50 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
could see how its tracks in series of fours were made. 
At every jump the long hind-legs thrust themselves 
far in front. They made the two far-apart tracks in 
the snow, while the close-set fore-paws made the 
nearby tracks. Accordingly a rabbit is always trav- 
eling in the direction of the far-apart tracks, quite 
contrary to what most of us would suppose. 
It is the same way with celestial rabbits. Look 
any clear winter night down below the belt of Orion, 
and you will see a great rabbit-track in the sky — 
the constellation of Lepus, the Hare, whose track 
leads away from the Great Dog with baleful Sirius 
gleaming green in his fell jaw. 
From the rabbit-meadow we followed devious 
paths down through Fern Valley, which in summer- 
time is a green mass of cinnamon fern, interrupted 
fern, Christmas fern, brake, regal fern, and half a 
score of others. In the midst of the marsh were rows 
of the fruit-stems of the sensitive fern, which is the 
first to blacken before the frost. These were heavy 
with rich wine-brown seed-pods, filled with seeds 
like fine dust. They had an oily, nutty taste; and it 
would seem as if some hungry mouse or bird would 
find them good eating during famine times. Yet so 
far as I have observed they are never fed upon. 
Along the side of the path were thickets of spice- 
bush, whose crushed leaves in summer have an 
incense sweeter than burns in any censer of man’s 
making. To-day I broke one of the brittle branches, 
to nibble the perfumed bark, and found at the end 
of a twig, pretending to be a withered leaf, a cocoon 
