HABITS AND CHARACTERS

OF

BRITISH WILD ANIMALS

BY

H. MORTIMER BATTEN

Author of ' Tracks an J Trading '

ILLUSTRATED BY

WARWICK REYNOLDS

LONDON : 38 Soto Square. W.

W. & R. CHAMBERS, LIMITED

EDINBURGH : 339 High Street

.55"

BIOLOGY

LIBRARY

G

Edinburgh :
Printed by W. & R. Chambers, Limited.

Printed, Sept. 1920.

CONTENTS.

MM

INTRODUCTION .... 7

THE RED DEER .... 11

THE ROE-DEER, OR THE ROEBUCK 37

THE Fox 49

THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE) .... 74

THE OTTER 103

THE PINE-MARTEN 139

THE BADGER 161

THE POLECAT 185

THE BROWN HARE 192

THE BLUE OR MOUNTAIN HARE 211

THE RABBIT 218

THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN 248

THE SQUIRREL 271

THE GRAY OR BROWN RAT 289

THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE 312

THE WILD CAT 337

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

The Roe-Deer, or the Roebuck Frontispiece

The Red Deer facing page 16

The Fox ii .1 48

The Weasel ; 80

The Stoat (the Ermine) « « 96

The Otter 112

The Pine-Marten MM 144

The Badger i n 160

The Polecat H ,t 176

The Brown Hare • * 192

The Blue or Mountain Hare • • 208

The Rabbit , „ 224

The Hedgehog or Urchin DM 256

The Squirrel H it 272

The Gray or Brown Rat • • 288

The Water-Rat or Water- Vole .... » „ 320

The Wild Cat . • 336

INTRODUCTION.

IN the hope of achieving to some degree the virtue
of originality — if originality can truly be termed
a virtue — this book has been written from practical
observations, and, so far as possible, without the
aid of references. It is understood that originality
strikes the keynote of interest, and while I have
perhaps been guilty of shirking the more burden-
some and technical details concerning the animals
dealt with, I have endeavoured to include not
only necessary facts, but also to infuse into each
record something of the character of the beast
itself. I have considered it essential not only to
describe an animal as a creature of certain habits,
but also to treat it as a thing of temperament
and character, for it is only by the power of
insight into this side of nature that one can
hope to arrive at a thorough understanding of
the denizens of the wild. An American Indian,
when trying to impart his knowledge concerning
some wild beast, tells you not of its habits, but
of its character ; and it is because he himself knows
so well the temperaments of the creatures he
hunts that he is so much a master of woodcraft,
for with this knowledge he is at once on the
highroad to penetrating the innermost secrets of
their lives. In the same way the man who is
dependent upon his traps for a living profits at
every turn by his intimate knowledge of the
creatures he is out to trap. Some he knows to be
inquisitive, so he appeals to their curiosity ; others
he knows to be wary, and he trades on their
wariness ; all, he knows, have some weakness, some

8 INTRODUCTION.

vulnerable point in their all too inadequate armour
of defence, and if he can find it a rich harvest
awaits him. We in Britain do not wish to destroy
the wild creatures of our woods, but if we are
to learn their ways we must first become au fait
with their characters.

It is, of course, impossible to write from personal
observation and study all the data that are neces-
sary for the completion of a book of this kind.
One may be tolerably familiar with the life-habits
and customs of a certain beast, may indeed regard
it as an intimate friend; but life is too short
for one to learn from practical observation all the
details concerning it that are necessary— its changes
of coat, length of life, and so on. If one could
devote all one's studies to one particular species,
it might be possible ; but in dealing with several
there comes a point when inaccuracy must be
risked or extensive references made. Realising this,
my method has been first to write all I know
concerning the animal dealt with, and, this done,
to apply to outside authority for such supple-
mentary evidence as might prove necessary. If
my original notes have appeared sufficient, they
have been left untouched ; and in every case my
own data, when sufficiently wide, have been given,
whether or not they happen to coincide with the
notes of other, and probably far better qualified,
naturalists. On other occasions, personal data on
a certain point have either been entirely lacking
or insufficiently substantial, in which case the best
authorities have been sought and quoted.

