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picion grew on me. I retired and hid behind some bracken. 
Scarcely five minutes passed after I was safely out of sight, before 
up sprang the deceiver, and made off faster than you could have 
believed it possible, to some softish ground near, and there 
disappeared. He had a sufficiently long run in the open to have 
given me time to have out-paced and again secured him; but I 
allowed the little beastie to escape—it was not in my heart to 
condemn him to a tub after a display of such wonderful craft, 
such cool and heroic deception. 
And then that harmless vegetarian, the Water Vole,! perse- 
cuted by anglers for others’ sins—still, I am glad to say, haunts 
many a river bank amongst us—the dwarf beaver, rather than the 
water rat. 
The Shrew Mouse,? of course, with its unpalatable carcass, 
rejected by every cat, hawk, dog, and owl; but have we certainly 
the Water Shrew® or the Elephant Shrew*? and have we the 
Harvest Mouse? ? the smallest of British quadrupeds. The Long- 
tailed Field-Mouse® I have assuredly seen, but never its Short-tailed 
brother’ ; and we decidedly have not the Hamster. And I never 
met the Badger, poor old fellow—very harmless, but with an ill 
reputation ; shy and retiring in his manners, if only unmolested— 
so shy that in his own haunts even, I have tried in vain many a 
time to see him. Moving with an unwieldy gait, between the 
amble of a hurried pig and the shuffle of a brown bear. I have 
watched, I say, for hours in a coppice in Hampshire, where his 
earth was, but never caught him on the move, though I used to see 
his footprints all about on the fresh earth the very morning after. 
I am afraid we should not want a large case for the show of 
Quadrupeds. 
Now of Reptiles. I am very fond of the Toad ; and I believe 
that in this county we have a peculiar variety. I have studied the 
habits and ways of many in my father’s conservatory. We had 
one for a long time who came out regularly every evening at the 
1 Arvicola amphibius. 2 Sorex murinus. ® Crossopus fodiens. 
* Macroscelides (Ethiop.) ° Micromys minutus. © Mus musculus, 
" Arvicola arvalis, 8 Cricetus frumentarius,—(ED,) 
