The Chase of the Hare 205 



The writer prides himself somewhat on having a fairly- 

 good eye for game in the forest, but he has never yet been 

 able to find a hare, although he has hunted them often, both 

 with hounds and gun. 



It makes one feel chagrined to have some friend point one 

 out just where you have been looking, or as usual, tell you 

 where to look without pointing, and to see there, within a few 

 paces, in full vieAv, the object you seek. There she hes— every 

 hair lying so snu» and close that not one is moved by a passing 

 breeze, not a wink of the eye or a turn of the head or the lifting 

 of an eyebrow. As you study the object for a momcjit, the 

 deception its colour practises on the eyesight disappears, and 

 you wonder why you did not see her before. Your retriever 

 has gone carefully over the ground, and he with all his 

 keener sense of nose and sight also failed to see what in all 

 probability he had been looking at. Presently she bounds 

 away, and you must be smart even then with your gun, or 

 your game keeps on running. 



It is probably much more to your credit to find your hare 

 than it is to stop him with your gun when lie is found. 



The care a hare takes in coming up to its "form" or place 

 selected for the day's resting place (which form we are told 

 is seldom occupied for more than two or three days in suc- 

 cession) is most ingenious. Instead of coming straight up 

 to it, they begin to circle and double back on their trail, so 

 as to make confusion worse confounded to an enemj'^ attempt- 

 ing to follow them by scent. Then they will halt and give a tre- 

 mendous spring to the right or left, so that to their pursuers 

 their line comes to an abrupt ending; and so on by a succession 

 of leaps until they finally land in the chosen spot in an open 

 field, or at most in the shadow of a low growing shrub. They 

 are said to sleep with their eyes open, but while you can nearly 

 step on them before they vnW expose themselves by moving, 

 when they do flee from their form, they go at a rate of speed that 



