THE KEEPER'S HOPES 165 



free movement, there is some chance to look about, 

 there is air and light, cover and shade. Corn-stems 

 are firm and dry, but grass-stems hold the soaking 

 moisture of rain and dew, which saturates the skin 

 even through fur and feather, and quite beyond the 

 remedy of dog-like shakings. Wheat, as we have 

 said, is the corn most favoured of all creatures where 

 not planted too thickly, and growing on ground not 

 over clean, but dotted plentifully with bunches of 

 knapweed, thistles, and bindweed, and intersected by 

 furrows where the corn has grown poorly, and with 

 open spaces bare to the wind and sun. Winged 

 game, in case prompt flight is necessary, find it easier 

 to start up into the air through the straight, stiff ears 

 of wheat than through the ears of oats and barley. 

 Barley that shares the ground with a rank plant of 

 grass -seeds finds small favour among those many 

 creatures that forsake the airless woods in summer. 



Numbers of hares live all the summer in the cornfields. 

 But while many rabbits are born in the corn, when 



there is a wood at hand most of them retire 

 The by day, returning to the corn to feed at 



Hopes** ' night. No rabbit, in sleekness of fur, is 



comparable to the rabbit that has lived for 

 a few fine weeks among the corn-stems, for the con- 

 stant brushing of the stems grooms his coat to a state 

 of wonderful fineness. At any moment rabbits in the 