A final reading of the finished chapters has
brought home very forcibly the realisation that
at least half the information contained in this
volume is the result of the studies of my boyhood.

INTRODUCTION. 9

It dates back from my ninth year, and a very
large number of the incidents quoted occurred
during the succeeding seven years. In those days
the study of wild birds and animals, particularly
animals, combined with an intense love for angling,
led me to explore many lonely mountain lochs
and forests, and was so absorbing an attraction
that it is to be feared it excluded studies of a
more important kind. I had no books on British
animals ; so far as the school library was concerned,
no one seemed to have written any, and during
holidays a reference library was not within hailing
distance. The natural history books annually
presented by kindly relatives were given over
to such curiosities of the African veldt and the
Indian jungle as best lent themselves to illus-
tration, and contained nothing concerning the
creatures I knew and loved. Gamekeepers, stone-
breakers, and water-bailiffs were the only references
available; and I very soon learnt that the sole
way to acquire accurate knowledge was to find
out for one's self — a state of affairs for which I
to-day thank my lucky star !

It was at my special request that the services of
my friend and colleague, Mr Warwick Reynolds,
were obtained for the illustrations, and the delightful
pictures he has produced more than realise my
highest expectations. One of the chief reasons
for inviting this well-known artist to undertake
the task was his reputation for minute accuracy
as regards details. The animals he draws are
creatures instinct with life and character, set
amidst their true environment ; Mr Reynolds's
striking effects are invariably obtained without
sacrifice of that fidelity to truth which is essential
in a work of this nature.

10 INTRODUCTION.

There is undoubtedly an astounding dearth
of books dealing with the wild life of our woods
and hills which strike a happy medium — that is,
books which are sufficiently informative without
being burdensome to all but the seriously minded
naturalist. For every man or woman who wishes
to delve deeply into technicalities, there are hun-
dreds who, while not desiring to imbibe solid chunks
of knowledge, are sufficiently fascinated by the sub-
ject to read with the keenest interest of the life-
habits and characters of the wild beasts they see.
The tendency is for human life to speed up, and
as the tension increases year by year, the need
for complete relaxation becomes more and more
marked, and tired brains turn more and more to
the fresh, calm things of the country. To-day
natural history books are more popular than ever
before, and it is with the realisation of this growing
popularity that I have endeavoured to produce a
book which, while being popular, is painstaking
and thorough so far as is within the scope of my
ability to make it. I hardly hope that it adds
very much to the sum of man's knowledge; but
if it adds one drop to his cup of contentment,
my purpose is achieved.

KILLIN, PERTHSHIRE.

Habits and Characters of
British Wild Animals.

THE RED DEER.

Thrice the age of a dog is that of a horse ;
Thrice the age of a horse is that of a man ;
Thrice the age of a man is that of a deer ;
Thrice the age of a deer is that of an eagle ;
Thrice the age of an eagle is that of an oak.

SO says an ancient and interesting adage, which
at any rate lacks nothing in extravagance of
statement. Throughout Scotland the belief is still
firmly rooted among shepherds and foresters of the
old school that deer live to an enormous age,
often exceeding two hundred years. It is a very
curious fact that till quite recently this belief in the
longevity of the red deer went practically undis-
puted, and in glancing through old records of the
chase one repeatedly finds reference to famous
stags reputed to have evaded many generations of
hunters. Indeed, the recognised name of ' Spy-
tard ' existed as a designation for harts over a
hundred years of age, and I believe that a Spytard
was granted certain protections not shared by the
younger generations of its race !

Scrope relates one or two incidents which might
be taken as conclusive in indicating the abnormal
length of life this animal attains, though he himself
did not uphold such extravagant views. Concern-
ing a stag which was shot by Glengarry in 1826,

12 THE RED DEER.

Scrope writes : ' On going up to him [the stag] a
mark was discovered on his left ear ; the first man
who arrived was asked what mark it was? He
replied that it was the mark of Ewen-mac-Jan Og.
Five others gave the same answer ; and after con-
sulting together all agreed that Ewen-mac-Jan Og
had been dead 150 years, and for forty years
before his death had marked all the calves he
could catch with this particular mark ; so that this
deer (allowing the mark to be authentic) must
have been 150 years old, and might have been 180.
The horns, which are preserved by the present
Glengarry, are not particularly large, but have a
very wide spread.'

