THE WATER-HAT OR WATER-VOLE. 325 



living their lives in sunny bachelorhood or spinster- 

 hood, unfettered by family cares, and existing only 

 for their own pleasure. Whether, like the bank- 

 beaver, they are outcasts, expelled from the social 

 intercourse of their kind, or whether they are 

 solitary merely from choice, it is impossible to 

 tell. 



Such a solitary specimen inhabited the banks of 

 a small pond, fed by an overflow arm from the 

 river, all one spring and summer under the writer's 

 observation. He was an exceptionally large vole, 

 and seemed totally devoid of ambition. The roof 

 of his bank-burrow had crumbled in, but he made 

 no attempt to improve things. One of the main 

 outlets contained in course of time a hornet's nest, 

 but he did not seem to mind. A dead toad was 

 never removed from another exit till the burying 

 beetles removed it. 



This vole was seen regularly by the anglers who 

 visited the pool, and many commented upon his 

 tameness. It is quite probable that ' he ' was an 

 old female vole, whose age forbade her taking a 

 further active part in the multiplication of her 

 species, and whose declining interests no longer 

 embraced the various errant-knights that came her 

 way. Other voles lived quite near at hand, but 

 this romantic old recluse apparently never associated 

 with them. 



Another solitary specimen lived by the banks of 

 a whirlpool at no great distance from the first, and 

 was seen on several occasions chasing other voles 

 from the locality. So far as one could judge, this 

 individual had entirely dispensed with the use of a 

 burrow, evidently considering himself above such 

 things, and made his home among the chaos of 

 loose rocks piled at the water's edge. Here he 



