204 WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER 



a hunt is seldom successful, unless time be at 

 the disposal of the hunters. Yet in the after- 

 noon, should the rabbits be driven to their 

 burrows, the raiders find their task an easy one, 

 for, caught in blind alleys among the galleries 

 below ground, the timid rodents choose rather 

 to submit to death than by one bold effort to 

 make their escape. 



No satisfactory reason can be given for the 

 paralysing fear that possesses the rabbit directly 

 it ascertains the presence of a stoat. Nor can 

 it be explained why the rabbit should " bolt " 

 before its cruel foe more readily in the morning 

 than in the afternoon. For ages, from causes 

 which evolutionists have clearly described, those 

 creatures most capable of taking care of them- 

 selves have outlived their weaker and less in- 

 telligent brethren ; and, bearing this in mind, 

 we cannot understand how a strange stupidity, 

 which so often results in death, can have become 

 hereditary. 



In hard weather the fox and the hawk ap- 

 proach the homestead. The kestrel descends 

 suddenly, like a stone dropped from the sky, 

 into the barnyard, and rises with a mouse in its 

 claws. The sparrow-hawk, bolder and more 

 cruel still, dashes along the hedgerow and 

 " stoops " upon a thrush that is trying to get at 

 a worm in the " miskin " near the cowsheds. 



