, unless a prying visitor
penetrated the thicket and discovered the second opening--then, of
course, the only one--leading to the den.
When summer came, and the undergrowth renewed its foliage, and the grass
and the corn grew so tall and thick that Vulp could roam unseen through
the fields, he left his haunts amid the woodlands at the first peep of
dawn, and as long as daylight lasted lay quiet in a snug retreat amid
the gorse. There all was silent; no patter of summer rain from leaves
far overhead, no rustle of summer wind through laden boughs, prevented
him hearing the approach of a soft-footed enemy; no harsh, mocking cry
of jay or magpie, bent on betraying his whereabouts, gave him cause for
uneasiness and fear. Of all wild creatures in the fields and woods, he
detested most the meddlesome jay and magpie. If he but ventured by day
to cross an open spot, one of these birds would surely detect and follow
him, hopping from branch to branch, or swooping with ungainly flight
almost on his head, meanwhile hurling at him a thousand abuses. Unless
he quickly regained his refuge in the gorse, the blackbirds and the
thrushes would join in the tantalising mockery, till it seemed that the
whole countryside was aroused by the cry of "Fox! fox!" After such an
adventure, it needed the quiet and solitude of night to restore his
peace of mind; and even when he had escaped the din, and lay in his
couch among the bleached grass and withered leaves, his ears were
continually strained in every direction to catch the least sound of dog
or man. When in the winter he ran for life before the hounds, and tried
by every artifice to baffle his pursuers, these "clap-cats" of the woods
would jeer him on his way. Once, when he ventured into the river, and
headed down-stream, thinking that the current would bear his scent below
the point where he would land on the opposite bank, the magpie's clatter
caused him the utmost fear that his ruse might not succeed. But luckily
the hounds and the huntsman were far away. The birds, however, were not
the only advertisers of his presence; the squirrel, directly she caught
sight of him, would hurry from her seat aloft in fir or beach, to the
lowest bough, and thence--though more wary of Vulp than of Brighteye,
the water-vole--fling at him the choicest assortment of names her varied
vocabulary could supply. Still, for all this irritating abuse Vulp had
only himself and his ancestry to blame. The fox loved--as an article of
diet--a plump young fledgling that had fallen from its nest, or a tasty
squirrel, with flesh daintily flavoured by many a feast of nuts, or
beech-mast, or eggs. It was but natural that his sins, and those of his
forefathers, should be accounted to him for punishment, and that it
should become the custom, in season and out of season, when he was known
to be about, for all the woodland folk to hiss and scream, and
expostulate and threaten, and to compel his return to hiding with the
least possible delay. Thus it happened that he scarcely ventured, during
the day, to attack even a young rabbit that frisked near his lair, lest,
screaming to its dam for help, it should bring a very bedlam about his
ears.
While roaming abroad in the summer night, Vulp gradually became
acquainted with all sorts of vermin-traps used by the keepers. Once,
treading on a soft spot near a rabbit "creep," he suddenly felt a slight
movement beneath his feet. Springing back, he almost managed to clear
the trap; but the sharp steel teeth caught him by a single claw and for
a moment held him fast. He wrenched himself loose, and retired for a
while to examine his damaged toe-nail. Then, reassured, he again
approached the trap, so that he might store up in memory the
circumstances of his near escape. He learned his lesson thoroughly, and
never afterwards did the smell of iron, or the slightest taint of the
trapper's hand, escape him. He even walked around molehills; they
reminded him too much of the soft soil about the trap. And, for the same
reason, he avoided treading on freshly excavated earth before the holes
of a rabbit warren.
The succeeding years of Vulp's eventful life were in many respects
similar to the year that began with his courtship of the sleek young
vixen in the white wilderness of the winter fields. His fear of men and
hounds increased, while his cunning became greater with every passing
day. He never slept on a straight trail, but cast about, returned on the
line of his scent, and leaped aside, before retiring to sleep in his
retreat amid the bracken. Often he heard the wild, ominous cry of the
huntsman, "Eloa-in-hoick, hoick--hoick, cover--hoick!" as the hounds
dashed into the furze; and the loud "Tally-ho!" as he himself, or,
perchance, a less fortunate neighbour, broke into sight before the
loud-tongued pack. And more than once, from a safe distance, he heard
the awful "Whoop!" that proclaimed the death of one of his kindred.
As the years wore on, Vulp gradually wandered far from his old home. The
countryside, for twenty or thirty miles around, was known as intimately
to him as a little garden, nestling between sunny fruit-tree walls, is
known to the cottager who makes it the object of his daily care. His
ears were torn by thorns and fighting; his russet coat was streaked with
grey along the spine. At last, when age demanded ease and comparative
safety from the long, hard chase over hill and dale, he retired to a
rocky fastness on the wild west coast, and there, far above the leaping
waves and dashing spray, lived his free, lonely life. And there he died.
