7 z FEBRUARY 



than before or after. It added to their warmth. It was 

 not regarded by them as a cold thing, but as a source of 

 heat. You could feel the warmth as you can in a rabbit s 

 form, when the bird had flown. A villager, a man of 

 very acute observation, said that he had often watched 

 the birds come out of the wood to roost in the snow. 



Hares often, and occasionally rabbits, use it very much 

 as the Esquimaux : they make houses of it. A sportsman 

 walking with a retriever (a great friend of mine) over a 

 deep snowfield saw his dog stop and set almost like a 

 pointer ; and looking down he perceived just the dark 

 eye of a hare looking out through a small round window 

 in the roof of his snow-house. Dog and man and hare 

 looked at one another at close quarters for half a minute 

 without moving. The dog was so well trained that he 

 made no attempt to disturb the hare ; and the sportsman, 

 melted by the soft eye looking from the snow, walked 

 on, and the obedient dog followed him. It was a pretty 

 episode, that would have delighted the poet Cowper. 

 One of the most timorous of all our animals displayed 

 surprising nerve : the dog, a docility and capacity for 

 restraining his elemental instincts, that almost amounts 

 to reason ; and the sportsman gave evidence that humane 

 feeling and the carrying of a gun may coincide. The 

 incident recalled an experience of the North- West of 

 Canada, told me by a friend who is both naturalist and 

 traveller. On a plain of snow he came in sight of a hare 

 pursued by an ermine, both protectively coloured to the 

 whiteness of the snow. The hare, now in the extremity 

 of danger, ran straight up to the man and crouched 

 between his feet. The pursuer circled round the two 

 for a few minutes and then made away. When he had 

 disappeared the hare, still showing no fear of the man, 

 rose and pattered slowly away. 



