2 66 



Peacock : The Beck — A Study. 



There are, however, more ways than the most direct one of 

 getting - what you want in this sublunary sphere, as the squire 

 found out to his cost. Sir R., his good neighbour and a county 

 magistrate, who looked on a poacher much as we look on a 

 murderer, chose the beck-spring warren I am describing, and 

 destroyed all the common rabbits with ferrets and guns ; his head 

 keeper then let it be known on the quiet to certain enterprising 

 'gentlemen' in the adjoining villages that he would pay five 

 shillings apiece for the first hundred couples of ' silver hairs ' to 

 hand, but if anyone was caught poaching there would be 

 'ructions galore.' No one was caught poaching, and in less 

 than a week the required number of couples was turned loose 

 on the sands, where they throve amazingly as stolen goods 

 always' do, I am sorry to say, according to local tradition. Of 

 late years I have come to the conclusion that it is better to 

 poach second-hand than personally. 



As we watch the rabbits that are abroad, all young ones 

 during the early hours of the afternoon, there is a movement 

 amongst them, and all in sight disappear as if by preconcerted 

 arrangement. There is some danger afoot, but nothing visible 

 to the eyes using a field glass. The keen scent of the bunnies 

 detects what man cannot, the presence of a dire enemy. A vixen 

 soon steals out of the wood, followed by her five half-grown 

 cubs ; little beauties, miniatures of their mother, and more 

 playful and sportive than the most frolicsome of kittens. The 

 vixen holds straight across the open in full view, but the cubs 

 do not follow her far, retiring to the woodside to scamper and 

 play about, but always ready to dart into the cover at the 

 slightest sign of danger. They were born under the roots of 

 a large ash tree on the clay bank on the upper side of the wood, 

 and have followed their dam through the undergrowth and nut 

 trees without fear. Early this year I saw her on the very spot 

 where her cubs are playing now with four admirers, chasing one 

 another about like mad things, and barking till the woodside 

 echoed and rang again. It is very seldom that you hear the 

 voice of the fox except in the late winter. 



We had better watch the vixen, her movements will be well 

 worth studying, for, if I do not mistake, she is going to put into 

 practice one of the many tricks atwhichshe has long been an adept. 

 Crossing the grass at a long, even, swinging pace, she jumps 

 down the beck-side to the water's edge. The moment she is out 

 of sight the cubs disappear into the wood, and return straight 

 to their earth, or its immediate neighbourhood, for it is there 



Naturalist, 



