THE RABBIT. 221 



in the movements of their elders. At dusk an 

 old doe sits up and begins to hop out along one 

 of the clearly defined runways that lead from the 

 burrows. Slowly and cautiously she goes, placing 

 her feet just where she placed them last night and 

 the night before, while behind her comes first one 

 rabbit, and then another. A second old doe (a 

 buck never leads) sets out along a second run- 

 way, leading in the opposite direction; then the 

 move becomes a general one, almost every adult 

 rabbit sallying forth on its nightly foray. For 

 a minute or two the whole earth is brown with 

 them, and one would never believe a single 

 warren could contain so many residents. Rapidly, 

 almost mysteriously, they melt away. In the 

 dimness you just see a leading doe, perched like 

 a silhouette on the break in the wall, as she 

 pauses for a final survey ere she leads her train 

 into the next field. She disappears, and a second 

 black speck takes her place; then a third and a 

 fourth are seen, like bobbing clockwork toys ; till 

 finally the gathering darkness blurs out the gap. 



Not long do the rabbits stick to their runways, 

 one branching off here and another there, so that 

 by the time the moon is up they are scattered all 

 over the country-side old Long-Legs being two 

 miles away, nibbling a cottager's cabbages at the 

 very threshold of the village. At the home-burrow, 

 squatting about the plateau, there remain only a 

 sprinkling of youngsters^and a few nursing mothers 

 keeping guard. 



The youngsters join in at the tail-end of the 

 procession ere very long. The first night out, 

 the wall across the meadow appears to them as an 

 insurmountable obstacle, so they nibble the grass 

 on this side of it; the night following they try 



