200 Wild Life in a Southern County 



the far-away hedge, give the aspect of a wilder park, the 

 more pleasant because of its wildness. 



Near about the centre, where the land is most level, an 

 unexpected slope goes down into a cuplike depression. 

 This green crater may perhaps have been formed by 

 digging for sand — so long ago that the turf has since 

 grown over smoothly. Standing at the bottom the sides 

 conceal all but the sky overhead. Some few dead leaves 

 of last year, not yet decayed, though bleached and brittle, 

 lie here at rest from the winds that swept them over the 

 plain. Silky balls of thistledown come irresolutely rolling 

 over the hedge, now this way, now that : some rise and 

 float across, some follow the surface and cling awhile to 

 the bennets in the hollow. Pale blue harebells, drooping 

 from their slender stems here and there, meditate with 

 bowed heads, as if full of tender recollections. 



Now, on hands and knees (the turf is dry and soft), 

 creep up one side of the bowl-like hollow, where the 

 thistles make a parapet on the edge, and from behind it 

 look out upon the ground all broken up into low humps, 

 some covered with nettles, others plainly heaps of sand. 

 It is the site of an immense rabbit-burrow, the relic of an 

 old warren which once occupied half the field. The nettle- 

 covered heaps mark old excavations ; where the sand 

 shows, there the miners have been recently at work. At 

 the sound of approaching footsteps those inhabitants that 

 had been abroad hastily rushed into their caves, but now 

 (after waiting awhile, and forgetting that the adjacent 

 hollow might hide the enemy) a dozen or more have come 

 forth within easy gunshot. Though a few like this are 

 always looking in and out all through the day, it is not 

 till the approach of evening that they come out in any 

 number. 



