ioo Poachers and Poaching. 



densest darkness. Still we follow on. Rabbits 

 have made pitfalls in the loose, yellow sand, and 

 we see their white scuts as vanishing points in 

 the darkness. Mice rustle away, and a hedgehog 

 comes to the pool to drink. One of the latter we 

 saw just now taken in the keeper's trap, the latter 

 baited with a pheasant's egg. The squeal of a 

 foumart comes from the loose stones. Later 

 it will feed on the frogs now croaking from 

 the ditch ; these it kills by piercing their 

 skulls. 



If the cuckoo tells her name to all the hills, so 

 does the sedge-warbler to the fluted reeds. And, 

 like that wandering voice, our little bird seems 

 dispossessed of a corporeal existence, and on 

 through summer is " still longed for, never seen" 

 and this though common enough, for you may 

 wander long among the willows, with a bird in 

 every bush, without one showing outside its 

 corral of boughs. Wherever vegetation grows 

 tall and luxuriant, there the " reed-wren " may 

 be found. It travels in the night : you go out 

 some May morning, and the rollicking intoxica- 

 tion of the garrulous little bird comes from out 

 the self-same bush from which you missed it in 

 autumn. From the time it first arrives it begins 

 to sing louder and louder as the warm weather 

 advances, especially in the evenings. Then it is 

 that it listens to the loud-swelling bird-choir of 



