112 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PLAY 



between a fire and a furnace. The first stimulate 

 life and love ; the last bring decay and death, and 

 if the time of their coming were not coincident 

 with the period of the greatest vitality of wild 

 creatures, after the genial months of late summer 

 and early autumn, the last days of a wet October 

 would claim more victims among the birds and 

 beasts of our fields than the heaviest snows of winter. 

 There is scarcely any English animal or bird that 

 can remain healthy during a week's rain even young 

 ducks die in a wet summer. The danger from snow, 

 even to the weaker creatures, bears no comparison, 

 either at the time or in view of the after-mischief 

 caused by it, to the effects of cold and pitiless rain. 

 It is the cutting off of the food supply, caused by 

 the long continuance of frost, that kills the birds 

 and starves the hares and rabbits, not the snow itself. 

 Animals, which would be sick and ailing after three 

 days' rain, seem to enjoy a week's snow. You may 

 see where, after a moonlight night, hares and rabbits 

 have been rolling in the snow, just as dogs roll and 

 romp in the powdery white. But neither man nor 

 beast can face the rain. It was not snow, but famine, 

 that destroyed the grande armee in the retreat from 

 Moscow, though Generals Janvier and Fevrier com- 

 pleted what hunger had begun. But the incessant 

 rains of the following autumn, lasting from August 



