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a broken leg will run at great speed for 60 or 80 yards ; 

 and then, if there is no pursuit, stop and begin barking a twig, 

 as if nothing had intervened to interrupt the ordinary 

 feeding hour. Sometimes, of course, they are dazed by 

 a sort of terror ; and doubtless both rabbits and birds are 

 charmed by stoats as no creature is by a snake. One 

 astounding instance of the numbing of all the initiative 

 faculties of a rabbit deserves to be recorded. The rabbit 

 pursued by a stoat ran to the very feet of the onlooker and 

 there crouched. It allowed itself to be lifted and carried 

 into the house, showing no fear, and no relief. Sense 

 seemed numb. It was clearly unhurt physically ; but when 

 set down within the house made no sort of effort either to 

 run away or to frisk. The same utter lethargy of mind and 

 body remained when it was taken on to the lawn. No exact 

 time was taken, but it was afterwards estimated that at any 

 rate more than an hour elapsed before the rabbit showed sign 

 of normal alertness and fear. Then it ran off into the bushes 

 as a wild rabbit should. The stoat will not always terrify 

 the rabbit out of its self-control ; and in defence of its young 

 the doe rabbit discovers a courage that is peculiar to the 

 maternal sense. She will drive off even a stoat, and limbs 

 hardened to a wonderful temper by burrowing practice 

 become sufficiently terrible weapons. It is courage of a 

 more patient sort which enables a rabbit to endure, it may 

 be for hours, the attack of a ferret from the rear. Many 

 a rabbit has saved itself by shoving up to the narrow end 

 of a blind alley in the hole ; and not even running the risk 

 of a kick while the ferret scrabbles vainly at its quarters. 

 The hare or rabbit in its form shows similar fortitude. How 

 often walking through the crackling stems of the dried kex 

 in an open spinney, one has seen a rabbit lying low, so close 

 that you may almost touch it, and may easily strike it. On 