Later the same writer says: 'I venture to
mention that, according to tradition, Captain Mac-
donald, of Tulloch, in Lochaber, who died in 1775
at the age of eighty-six, knew the white hind of
Lochtreig for the last fifty years of his life; his
father knew her an equal length of time before
him, and his grandfather knew her for sixty years
of his own time ; and she preceded his days : these
three gentlemen were all keen deer-stalkers. Many
of the Lochaber and Brae Rannoch men knew her
also ; she was pure white without spot or blemish.'

A very large stag was known for two hundred
years in the Monalia, a range of mountains lying
between Badenoch and Inverness. He was always
seen alone, keeping the open plains, so that he was
unapproachable.

Almost every history of the red deer one picks
up furnishes some similar 'proof of the animal's
capability of carrying an unlimited burden of years ;
but for that matter one can find corroborative
proof of almost any traditional belief that is
sufficiently widely accepted. At the same time, I

THE RED DEER. 13

am inclined to think that present-day naturalists
are insufficiently generous in estimating the length
of life of this animal. It is usually held that a stag
begins to decline after its fourteenth year, and so
far as its antlers are concerned this is undoubtedly
so. Deer kept in captivity are seldom known to
live so long as thirty years, and as a general rule
they become so far advanced in senile decay as to
play little or no part in the social intercourse of
their kind long before this age is reached. Yet
an old stag may live a more or less solitary life
for many years ere finally it vanishes.

A great deal, however, must depend upon the
conditions under which the animal lives, and taking
the normal conditions of the normal hart of the
Scottish mountains, there is certainly very little
that would seem conducive to great longevity. A
seventeen or eighteen stone stag may not turn the
scale at eleven stone by the end of the rutting
season, and in this weakened and susceptible con-
dition the first savage onslaught of the upland
winter finds him. Unable to stand the conditions
of the greater altitudes, he seeks the sheltered
corries, or may even wander down to the compara-
tively moderate climate of the forests at river-level.
Weeks of scanty fare, of miserable chill and cold-
driving mists, fall upon him at a time when he is
all too poorly fitted to meet such conditions, and,
unless artificially fed, he may sink into a pitiable
state of weakness. Stags have been known to
fall in the act of crossing comparatively shallow
torrents, and, too feeble to rise, to perish miser-
ably within a few feet of solid ground. They have
also been known to become too feeble to shake
the snow from their coats, and, the first layer
freezing solid, another rapidly collects, and yet

14 THE RED DEER.

another, till the accumulating burden weighs the
wretched creature down to die in its own tracks.

Such is the temperament of the red deer, such
the conditions under which it normally lives, that
in endeavouring to estimate its powers of repro-
duction a very liberal margin must be left for
death by circumstances more natural than shot
and powder — that is to say, if not protected by
man, the red deer of the north country would
be only just able to hold their own against
starvation and the elements; and so vigorous is
the life they lead, so subjected to periodical
fluctuations of strength and vitality, that it is
hardly reasonable to suppose such a life would
prove remarkable for its durability. In addition
to the rutting season there is the drainage of an
annual growth of antlers, the development of
which must be a process as irritating and trying
to their wearer as the cutting of teeth to human
children ; so that, all things considered, it might be
conjectured that the hinds stand a far better chance
of long life than do the harts.

Particularly difficult is it to lay down hard-and-
fast rules with regard to the red deer, for their
environment controls their habits, and therefore to
attempt to be conclusive is to invite criticism.
Some deer live on the bleak mountain-tops, while
others spend the whole of their lives in sheltered
woodlands. In all cases, however, they seem to be
more susceptible to misfortune than are roe-deer.

The red deer that dwell in sheltered woods
naturally live at a more easy-going rate than do
those of the highlands. Whereas a highland stag
may begin to show the first signs of senile decline
by the steady deterioration of his antlers after his
fourteenth year or so, the antlers of a woodland

THE RED DEER. 15

stag may be at their zenith of development in his
sixteenth or seventeenth year, and thereafter the
rate of decline may be very much slower than
is the case with the mountain-stag. Naturally,
therefore, one concludes that the animal living the
life of shelter and plenty far outlives his kinsman
who has chosen the bleak and hungry heights as
a habitat.

