Famishing Rabbits and Hares 311 



with the imprints of their feet — looking everywhere for a 

 green blade. 



Yet they only occasionally scratch away the snow and 

 so get at the grass. Though the natural instinct of rabbits 

 is to dig, and though here and there a place may be seen 

 where they appear to have searched for a favourite morsel, 

 yet they do not seem to acquire the sense of systematically 

 clearing snow away. They then bark ash — and, indeed, 

 nearly any young sapling or tree — and visit gardens in the 

 night, as the hares do also. They creep about along the 

 mounds, being driven by hunger to search for food all day 

 instead of remaining part of the time in the buries. 



As to the hares, little more than a week of deep snow 

 cripples their strength : they will run but twenty or thirty 

 yards, and may be killed occasionally with a stick or 

 captured alive. They are even more helpless than rabbits, 

 because the latter still have holes to take refuge in from 

 danger ; but the hare while the snow lasts is a wretched 

 creature, and knows not where to turn. Birds resort to 

 the cattle-sheds to roost ; among them the blackbirds, who 

 usually roost in the hedges. Birds come to the houses 

 and gardens in numbers because the snow is there cleared 

 away along the paths. 



During severe weather the water-meadows are the most 

 frequented places. They are rarely altogether frozen. If 

 in the early morning there are sheets of ice, by noonday a 

 great part will be flooded an inch or two deep, the water 

 rising over the ice, and forced by it to spread farther, 

 softening the ground at the sides. The water-carriers are 

 long before they freeze. Thrushes and blackbirds come to 

 the hedges surrounding these meadows ; the fieldfares and 

 redwings are there by hundreds, and fly up to the trees if 

 alarmed. 



