UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
and when they were nearly full-grown, and the food 
was insufficient, they proceeded to devour one an- 
other. I kept two of the survivors a few days, but 
they were so utterly cruel and savage that I was 
glad to let them escape. 
Most of our rodents are as free from guile as our 
birds; they have none of the subtlety and cunning 
of their enemies the fox and the wolf; they are 
simply wild and shy. The rabbit has little wit, yet 
she manages to run the gantlet of her numerous 
enemies. Some of her arts of concealment are as old 
as mankind — the art of hiding where no one would 
think of looking — concealment where there is little 
to conceal her. One March day I started a rabbit 
from her form in a broad, open cultivated field. She 
had excavated a little place in the soft ground just 
deep enough to admit the hind part of her body and 
there she crouched in the open sunlight with only a 
little dry grass partly screening her. When I was 
within two paces of her she bounded away like the 
wind and directed her course toward a bushy ravine 
several hundred yards away. The advantage of her 
position was that she commanded all approaches; 
nothing could steal a march upon her, and she 
could flee in any direction. In a tangle of weeds or 
bushes she would have been where every one of her 
natural enemies prowl or beat about, and where 
concealment would have been more or less confine- 
ment. A few yards farther along I came upon an- 
102 
