HARES AND RABBITS 137 



beginning to grow luxuriantly, one always can ask 

 in what way that does harm. While he is trying 

 to think of a convincing answer, remind him of the 

 time when farmers gloried in their wheat, and did 

 everything for the good of the great crops they 

 grew, not only sowing it in clean land and hoeing 

 it, but folding sheep over it in the spring, to eat the 

 green tops and tread the roots firmly in the soil. 

 Now, considering that a hare at its worst does no 

 more than eat about half the length of each green 

 blade of wheat which it selects, the result, far from 

 being damaging, must tend to improvement. I 

 won a great victory over a lord high bailiff of an 

 estate, on which I began to get up the stock of 

 hares. He had several fields of wheat which 

 promised very fairly. But so soon as the ears grew 

 heavy with corn, just before ripening, about one in 

 three of the stems fell down. This I observed. 

 The bailiff met me ; he was genuinely furious, and 

 told me that he had got judgment against the hares. 

 I thought this was all very fine, and tried to reason 

 with the man, but he would not. So I determined 

 to play him at his own game. I appealed to Caesar, 

 and found things as the bailiff had told me. I 

 pointed out that the hares certainly had made a few 

 roads through the wheat, but that even the bailiff 

 had made no complaint as to what they had eaten. 

 And was it possible, I asked, for anyone who 

 thought for one moment to believe that hares could 