[Illustration: "HE RETIRED TO A ROCKY FASTNESS ON THE WILD WEST COAST."]
It was a bright, hot day in July. Lying among the boulders on the shore,
I watched through a field-glass the antics of some birds that wheeled
and soared above the cliffs, when, to my surprise, I saw Vulp crawl
slowly along a shelf of rock above a deep, dark cavern. His movements,
somehow, appeared unnatural. Instead of crouching, with legs bent under
him and brush curled gracefully about his "pads," to bask, his eyelids
half-closed, in the sun, he lay on his side. Guided by a companion, who,
with waving hand, directed my course as I climbed, I gradually mounted
the steep ascent, and peeped over the edge of the rock on which the fox
lay. Despite my excessive caution, he was aware of my presence. Slowly
and drowsily he lifted his head, uttered a feeble half-grunt, half-whine
of alarm, and for a moment bared his teeth defiantly. I remained
absolutely still. Then his head fell back, and with a tremor of pain he
stretched a stiffened limb. I crawled across the ledge to a rugged path
among the cliffs, and descended to the shore. Next day I found him on
the rock again, lying in the same position, but dead, while far up in
the blue the sea-birds circled and called, and far below, at the edge of
the flowing tide, the crested billows leaped and sang.
His "mask" hangs above my study door. It has been placed there--not as
a thing of beauty. The hard, set pose devoid of grace, the bent, dried
ears once ever on the alert, the glassy, artificial eyes in sockets once
tenanted by living balls of fire that glowed in the darkness of the
night--all are unreal and expressionless. Yet the "mask" suggests a
hundred pictures, and when I turn aside and forget for a moment the
unreality of this poor image of death, I wander, led by fancy, among the
moonlit woods, where the red mouse rustles past, and the mournful cry of
the brown owl floats through the beeches' shadowed aisles. Then I hear a
sudden wail, that echoes from hillside to hillside, as the vixen calls
to Vulp: "The night is white; man is asleep; I hunt alone!" And the fox,
standing at the edge of the clearing, sends back his sharp, glad answer,
"I come!"
THE BROWN HARE.
I.
THE UPLAND CORNFIELD.
In midsummer, when the sun rises over the hillside opposite my home its
first bright beams glance between the branches of a giant oak in the
hedgerow of a cornfield above the wooded slope, and sparkle on my study
window. And when at evening the valley is deeply shadowed, the light
seems to linger in benediction on the same cornfield, where the great
oak-tree, no longer silhouetted darkly against a golden dawn, shines
faintly, with a radiance borrowed from the west, against the pearl-blue
curtain of the waning day. Except during the early morning or at dusk,
the cornfield does not stand out conspicuously in the landscape. The eye
is attracted by the striking picture of the woodland wall stretching
across the slope from the brink of the river, or by the lower prospect
of peaceful meadows and orchards through which the murmuring stream
wanders towards the village bridge; but the peaceful uplands beyond
rarely greet the vision. For many years I was wont to look from my
window only at the woods and the meadows, and somehow I was accustomed
to imagine that the line of my vision was bounded by the top of the
wood. It was not till more than usual interest had been awakened in me
concerning the wild life inhabiting the cornfield, that my eyes were
daily turned in the direction of the uplands, where, every evening, the
rooks disappear from sight on their way to the tall elms in a
neighbouring valley.
Except during harvest, the cornfield is seldom visited by the country
folk. It lies away from the main road, and the nearest approach to it is
by a grass-grown lane leading from some ruined cottages to a farmstead
in the middle of the estate. Many years ago, it was a wilderness of
furze and briar, one of the thickest coverts on the countryside,
affording safe sanctuary for fox and badger. But gradually it has been
reclaimed, till now only a belt of undergrowth, scarcely twenty yards
wide, stretches along the horizon between the upper hedgerow and the
wheat.
Here, one starry April night, in a snug "form" prepared by the mother
hare, a leveret was born. The "form" was hardly more than a depression
in the rank grass, to which, for some time past, the doe had been in the
habit of resorting at dawn, that she might hide secure through the day,
till the dusk brought with it renewed confidence, and tempted her away
into the open meadows beyond the cornfield, where the young clover grew
green and succulent. A thick gorse-bush, decked with a wealth of yellow
bloom, grew by the side of the "form," and, all around, the matted grass
and brambles made a labyrinth, pathless, save for the winding "run" by
which the hare approached or left her home.
Unlike the offspring of the rabbit--born blind and naked in an
underground nest lined with its parent's fur--the leveret was covered
with down, and her eyes were open, from the hour of birth. Nature had
fitted her for an existence in the open air. At first she was suckled by
day as well as by night, but as she grew older she seldom felt the want
of food till dark. While light remained, she squatted motionless by her
mother's side in the "form," protected by the resemblance in colour
between her coat and the surrounding herbage, where the browns and greys
of last autumn might still be seen among the brambles, with here and
there a weather-worn stone or the fresh castings from a field-vole's
burrow. In the gloaming, she followed her mother through the "creeps"
amid the furze-brake, and sometimes to the edge of the thicket as far as
the gap, where she learned to nibble the tastiest leaves in the grass.
