56 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



any rate their numbers are more than made up by the 

 unusual number of leverets which in such seasons 

 grow to maturity. Hares are always numerous on 

 the downland round Lambourne and Catmore in 

 Berkshire, but at the end of the wet season of 

 1902 they had increased enormously. In ordinary 

 years many young hares are destroyed by plough 

 and harrow in tilling the soil, but the weather had 

 been so bad all through 1902 that field operations 

 for clearing the land, and especially steam ploughing, 

 were practically at a standstill for months ; and the 

 leverets were no longer sacrificed to Ceres. 



There is reason to conjecture that a wet summer 

 round our coasts actually reduces the number of fish 

 in the sea, and marine life generally. This may 

 seem a paradox, but it is borne out partly by the 

 increase of marine life after dry years, partly by the 

 recent discoveries as to the hatching and life of the 

 spawn and young of sea creatures. The season of the 

 year 1900, for instance, saw the most teeming marine 

 life known for years round our shores. " But the 

 early summer of 1900 was exceptionally wet and 

 cold ? " Yes, so it was, and it destroyed the young 

 partridges, rabbits, and wild pheasants. But the sea 

 creatures are not made in one summer like the 

 partridges. The herrings, of which the record catch 

 was made, the bass which were caught in thousands 

 off Dover, the innumerable cuttlefish off the coasts 

 of France and Cornwall, the solid shoals of mackerel 

 taken off the Irish shores, perhaps were adult fish 

 hatched and bred in unusual numbers in the three 



