1 40 The Gamekeeper at Home. 



rolls on, licking up grass and fern and heath ; and its 

 hot breath goes before it, and the blast rises behind it. 

 As on the beach the wave seems to break at the foot, 

 and then in an instant the surf runs away along the 

 sand, so from its first start the flame widens out right 

 and left with a greedy eagerness, and what five 

 minutes ago was but a rolling bonfire is now a wall of 

 fire a quarter of a mile broad, and swelling as it 

 goes. 



Then happens on a lesser scale exactly the same 

 thing that travellers describe of the burning prairies of 

 the Far West — a stampede of the thousands of living 

 creatures, bird and beast : rabbits, hares, foxes, weasels, 

 stoats, badgers, wild cats, all rushing in a maddened 

 frenzy of fear they know not whither. Often, with a 

 strange reversal of instinct, so to say, they will crowd 

 together right in the way of the flames, huddling in 

 hundreds where the fire must pass, and no effort of 

 voice or presence of man will drive them away. The 

 hissing, crackling fire sweeps over, and in an instant 

 all have perished. No more miserable spectacle can 

 be witnessed than the terror of these wretched crea- 

 tures. Birds seem to fly into the smoke and are 

 suffocated — they fall and are burned. Hares, utterly 

 beside themselves, will rush almost into the arms of 

 the crowd that assembles, and, of course, picks up 