A mountain-stag exceeding twenty stone in
weight is considered a good one, and it is notice-
able that the heaviest stags killed are invariably
those which have chosen their home-range with
a view to shelter and plenty. Thus a woodland
stag killed at Atholl scaled thirty stone six pounds,
and another outlying stag killed on the same
estate tipped the beam at thirty-four stone — much
higher weights than are to be found in the deer
forest * of Atholl.

A horse lives thirty years, but does not reach
maturity till six years of age. How are we to
judge the age at which a deer reaches maturity ?
Very young stags endeavour to consort with the
hinds; but mild flirtations of this kind occur in
animal life of every kind, and are certainly no
indication of complete maturity. Probably a stag
is not fully matured till his third year, which would
argue that his allotted span of life is considerably
shorter than that of the horse. Gestation in the
case of the horse lasts ten months, in the case of
the deer eight months ; and, moreover, horses suffer
none of the fluctuations peculiar to deer, so that
all presumption is in the direction of the horse out-
living the deer. The camel outlives the horse by
at least twenty years; its period of gestation is

* It should be noted that a Scottish deer forest is not usually wooded
but is merely a large, almost barren tract

16 THE RED DEER.

the same, and it reaches maturity one year later.
So much granted, it may be added that all the
evidence we have seems to show that the period
of gestation has no bearing upon the length of life,
for some animals are born at a far earlier stage
of development than are others. The grizzly, for
example, undoubtedly outlives any creature dealt
with in this book, yet the period of gestation lasts
only six months, the mother being denned up in her
hibernation when the birth occurs, and remaining
so for a considerable time after. A grizzly cub,
when born, weighs less than two pounds, the
weight of the adult being probably six hundred
pounds ; yet, though the grizzly may live to eighty
or ninety years of age, it has reached maturity by
its third year.

By reason of these facts we realise the impossi-
bility of arriving at any basis by which the allotted
span of an animal's life can safely be estimated.
The weasel family alone provides a chaos of con-
tradictory facts calculated to produce a sense of
mental paralysis, and the ' cervides ' are no less con-
founding. There is no logic in the ways of nature.
The pace at which an animal lives, the abundance
or otherwise of its chosen food, and its fertility,
are factors which to some extent determine how
long it can hold out against its foes, which normally
is the only condition which decides its length of
life. It would seem to be a provision of nature
that the wild stag ceases to play any considerable
part in the reproduction of its kind ere it reaches
twenty years of age, and how long it exists there-
after is dependent upon conditions. It no longer
figures in a capacity that is of any consequence
to the community to which it belongs ; that
is, it is no longer able to hold out against its

THE RED DEER.

B

THE BED DEER. 17

foes, and therefore, by nature's order of things,
has ceased to live. But that the wolf and the bear
are gone, a stag that had been driven out by
younger stags owing to its age would be singled
out for the special attentions of its animal foes,
and having no friends at hand to help, would perish.

In Scotland we have no technical names in
common use to distinguish deer of various ages,
but confined deer are designated as follows :

Males and females less than one year old are
called Calves.

The male after one year old is called a Brocket.

A male at three is called a Squire, at four a
Staggart, at five a Stag, and at six a Warrantable
Stag. He may afterwards be called a Hart.

The female between one and three is called a
Hearst; at three she aspires to being a Young
Hind, and thereafter a Hind.

Immature males are recognised by their antlers.
A Brocket has only upright knobbers, with occa-
sionally small brow antlers. A Squire has good
brow antlers and upright. A Staggart has brow,
bay, tray, and two uprights. At five a stag is
complete with all the above, and the cup is well
formed ; at six there may be a third upright
branch from the cup, and thereafter the heads
vary considerably.

ANTLERS.

This difficult subject has been dealt with so fully
by numerous students so much better qualified
than is the present writer that he has decided
to deal only passingly with this most absorbing
question of the red deer's history.

