MARCH DAYS ON THE DOWNS 175 



whose business it is with branches and sacks to keep the 

 sides of the fire from spreading too near to stacks or 

 fences. Yet while directing this operation the writer 

 once singed a basking fox. The grass had been lighted 

 and relighted for more than an hour, and the successful 

 laying of a long train of straw had at last produced a 

 line of fire a hundred yards across, which was travelling 

 slowly across the wind. The fox had chosen for its 

 lair a hollow full of long grass from which rubble had 

 been dug at some distant date, and was either sound 

 asleep or unwilling to move, until the fire had passed 

 on either side of its lair. When it sprang up in the 

 middle of the smoke it was for a moment bewildered, 

 and dashed through the flames with its fur on end, and 

 every hair on its brush stiff with fright. A long- 

 legged setter which was watching the proceedings at 

 once gave chase, and it was not until after a long and 

 close course in the open that the fox recovered presence 

 of mind to make for a fence, and with one or two of 

 the apparently simple ruses by which the fox always 

 bewilders the slower dog-wits, that the setter was 

 baffled. In a long day spent on the hills at this time 

 it is possible to find every head of game, and all the 

 winged vermin in a thousand acres, by sitting quietly 

 opposite the sheltered slopes, or near the copses. 

 It is the only season at which animals are more rest- 

 less than man ; their power of sitting still deserts them 

 under the genial influence of the unaccustomed sun. 

 By the time that the peewits have ceased circling and 

 calling, the little brown dots, which may be either hares 



