92 Summer 



muzzled and then in the opinion of many they do 

 not work so briskly they will sometimes coil up and 

 go to sleep. To rouse them it is not always enough 

 to hold a dead rabbit at the mouth of the hole and 

 squeak like one in trouble ; the keeper perforce must 

 wake them up with a charge of powder or dig them 

 out. When one is lost he does not seem to wander 

 far ; and he will soon be returned if the ploughman 

 (who is pretty certain to find him hunting for himself 

 along a hedgerow) be not tempted to put him in his 

 pocket and say nothing about him. 



To that sportsman who is not overweeningly 

 anxious to make a big bag, the pleasantest rabbit- 

 shooting is found in a stroll over a big estate, than 

 which there is nothing more enjoyable. A very little 

 experience teaches you when and where to go. Rabbits, 

 like other wild things, have their regular meal-times ; 

 you may smoke a good many pipes under a favourite 

 tree at noon and see nothing. All is perfectly still ; 

 not a wing in the air, not a rustle in the undergrowth. 

 Then, at last, a wood-pigeon flies over from one great 

 wood to another, and is followed by several friends, 

 crows and jackdaws begin to give voice and be busy ; on 

 the stream the trout start rising, and dimple the water ; 

 and hist ! that little dark object unobserved before 

 in the shooting corn or the long grass is a rabbit who 

 has stolen out of his burrow, and whose ear-tips alone 

 are visible as, half-suspicious of a hostile presence, he 

 sits up to listen. If you keep perfectly still and don't 



