DEVONSHIRE WOODLANDS 
43 
of its rush and roar as it whirls over the falls in a shimmering 
sheet of glass comes up over the hill on the soft, sweet-scented 
air, and tells of the clear, cool water far below. I love to C3me 
and gaze on the great natural amphitheatre down which this 
river glides, and the memories of it I store away into my heart. 
“ Hi ! did ’ee zee any rabbits out by the coppice as ye came 
along ? ” I half turned round to find it was old Simon Oare, the 
rabbit trapper, who was calling me from the bottom of the field. 
He was standing on the hedge and was evidently rabbiting, for 
he held a ferret in one hand and a sack in the other. 
“ No,” I answered, “ I did not.” 
“Hump,” said the old man, and climbed down over the 
hedge into the field. I opened the gate and moved down 
towards him. He is tall and uncouth, dressed in gaiters and 
breeches, and a very antiquated tail coat. On his head reposed 
a ragged cap, which, apparently with supreme indifference, he 
had allowed to drop from its peg to his venerable skull ; unfortu- 
nately, the cap fell “ all of a heap,” for the peak hung over his 
left ear and the lining over the other ! 
“ Cunning little toads they rabbits,” he murmured, “can’t get 
’em to bolt no ways. They’m more cunning than I be.” An 
amusing old gentleman is Simon, and a great hero with his 
friends, for he has been to the wars, and requires little persuasion 
to induce him to relate the whole of his military history, or to 
“ shoulder his stick and show how fields were won.” We walked 
up the road together towards the village, and many an interesting 
tale he told, which I one day hope to repeat. 
It was growing late and the rain began to descend in large, 
round drops. They fell on the leaves and flowers, where they 
glistened in the sun’s last rays ; then the clouds rolled over, and, 
as Virgil savs, dark night came on apace. 
14, Cvoss Street, Bruce F. Cummings. 
Barnstaple , North Devon. 
A BIRD’S EDUCATION. 
EARS ago there was a ready answer to every difficulty 
in the animal vyorld we could not explain and did not 
understand. A cat was said to return home from a 
distance, a calf to seek its mother’s teat, or a bird to 
make its way over the ocean, because it was their “ nature ” to 
do so. And this nature was looked upon as a blind instinct or 
innate fate. A creature possessed by it performed all sorts of 
complex acts without previous experience, instruction, or fore- 
thought. It did them, or was forced to do them, automatically, 
like a penny-in-the-slot machine that registers one’s weight. 
By-and-by this universal panacea, blind instinct, ceased to 
satisfy, like most answers do sooner or later, that are no answers 
