2 4 o THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



juicy barbs roughly forming the outer ring, then 

 layer after layer of the inner clothing, out of the 

 centre of which has been picked to the last scrap the 

 carcase and tender limbs. 



There goes one of the potential enemies of the 

 voles, whose summer progeny, and progeny's pro- 

 geny, have, in spite of restrictions, riddled their part 

 of the field with clean round holes in the ground and 

 secret tunnels in the grass. Never mind. The young 

 weasels will want some, till the unreasoning keeper 

 traps them and sets them up in his " larder." Last 

 night, too, the young owls were proclaiming their 

 sharp stomachs, if yet feeble beaks, all round the 

 house as we lay in bed. One on the elm, one on the 

 roof, and one by the barn called their tu-whits to one 

 another more quickly than a ball could fly round a 

 circle of expert catchers, till a parent with a long, 

 querulous admonition bade them all be silent and 

 follow him to another place. The vole balance will 

 not lack adjustment so long as these winged cats are 

 about. Some of these " mice " will have already 

 become food for the young foxes, for our vixen has 

 gotten herself five of these that gamble in the bracken 

 and round the bushes of their natal field, scarcely at 

 all to the dismay of the rabbits, with whose multipli- 

 cation the fields teem. In the daytime you will only 

 see the tiny ones of the latest apparent litters (there 

 are later ones still in several stages in the stops that 

 the does keep so secret). But as the cool of afternoon 

 draws on, larger and larger rabbits come forth from 

 their holes and begin their gambols and their extended 

 foraging that shall before dusk dot the banks all over 

 with creatures nineteen-twentieths of which were non- 



