176 WITH NATURE AND A CAMERA. 



always practise just before going on to their forms. 

 It looks like a reasoned action deliberately executed 

 to mislead prowling enemies that track them by 

 the scent left in their footprints. It consists of 

 travelling almost straight for a given distance, and 

 then doubling back right along their own path 

 again thirty or forty yards, suddenly leaving it 

 altogether by a tremendous side-bound, and going 

 away at right angles to their original path for some 

 distance before retiring to rest. This curious per- 

 formance is generally gone through only once. How- 

 ever, I have known it repeated two or three times 

 before a fastidious animal had become satisfied with 

 its daylight quarters. 



When snow lies thick upon the ground and the 

 wind has drifted it, Hares often make their forms 

 in a peculiar manner. It is called in the North 

 of England "coaving" (undoubtedly a corruption 

 of caving), and consists of driving a tunnel almost 

 through a sloping drift of snow and then sitting 

 all day at the end of it. 



Many snowdrifts do not touch the wall they 

 are driven against, and there is frequently room 

 for a man to walk in comfort between them. 



I once saw a Hare in a burrow of this kind, 

 and she had made a small hole as big as a man's 

 waistcoat button through the front of the drift, and 

 had one eye fixed close up against it. Poachers 

 sometimes succeed in throwing a net over the poor 

 creatures as they sit in these snow burrows. 



Occasionally Hares are shot on bright moonlight 

 nights as they feed upon the snow ; and I knew 

 one old poacher who, though in easy circumstances, 

 had the spirit of the thing so strongly in his blood 

 that, even when bent double with rheumatism, he 

 would leave the warm fireside of his farmhouse, 



