94 Summer 



grass or a whin-bush, he will lie there till you pick 

 him up or your dog saves you the trouble. Turned 

 out of a sack at a coursing match, he will sometimes 

 cower down in exactly the same way. He is ex- 

 tremely susceptible to fear, and seems occasionally to 

 get literally frightened out of his wits. I have dis- 

 charged a gun over the head of a rabbit within a 

 couple of paces of his hole, and he has allowed himself 

 to be taken up in a paralysis of terror. What happens 

 when he is hunted by the weasel, the stoat, or the ferret 

 is pretty much the same : he sits stupefied as a mouse 

 does after it has been held unharmed in the grip of a 

 cat. The approach of death operates upon him like 

 an anaesthetic ; instead of taking a line across country 

 to some of the distant haunts where he has gone 

 a-courting on moonlight nights, he potters about the 

 neighbourhood where he was started ; and the slow 

 but devilish weasel will follow him from burrow to 

 burrow, nor turn aside for any of his brothers till he 

 has brought him down. 



During the past few years the depreciation in land 

 and the difficulty of letting to advantage have obliged 

 a number of owners to turn their attention to rabbits 

 as an industry. Now, it is easy to keep up an open 

 warren, where the tenants are not so numerous as to 

 need feeding. If only the keeper is able to protect 

 them against vermin and poachers, they will multiply 

 fast enough to provide constant shooting and some 

 profitable trapping. Some, indeed, who have tried 



