XLII 

 THE LIFE OF THE RABBIT 



" Rabbits be a dale cunninger now than what they used to be." 



A DEVONSHIRE RABBIT TRAPPER. 



TN the sloping coppice the wild trapped, snared, and shot from August 



hyacinths crowd among the furry until April ; still, it is half a mile to the 



fronds of the young bracken. Pink nearest homestead, and there are spells 



campion, wood-sorrel, and a sprinkling of days, and even weeks, when these 



of late-flowering primroses grow in the " feeble folk " are unmolested by man. 



clearing amid the hazel-stubs. The Moreover, the rabbits are conservative 



nightingale is challenging the blackbird in their habits, and show a sense of 



to melody, the chaffinches cry " pink, attachment to certain haunts. Such 



pink," as they flit through the oak an event as a general exodus from the 



boughs, and then from the shadiest warren has never happened, though 



recess of the plantation comes the soft, after a " big day " with the ferrets and 



melancholy coo of the wood-pigeon, guns, the slain are piled in heaps upon 



From the sun-warmed dead leaves, the turf, and every rabbit in the colony 



the mosses, and the flowers there arises is left trembling and terrified in those 



a blend of aromatic odours. And, honeycombed burrows, 



now and again, the pheasant calls, and Rabbits love to be dry and warm. 



a magpie chatters as it flies across the That is why they have chosen this 



green drive. sandy slope, sheltered by belts of 



The copse is above the rabbit warren, woodland, and fronting the sun. All 



and is one of a chain of small woods around are good feeding-places pas- 



upon the top of a sandy ridge, stretching tures where the juicy grass affords a 



from east to west. On the southern meal in early spring, fields of oats and 



slope, the rabbits have bred and swede-turnips, and beyond the vil- 



thrived ever since the recollection of lagers' allotment plots, where there are 



the oldest man in the parish, and their always cabbages and root crops. The 



number does not appear to increase sand yields easily to the busy scratching 



nor to diminish manifestly from year of the rabbits' paws. It is tunnelled 



to year. The place can scarcely be and made into chambers, and no water 



called a sanctuary, for the rabbits are drains into the " buries " or burrows. 





