148 Wild Life in a Southern County 



tree on the opposite side away from you he will not run 

 to a solitary tree if he can possibly avoid it : he likes a 

 group, and his trick is, the moment he thinks he is out of 

 sight among the upper branches, to slip quietly from one 

 tree to the other till, while you are scanning every bough, 

 he has travelled fifty yards away unnoticed. If the 

 branches are not close enough to hide him, he gets as 

 much as possible behind a large branch, and stretches 

 himself along it at the same time his tail, which at 

 other times is bushy, seems to contract, so that he is less 

 visible. He will leap in his alarm to dead branches, and, 

 though his weight is trifling, occasionally they snap under 

 the sudden impact ; but that does not distress him in the 

 least, because a bough rarely breaks clean off, but hangs 

 suspended by bark or splinters, so that he can scramble to 

 the ivy that winds round the trunk. Or if he is obliged 

 to slip down, the next branch catches him ; and I have 

 never seen a squirrel actually fall, though sometimes in 

 his frightened haste he will send a number of little dead 

 twigs rustling downwards. When the tail is spread 

 out, so to say, its texture is so fine and silky that the 

 light seems to play through it. They love this particular 

 corner because just there the hedge is composed of hazel 

 bushes, and even when the nuts are gone from the 

 branches they still find some which have dropped upon 

 the bank and are hidden in the dry grass and brown 

 leaves. 



In this corner, too, the bank being dry and sandy, 

 there is a large settlement of rabbits, and now and then 

 some of these find their way to the orchard and garden 

 along the hedge. Babbits have their own social laws and 

 customs adapted to the special conditions of their way of 

 life. At the breeding season there seems to be a tendency 