The antlers of deer are very closely associated
with matters appertaining to sex, though in just

W.A. b

18 THE RED DEEE.

what way it is difficult to ascertain. Castration
has an immediate effect upon the antlers, though
as to exactly what this effect is writers on the
subject appear to disagree. At one time it was
thought that if castration takes place when the
animal is too young to have grown horns, they
never grow ; if when the horns are grown, they
are never shed ; if when they are shed, they never
grow again. No doubt the effect is not always
the same, for Judge Caton has shown us that a
buck castrated when his antlers are nearly grown
will shed them within thirty days, and that next
year he will grow a new pair which never harden.
They remain full of life till frozen or broken off,
and thereafter the stump will grow larger, and
though a new antler may be projected, it will never
develop. However this may be, the evidence is
sufficient to show that the antlers are sexual
appendages, and any injury that may befall the
sexual organs of a deer is at once recorded on the
antlers, and may recur with each year's growth
from that time on. When a deer is found with
one crippled horn, the deformity can generally be
traced to an injury on that side of the animal's
body, which has directly or indirectly affected
these organs.

Red deer shed their antlers annually. As a
rule they drop in February, sometimes in the
Highlands as early as December. The Cumbrian
deer seldom shed their antlers until April, and an
immature stag might carry them till May.

The growth of the antlers would appear to
be very considerably influenced by the feeding.
Samuel Carter, writing in the Zoologist, makes
reference to this point. Of eleven calves in
captivity he had under observation, one had nine

THE BED DEER. 19

points in its third year. He considered that the
fine antlers of Exmoor were due mainly to the
excellent browse in the large coverts of scrub
oak, &c.

In Devonshire a stag's brow, bez (bay), and trez
(tray) antlers are called his Rights ; upright points
on top of the horns (cup), his Crockets. The horn
itself is the Beam, the width the Span, the rough
part at the base the ' Pearls.' Technical terms vary
both in their pronunciation and their spelling in
different localities. Harts that are crowned with
three points at the upper extremity of each horn
are called Royals.

Very few people have actually seen a stag
drop its antlers. The incident is said to occasion
the animal much surprise and bewilderment, and
having dropped one antler, it is said to bound
away, as though fearful of what is about to happen
next. It may be some hours before the second
antler drops, and occasionally a deer may be
watched browsing with its antlers so loose that
they are perceived to move. One curious fact
remarked upon by almost every student of the
red deer is that very few antlers are found com-
pared with the number that are shed. This may
be due to the fact that they very soon bleach, and
assume the semblance of a dead and barkless elm-
branch, and when most of the antler as it lies on
the ground is covered by leaves or vegetation, it
requires very keen sight to detect it. I have
myself stepped on a shed antler, and not till it
rose beneath my foot, casting off its partial cover-
ing of leaves, did a second scrutiny reveal what
it was. Deer are fond of gnawing dead antlers,
or any kind of bone substance for that matter,
but it is not reasonable to think that they com-

20 THE RED DEER.

pletely consume all the antlers that are shed. It
may be that they gnaw off most of the upstanding
points, so that the antler lies flat on the ground,
and thus escapes detection ; for in localities where
the water is short of bone-making elements, hinds
and stags will unite to gnaw persistently at any
antler found lying about.

Seton comments on the similarly mysterious
disappearance of the antlers of the elk in Montana.
He says : * ' What becomes of these wonderful
growths ? Why is not the forest littered with
them, since they are dropped and renewed each
year?

' Firstly, the forest is littered with them to some
extent in districts where the Elk abound. In
several parts in the West I have seen small garden
fences made of the cast-off antlers, and I am told
that in California it was common to see a rotten
survey stake replaced by a pile of elk-horns, which
were the handiest and most abundant substitute.
But still their numbers are nothing compared with
what one might expect. If they were as durable
as stone, they would be as plentiful as stones in an
ordinary Montana valley. The explanation is that
they are easily destroyed by the elements, and are
habitually preyed on by mice and other rodents.
In all the thousands of shed elk-horns that I have
picked up or seen in the West, I do not think I
ever saw one that was not more or less gnawed by
Mice, Rats, Gophers, or Porcupines.' He adds
that, as Caton long ago showed, ' while bone is
one-third animal matter or gelatine, the antler
substance is about thirty-nine parts animal matter
and sixty-one parts earthy matter of the same
kind and proportions as is found in common bone ;

* Life Histories of Northern Animals.

