ENGLISH ANIMALS IN SNOW . 207 



house. Apparently he had been frightened, for he 

 had gone off at a gallop. Then after keeping along 

 a high, steep bank where there was a chance of finding 

 a lark roosting in the rough grass at the edge, he 

 had diverged to examine a patch of dead nettles which 

 had sprung up round a weed-heap. Next he had 

 gone off for half-a-mile in a straight line to a barn, 

 and there, after examining every bush and straw-rick, 

 had caught a rat or a mouse, and then gone off into 

 the vale. Not far off was his return track. He had 

 gone a short distance on the track of a hare, but 

 apparently had found a good supper before then, for 

 in a few yards he had abandoned the trail and gone 

 straight back to the earth. The same day we found 

 the traces of a tragedy in rabbit-life : the footmarks 

 of several bunnies just outside a thick brake, the traces 

 of a fox creeping cautiously up the hedgerow between 

 them and their earths, and the fox's rush from the 

 bushes, ending in a broad mark in the snow, where a 

 rabbit had been seized, leaving only a few bits of 

 grey hair scattered about as memorials for his family. 

 Walking along the road through the flat meadows 

 one snowy night, we were startled by the noise of 

 a covey of partridges rising and cackling the other 

 side of the hedge. A fox had sprung right among 

 the covey, but apparently missed his mark, as the 

 next moment he crossed the road in front of us. 

 Water-shrews, water-rats, and otters all dislike frost 

 and snow, more, perhaps, because the streams are 

 frozen, and food more difficult to obtain along the 



