CUBDOM. 57 



hundred yards along a ride. That evening I 

 went to the earth we expected her to shift to, 

 and in the direction of which she had gone, and 

 the cubs were all there right enough, including 

 our refractory friend of the morning, who seemed 

 now quite reconciled to his new home ! 



On another occasion a vixen shifted her cubs 

 when they were very small, for no apparent 

 reason, and we could not make out where they 

 had got to, and searched every rabbit burrow 

 within a three-quarter mile radius in vain ; how- 

 ever, as the keeper and I were returning home 

 along one of the forest tracks, having given 

 up in despair, fearing that something had 

 happened to the vixen, and that the cubs must 

 be dead in the earth, we saw a heap of something 

 like a lump of peat in the middle of the ride, 

 which, as I passed it, seemed to move, and out 

 of curiosity I went to look at it to try and 

 account for this phenomenon, when lo ! half-a- 

 dozen little blue eyes peered at me out of the 

 heap, and here was the missing litter of no less 

 than seven cubs ! There was a small rabbit 

 burrow by the side of the ride five or six yards 

 away, where the vixen had evidently left 

 them, and, feeling cold, they had crawled into 



