This free and easy sport which the cutting of the corn provides for
a mixed and excited crowd makes a scene very familiar in any English
countryside. The driver of the binder, as he is carried round and round
the cornfield, in ever-narrowing circles, gains a good view of the
rabbits and the game, stealing about in their fear; and now and again
he may be observed to dismount to club a rabbit with his whip-handle.
On farms where the rabbits are considered the natural rights of the
harvesters, old hands grow very cunning at making the most of their
chance when the last few yards of standing corn remain to be cut, and
the rabbits, with which the little strip of cover is seething, at last
bolt out, to be fallen upon by the men in waiting, and to be slain
as fast as sticks can rain blows. Rabbits remain in their sanctuary
of corn long after the fox has stolen away, and the pheasants, rats,
stoats, and weasels have followed after.
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