50 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



could see how its tracks in series of fours were made. 

 At every jump the long hind-legs thrust themselves 

 far in front. They made the two far-apart tracks in 

 the snow, while the close-set fore-paws made the 

 nearby tracks. Accordingly a rabbit is always trav- 

 eling in the direction of the far-apart tracks, quite 

 contrary to what most of us would suppose. 



It is the same way with celestial rabbits. Look 

 any clear winter night down below the belt of Orion, 

 and you will see a great rabbit-track in the sky — 

 the constellation of Lepus, the Hare, whose track 

 leads away from the Great Dog with baleful Sirius 

 gleaming green in his fell jaw. 



From the rabbit-meadow we followed devious 

 paths down through Fern Valley, which in summer- 

 time is a green mass of cinnamon fern, interrupted 

 fern, Christmas fern, brake, regal fern, and half a 

 score of others. In the midst of the marsh were rows 

 of the fruit-stems of the sensitive fern, which is the 

 first to blacken before the frost. These were heavy 

 with rich wine-brown seed-pods, filled with seeds 

 like fine dust. They had an oily, nutty taste; and it 

 would seem as if some hungry mouse or bird would 

 find them good eating during famine times. Yet so 

 far as I have observed they are never fed upon. 



Along the side of the path were thickets of spice- 

 bush, whose crushed leaves in summer have an 

 incense sweeter than burns in any censer of man's 

 making. To-day I broke one of the brittle branches, 

 to nibble the perfumed bark, and found at the end 

 of a twig, pretending to be a withered leaf, a cocoon 



