STRATAGEMS OF THE HARE. 
205 
sion to remark that a hare, well practiced in his tricks, did not 
derange his tactics on account of a collegian’s shot. Nothing is 
still more common in flat and well- watered countries than that fa- 
mous trick of the willow, which so often recurs in the histories of 
wonderful hunts. 
Some willow-trees here hanging in melancholy postures, are 
used as natural bridges in crossing streams. The hare when 
hard run and at a loss where to turn, often seeks shelter on the 
worm-eaten trunk of these trees. It is seen first to enter the 
water, beat about some time, then dart with one leap, and with- 
out touching the ground, upon the branching crest of the willow, 
where it remains motionless, and lets itself be caught by the hand. 
I have on my conscience the murder of more than one perched 
hare, and of still more rabbits in this position. The rabbit of the 
isles of the Loire, the Garonne, and the Rhone, has no other 
shelter during inundations than the heads of willows. It even 
finds its table spread in this comfortable retreat, for the bark of the 
willow is a nourishment much to its taste. 
Thus the existence of the hare is but a perpetual series of anx- 
ieties and of terrors — of machinations and stratagems. 
There is but one being, the criminal and charming wife, whose 
lot here below is more worthy of pity. Vita leporis ! it was for 
the ancients the expression of supreme misery. 
The hare knows so well that the least carelessness in its con- 
duct may expose it to the most vexatious consequences — that 
there is not one of the acts of its daily existence that it does not 
calculate and weigh. If it was born in the forest, and makes the 
bush its habitual residence, it will take great care to cut itself 
only one path for going and coming, so as to take up as little 
room in the country as possible. For fear that the least blade of 
heath or thorn should tear off a bit of its fur, and thus betray the 
road to its lair, it carefully frees this road from every plant that 
obstructs it. It shears and combs every thing down close, and 
the same for its cross-cuts through the barley and wheat. 
Alas ! this excess of precaution is precisely what ruins it. Man, 
recognizing by these signs the habitual passage of the hare, here 
spreads his treacherous snares, and the fox, most terrible enemy 
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