70 'The Confessions of a 'Poacher. 



Game Act is mainly responsible for this. A 

 country Justice, who has often been my friend 

 when I was sadly in need of one, asked me 

 why I thought the Hares and Rabbits Act 

 had made both kinds of fur scarcer. I told 

 him that the hare would become abundant 

 again if it were not beset by so many enemies. 

 Since 1880 it has had no protection, and 

 the numbers have gone down amazingly. A 

 shy and timid animal, it is worried through 

 every month of the year. It does not 

 burrow, and has not the protection of the 

 rabbit. Although the colour of its fur re- 

 sembles that of the dead grass and herbage 

 among which it lies, yet it starts from its 

 "form" at the approach of danger, and from 

 its size makes an easy mark. It is not un- 

 frequently " chopped " by sheep-dogs, and in 

 certain months hundreds of leverets perish in 

 this way. Hares are destroyed wholesale 

 during the mowing of the grass and the reaping 

 of the corn. For a time in summer, leverets 

 especially seek this kind of cover, and farmers 

 and farm-labourers kill numbers with dog and 



