174 Wild Life in a Southern County 



most of the banks frequented by rabbits. Why do they 

 make an aperture so many times larger than they can 

 possibly require ? It may be a kind of ancestral hall, the 

 favourite cave of the first settlers here, clung to by their 

 descendants. Within, perhaps three, or even more, tunnels 

 branch off from it. So busy are they, and so occupied 

 when excavating a fresh passage, that sometimes when 

 waiting quietly on a bank you may see the miner at work. 

 The sand pours out as he casts it behind him with his 

 hinder paws; his back is turned, so that he does not 

 notice any one. 



Along the banks evidence may be found of attempts at 

 boring holes, abandoned after a few inches of progress had 

 been made : sometimes a root, or a stone perhaps, inter- 

 feres; sometimes, and apparently more often, caprice 

 seems the only cause why the tunnel was discontinued. 

 The grass in this corner is sweeter to their taste than 

 elsewhere : their runs are everywhere crossing and wind- 

 ing about. 



In the evening, as the shadows deepen and a hush 

 falls upon the meads, they come out and chase and romp 

 with each other. When a couple are at play one will rush 

 ten or a dozen yards away and begin to nibble as if totally 

 unconscious of the other. The second meanwhile nibbles 

 too, but all the while stealthily moves forward, not direct, 

 but sideways, towards the first, demurely feeding. Suddenly 

 the second makes a spring ; the first, who has been watch- 

 ing out of the corners of his eye all the time, is off like 

 the wind. Or sometimes he will turn and face the other, 

 and jump clean over, a foot high. Sometimes both leap 

 up together in the exuberance of their mirth. 



By the trunk of a mighty oak, growing out of the 

 hedge that runs along the top of the field, the brambles 



