26o AUTUMN AND WINTER 



crowds which flock the outer fields to see the sport, rejoice, 

 and will, if they get the chance, head the hare and hound it 

 back. It is common for the animal to make for the line of 

 people. This may be due to the accident of blind terror ; 

 but the incidents are so many in which animals, especially 

 hares, have, in extreme, turned for protection to men, that 

 one wonders if in the coursery field, too, this instinct does 

 not work. 



Mr. Thompson Seton, best of all the transatlantic natur- 

 alists, once gave the writer a strange example of this trust in 

 man as a last resource. He was out on the snow in the 

 North- West looking for ermine. In the course of his journey 

 he saw a white hare pursued over the snow by a white 

 ermine ; and the hunt was near its tragic end. But in the 

 hunted hare there was just enough initiative and sense left to 

 take a last chance. She ran straight to Mr. Seton, and 

 squatted between his legs. The white ermine, cool and 

 collected as ever, stopped to watch the manoeuvre, circled 

 twice round the man and hare, decided that the chance 

 was past, and made off. In a minute the hare recovered 

 and hopped away quietly, shy again of the man, but not 

 frightened. 



A hare is almost like a bee in one thing. It cannot 

 endure any quick movement in man. Stand still and 

 it loses fear. Even if it sees it is not alarmed. When 

 pressed even in a slight degree the hare will take to water 

 like the stag. The writer has known a hare land at his 

 feet across a wide and rapid brook. It took to the water 

 without any sort of hesitation and swam strongly and easily. 

 It was entirely undistressed on landing, and did not even 

 shake itself, though the pursuit, such as it was, had hardly 

 come into sight, and was no more than a strolling labourer. 



Preservation is usually attained by shyness, by intense 



