A GENTLEMAN IN VELVET 225 



that their fat little bodies are loved to an 

 embarrassing extent by hawk and owl. And 

 when industriously seeking the pleasures of obscure 

 security they give no thought to the interest of 

 the sheep -farmer, who is a much later comer on 

 the surface of the earth than themselves. 



But the water-vole plays none of these pranks. 

 If a great congress of the species had been held 

 to consider ways of living inoffensive to the tyrant 

 man, it could hardly have devised a better pro- 

 gramme. It eats none of his crops. It injures 

 none of his property. It is scrupulously clean in 

 its habits, and as it does not tolerate fleas, like 

 the rat, to act as disease -germ disseminators, it 

 would work him little or no sanitary mischief, 

 even if it frequented his dwellings. But it never 

 goes near them. Add to its negative virtues that 

 it does not touch fish or fish ova, or even fish food 

 in the form of larvae and insects, and it will be 

 admitted that it is wonderfully successful in the 

 avoidance of offence. Its positive virtues are less 

 notable, consisting as they do in the one fact that 

 it eats up vegetation which tends to choke water- 

 courses. But then his one positive virtue is 

 worked hard all day long, and may be held as 

 good as half a dozen which are brought only 

 occasionally into play. The solitary fact brought 

 against an otherwise blameless character is that 

 it digs holes in the banks of streams, but as the 

 holes are not frequent, and as the vole always 

 selects for them a bank of reliable consistency 

 where they can do no harm, this as an indictment 

 is mere carping. 



15 



