248 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



greater number were trapped, poisoned, or devoured 

 by cats, dogs, foxes, and birds of prey, "the total 

 destruction of mice in the two forests in question would 

 probably amount to nearly two hundred thousand ; " 

 and of those that were actually "counted out and paid 

 for by the proper officers " of the forests, the short- 

 tailed mice outnumbered the long-tailed species in 

 the proportion of fifty to one. It is not at all unusual 

 to find the little compact nest of the campagnal among 

 the herbage and wild plants in the Park, the covers 

 and the low-land meadows. We once met with one in 

 a decidedly swampy locality, within a very few yards 

 of the stream running into the Great Pond, this was 

 built of coarser blades of grass than those we had seen 

 among the fern in the Park, but differed from them in 

 no other particular. 



The Hare (Lepus timidus) and the Rabbit (Lepus 

 cuniculus] are not quite extinct within the boundaries 

 of the parish, although unremitting exertions are made 

 season after season to reduce their numbers. The 

 hare is well known to travel a long distance in search 

 of food, so that if all the hares on the Manor were to 

 day killed " at one fell swoop," they would very shortly 

 be succeeded by others from other localities. This, 

 however, cannot justly be said of rabbits; their colonies 

 are numerous in the Park and on the Downs, and 

 their wonderfully prolific nature enables them to hold 

 their own in spite of traps, wires, guns, dogs, ferrets, 

 stoats, weazels, hedgehogs and foxes. Other means of 

 destruction have yet to be resorted to for the purpose 

 of subduing them, and we are enabled to state that 

 the ingenuity of man has been already successfully 

 exercised in this direction. Not many years since, in 

 one of the Eastern counties, extensive works were 

 carried on in a locality where rabbits abounded close 

 to the sea-shore. The men engaged in these works, 

 yielding to their natural instincts as sporting animals, 

 hit upon a novel expedient in rabbit hunting, the idea 