But soon after nightfall, she was generally alone for some hours while
the doe wandered in search of food.
Before daybreak, the doe always returned to suckle her little one. Often
in the quiet night, the leveret, feeling lonely or afraid, would call in
a low, tremulous voice for help. If the doe was within hearing she
immediately responded; but frequently the cry, "leek, leek," did not
reach the roaming hare, and the leveret, crouching in the undergrowth,
had to wait till she heard her mother's welcome call. Soon the little
home in the thicket was deserted, and the leveret accompanied her
mother on her nightly journeys till the fields and the woods for miles
around became familiar.
About a month after her birth, the leveret, having grown so rapidly that
she was able to take care of herself, parted from her mother, and,
crossing the boundary hedge of the estate, took up her quarters on the
opposite side of the valley. The doe and her leveret had lived happily
in the cornfield and the meadows above the wood. The mother had attended
with utmost solicitude to the wants of her offspring, allowing no
intruder among her kindred to trespass on her own particular haunts, and
careful to select for each day's hiding place some sequestered spot
where a human footstep was seldom heard, and the noise of the farmyard
sounded faint and remote.
The leveret had learned, partly through a wonderful instinct and partly
through her mother's teaching, how to act when there was cause for
alarm. Immediately on detecting the presence of an intruder, she lay as
still as the stone beside the ant-heap near, trusting that she would not
be distinguished from her surroundings. But if flight was absolutely
necessary, she sped away towards the nearest gap, and thence over
pasture and cornfield, always up-hill if possible, out-distancing any
probable pursuer by the marvellous power of her long hind-limbs.
During the late summer and the early autumn, nothing occurred to
endanger the leveret's life. The corn grew tall and slowly ripened. Amid
its cool shadows the leveret dwelt in solitude. Her "creeps" were out of
sight beneath the arching stalks. A gutter for winter drainage, dry and
overgrown with grass, formed a tunnel in the hedge-bank between the corn
and the root-crop field beyond; and through this gutter the leveret,
when at night she grew hungry, could steal into the dense tangle of
thistles and nettles fringing the turnips, thence, between the ridges
under the wide-spreading leaves, to the narrow pathway dividing the rape
from the root-crop, and across the field to a furrow where sweet red
carrots, topped with dew-sprinkled plumes, tempted her dainty appetite.
When the calm night was illumined, but not too brightly, by the moon and
stars, the leveret would venture far away from her retreat to visit a
cottage garden where the young lettuces were crisp and tender. Her
depredations among the carrots and lettuces were scarcely such as to
deserve punishment. She ate only enough of the lettuces to make a slight
difference in the number of seeding plants ultimately devoured by the
cottager's pig, or thrown to the refuse-heap; and from the great pile of
carrots, to be gathered and stored in the peat-mound by the farmstead,
the few she destroyed could never by any chance be missed. On all the
countryside she was the most inoffensive creature--the harmless gipsy of
the animal world, having no fixed abode, her tent-roof being the dome of
the sky.
As autumn advanced, the reapers came to the corn. She heard them enter
by the gate; and presently, along the broad path cut by the scythe
around the field, the great machine clanked and whirred. All day the
strange, disturbing noise continued, drawing gradually nearer the spot
where the leveret lay. Through the spaces between the stalks she watched
the whirling arms swinging over, and the horses plodding leisurely by
the edge of the standing wheat. At last, but almost too late, she
leaped from her "form" as the cruel teeth cut through the stalks at her
side; and, taking the direction of her "creep," rushed off towards the
nearest gap and disappeared over the brow of the hill.
In the middle of the night she wandered back to the wheat-field. The
scene before her eyes revealed a startling change. The corn stood in
"stooks" on the stubble; no winding paths led here and there through a
silent sanctuary, where countless waving, nodding plumes, bent and
released by a gentle-flowing wind, had shimmered in the bright radiance
of the harvest moon, when, coming home late at night from the marsh
across the hill, she had stayed for a while on the mound by the gate,
and tiptoe, with black-fringed ears moving restlessly, had listened to
some ominous sound in the farmyard. The prickly stubble felt strange to
her feet, so, carefully picking her way by the ditch, she crossed to the
nearest gate and ambled down the lane. But the change noticed in the
wheat-field seemed to have passed over the whole countryside. It was
more and more pronounced during the following week, till, in October,
the late harvest had all been cleared. The habits of the hare altered
with the season. Having at last grown accustomed to the varied
conditions of her life, she sometimes frequented the old tracks over the
upland, but rarely resorted to the "forms" in which she had lain amid
the summer wheat.