AN ASTONISHED RABBIT. 85 



and apparent indifference. In some instinctive way these 

 wild creatures learn to distinguish when one is or is not 

 intent upon them in a spirit of enmity ; and if very near, 

 it is always the eye they watch. So long as you observe 

 them, as it were, from the corner of the eyeball, sideways, 

 or look over their heads at something beyond, it is well. 

 Turn your glance full upon them to get a better view, 

 and they are gone. 



When waiting in a dry ditch with a gun on a warm 

 autumn afternoon for a rabbit to come out, sometimes a 

 bunny will suddenly appear at the mouth of a hole which 

 your knee nearly touches. He stops dead, as if petrified 

 with astonishment, sitting on his haunches. His full dark 

 eye is on you with a gaze of intense curiosity ; his nostrils 

 work as if sniffing ; his whiskers move ; and every now 

 and then he thumps with his hind legs upon the earth 

 with a low dull thud. This is evidently a sign of great 

 alarm, at the noise of which any other rabbit within 

 hearing instantly disappears in the ' bury.' Yet there 

 your friend sits and watches you as if spell-bound, so long 

 as you have the patience neither to move hand or foot, 

 nor to turn your eye. Keep your glance on a frond of 

 the fern just beyond him, and he will stay. The instant 

 your eye meets his or a finger stirs, he plunges out of 

 sight. 



It is so also with birds. Walk across a meadow 

 swinging a stick, even humming, and the rooks calmly 



