VII. 



BRITISH WILD BEASTS. 



I REMEMBER once, when lying dozing under a tree in a very 

 quiet scrap of English woodland, seeing a badger. The 

 very suddenness of such an apparition is in itself a delight- 

 ful touch of wild nature — for Nature is always sudden in 

 these glimpses of her inner life. 



Thus I remember, when in India, waiting for bear or 

 leopard to be driven past my post, the spectral visions of 

 boar and pea-fowl or fox that would rise up as it were from 

 the ground. One instant absolute solitude, and the next, 

 and lo ! a great sambhur stag, with all its pride of antlers, 

 standing out in the open. It takes two steps and is gone 

 again — for ever. Was it ever there at all ? You feel in- 

 clined to rub your eyes. A twig snaps. You look up : there 

 is nothing. You begin to think of phantoms and Shelley's 

 " panther-peopled solitudes." And look ! from opposite 

 you steps out a peacock. For half a second you see it with 

 all its pomp of trailing brilliance. How it lights up the 

 undergrowth ! But on a sudden it turns, and the glittering 

 undulating plumes vanish behind a bush, noiseless and 

 splendid like a coil of some great burnished snake, and 

 once more gloom settles deep on the glade. And so it goes 

 on all the time you wait. Sudden and silent things come 

 and go, and in each flash you catch a glimpse of Nature's 

 self, a i)eep into her private diary. 



