46 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



ordinary management of sheep on down-land prescribes 

 that they shall be fed on the thin chalk-turf, and 

 folded at night on the arable land. The experiment 

 was tried of folding them on the down, in the hope 

 that this would cause richer pasture to appear there. 

 Instead, a rank growth of the most undesirable, sharp- 

 edged, tussocky " rubbish " grasses sprang up, and on 

 one or two spots known to the writer has remained, 

 spoiling that portion of the downs for twenty years. 



Among the unpaid gardeners who keep certain parts 

 of our landscape trim must be reckoned the humble 

 rabbit. "Rabbit turf" on the juniper-studded slopes 

 of the Surrey hills, or the verges of the Devonshire 

 cliffs, is almost the finest sward existing. The con- 

 stant nibbling of the rabbits, which work steadily 

 outwards from their burrows, cropping the grass again 

 and again closer than does a mowing-machine, dwarfs 

 not only the grass, but all other plants and herbs. 

 They also nibble the furze-bushes and bunches of 

 heather into cushions and blunt cones, and give to the 

 ground which they frequent the appearance of being 

 covered with artificially rounded and trimmed shrubs 

 and bushes, an effect which the large number of ant- 

 hills, so characteristic of the sides of downs, aids in 

 producing. On some parts of the coast, especially in 

 the sandhills which protect low lands from the sea, 

 rabbits occasionally threaten to produce very much 

 more serious changes in the landscape than this. They 

 burrow into the sandhills and weaken them until they 

 are no longer the firm barrier that they were. Over 

 the whole of the coast of Holland the Board which 



