io8 SMALL WOODLAND BEASTS 



your binocular to bring it within a yard or two of 

 your eyes. 



You will see that, as in the dog, the little nose is 

 perpetually in motion; it is all the time sniffing at 

 fleeting, elusive smells; also that he has a more 

 exquisite sensibility than the dog. Watching his little 

 tremors, his shiverings and quick little starts, the 

 wide opening of his eyes and rise and fall of the hair 

 along the back, with other minute motions extending 

 from the nose — which is exceptionally long in the 

 shrew — to the tip of the tail — which is longest in the 

 wood-mouse — you would imagine it to be the frailest 

 thing in existence, made of nothing but nerves, 

 trembling to every breath like a bit of thistledown, 

 and to be blown away by a breath or killed outright 

 by a snap of the fingers. And it is the smells and 

 their character which cause it all — smells familiar 

 and harmless, smells unknown that excite curiosity 

 and suspicion, smells dangerous that startle, but 

 are perhaps too faint, too far away, to cause the 

 little creature to forsake its sun-bath just yet. 



It will come as news to many, perhaps to most, 

 readers to be told that we too, human beings though 

 we be, are capable of being moved in the same way, 

 though in a comparatively faint degree, from the same 

 causes. Those of us, that is to say, who have lived an 

 outdoor life, who find their chief pleasures in woods 

 and in all wild and solitary places, and are alert and 

 responsive to all natural sights and sounds and 

 odours. To such persons, to sit still in any silent 

 green place, merely to watch and listen, is peculiarly 



