TJie Water-meadow. 339 



meadow with the imprints of their feet looking 

 everywhere for a green blade. 



Yet they only occasionally scratch away the snow, 

 and so get at the grass. Though the natural in- 

 stinct of rabbits is to dig, and though here and there 

 a place may be seen where they appear to have 

 searched for a favorite morsel, yet they do not seem 

 to acquire the sense of systematically clearing snow 

 away. They then bark ash and, indeed, nearly 

 any young sapling or tree and visit gardens in the 

 night, as the hares do also. They creep about along 

 the mounds, being driven by hunger to search for 

 food all day instead of remaining part of the time in 

 the buries. 



As to the hares, little more than a week of deep 

 snow cripples their strength : they will run but 

 twenty or thirty yards, and may be killed occasion- 

 ally with a stick or captured alive. They are even 

 more helpless than rabbits, because the latter still 

 have holes to take refuge in from danger ; but the 

 hare while the snow lasts is a wretched creature, and 

 knows not where to turn. Birds resort to the cattle- 

 sheds to roost ; among them the blackbirds, who 

 usually roost in the hedges. Birds come to the 

 houses and gardens in numbers because the snow is 

 there cleared away along the paths. 



During severe weather the water-meadows are the 

 most frequented places. They are rarely altogether 

 frozen. If in the early morning there are sheets of 

 ice, by noonday a great part will be flooded an inch 

 or two deep, the water rising over the ice, and 

 forced by it to spread further, softening the ground 

 at the sides. The water-carriers are long before 



