92 Poachers and Poaching. 



the prettiest patterns upon the snow. The 

 tracks of the partridge are pretty, too, and from 

 them we read what ceaseless runners the birds are. 

 A depression shows where they have roosted 

 last night, and then their tracks may be followed 

 through the stubble and seed fields. By the 

 brook-side are the hair-like tracings of innumer- 

 able small birds ; and the water margins here 

 record the fullest registering. This may be 

 owing to the soft brook banks and their aquatic 

 life, when the rest of the fields are icebound. 

 Then many of the spawning fish are still on the 

 redds, and the prospect of these may be an addi- 

 tional inducement to some of the fish-feeding 

 creatures. Here, clutching a tuft of couch-grass 

 is a dead barn-owl, for which the intense cold 

 has proved too much one enemy less to the 

 shrews and field mice, whose hasty tracks here 

 and there show that more than once last night 

 they have had to beat a hasty retreat. Once 

 during the day, as the ferrets were turned into a 

 burrow, some one pointed out a brace of ermines 

 that had doubtless been looking after the rabbits 

 on their own account. They were still in their 

 brown summer fur, and made their way over the 

 snow and out of harm's way at a remarkably 

 rapid rate. This little incident reminds us of a 

 brown owl which emerged from a rabbit-hole just 

 as the ermines did, and curiously enough these- 

 birds had a couple of eggs and a young one even 



