68 FLUFF-BUTTON THE RABBIT 
would have been the last. However, as it was, they 
often saw one another again, for Old Doe Rabbit had 
tunnelled her nesting burrow under a fir tree inside 
the wood, and used to lead her family out to feed 
in the evening. At first there were six of them, but 
as March turned into April, and White-Lamb's body 
grew to proportions more in keeping with his legs, 
foxes, cats and stoats took their toll, and their 
numbers diminished to three. After a time they 
achieved a certain independence. They crept out 
alone, and sat among the bluebells and combed their 
ears and pretended to be grown-up rabbits, until 
a pigeon clattering out of the fir trees or a magpie 
croaking in glee over a throstle's nest, made them 
tumble inside to their mother in a hurry. A mere 
human hunter would have said that there was 
absolutely no difference between Fluff-Button and 
his sisters, but he would have been wrong. Fluff- 
Button was no more like them than all the children 
in a human family are like one another, but only 
another rabbit could have seen the difference. 
They all had the same white dab of a tail, and the 
same ever-twitching whiskers, and they all had to 
go through the same training. All knowledge in 
the woods is divided into two kinds : those things 
which you are born knowing, and those things which 
you find out for yourself. Fluff-Button was born 
