loo The Gamekeeper at Home. 



while the lesser seems to slip through the grass. By 

 these signs, and by a kind of instinct which grows upon 

 one when always in the field, it is possible to distinguish 

 between them even in tall grass and in the gloaming. 



This sort of shooting, if it does not afford the 

 excitement of the pheasant battue, or require the 

 alertness necessary in partridge killing, is not without 

 its special pleasures. These are chiefly to be attri- 

 buted to the genial warmth of the weather at that 

 season, when the reapers have only just begun to put 

 the tall corn to the edge of their crooked swords, and 

 one can linger by the hedge-side without dread of 

 wintry chills. 



The aftermath in which the rabbits feed is not so 

 tall as the mowing grass, and more easy and pleasant 

 to walk through, though it is almost devoid of flowers. 

 Neither does it give so much shelter ; and you must 

 walk close to the hedge, gliding gently from bush to 

 bush, the slower the better. Rabbits feed several 

 times during the day — i.e. in the very early morning, 

 next about eleven o'clock, again at three or four, and 

 again at six or seven. Not that every rabbit comes 

 out to nibble at those hours, but about that time some 

 will be seen moving outside the buries. 



As you stroll beside the hedge, brushing the 

 boughs, a rabbit feeding two hundred yards away will 