THE RED DEER. 21

besides which, the inner structure of the antler is
exceedingly porous or cellular. " Soon ripe, soon
rotten," is a north of England proverb that has a
bearing in this case.'

The same convincing explanation may be satis-
factorily applied as regards the antlers of red deer in
this country, and what appeals to me as infinitely
more extraordinary is that the carcasses of deer
that die from natural causes or wounds are so
rarely reported to be found by man. The carcass
of so large an animal would naturally advertise
its whereabouts ; yet who has ever found a" dead
deer ? Occasionally the bodies of deer that have
been killed by blizzard or avalanche, or that have
died of starvation, are found by foresters ; but how
many foresters can recall ever having found the
body of a deer that was not suddenly overcome
by misfortune ? Hundreds of deer die naturally,
and doubtless, like many beasts of the forests and
hills, they creep away and hide when the lassitude
of death falls upon them. Elephants, of course,
have their recognised burial-grounds ; the caribou
are believed by the Indians to wander off into
some distant range, unknown to their kind, when
death is drawing near ; the eagle is said to fly out
to sea in pursuit of the sunset as the shadows close
upon its native hills ; but we have neither fable nor
fact concerning the closing scene of the red deer's
life — when it be spared to die by the kindly hand
of Time.

To return to the subject of antlers — for a time
the stag carries two red, raw patches at the points
from which the old horns have dropped, but at the
end of about ten days the points swell up and the
new horns are projected. At this time the stag
is probably living a quiet and secluded life. He

22 THE RED DEER.

may move about in consort with a younger stag,
or with a favourite hind with whom he has pre-
viously mated, finding his companion's alertness
conducive to the rest and quietude he craves, as it
saves him the trouble of watching. He is painfully
conscious of the soreness of his head, and generally
avoids the society of his fellows. He realises that
any young stag which he perchance punished during
the rutting season may now be in a position to
make things very uncomfortable for him ; and if
a small dispute has to be settled, he uses only his
forehoofs and perhaps his teeth, the latter being
brought into play in much the same manner as a
horse uses them.

All spring the red deer devotes to the growing
of new antlers and the laying on of fat. When
first they come the horns are covered with soft,
steel-gray velvet. They are charged with blood
and nerves, and are very sensitive to injury. If
held in the hand they are found to be hot, and
must at this stage be a source of continual
anxiety to their wearer. I have handled the
budding antlers of a tame elk, and the animal
seemed to enjoy having them gently rubbed. A
keen frost during the time that the new antlers
are growing must cause the animal extreme dis-
comfiture, for they are so sensitive that the elk
referred to used to shake his head in an irritated
manner if the beam of his horns was quite lightly
tapped with the finger-nail.

Later in the season the blood recedes, as the sap
recedes to the roots of a tree in autumn. The out-
side velvet dries, peels, and for a time hangs from
the now fully developed antlers in untidy ribbons.
The animal cleans them by constant rubbing
against branches, bushes, the end of a broken rail,

THE BED DEER. 23

or any other object that comes handy. By this
time the new horns are about three months old,
and they are carried for just so long as the hind
carries her fawn.

A span of about forty inches is perhaps the
average that the antlers of the red deer of this
country attain.

VALUE OF ANTLERS.

Of what value are these kingly growths towards
the cultivation of which this noble animal devotes
so much of its life ? If it were that the deer with
the finest antlers was best able to hold his own
against other bulls, thereby producing more off-
spring than those less well able to defend them-
selves, nature's scheme would at once be evident ;
but this is not so. In fighting, a stag's brow
antlers are the only points calculated to be of
use to him. With these he may inflict a mortal
wound, but the whole vast superstructure is merely
so much weight and hindrance. It can, indeed,
be used as a lever against him, and so prove his
undoing. A stag burdened with heavy antlers is
no match for a polled stag, and polled or horn-
less animals are yearly becoming more common.
These stags come off best in the supreme con-
tests for possession of the hinds, and to-day on
many reserves it is no uncommon thing to see the
hornless harts in possession of the largest harems.
These hornless stags attain greater weight and
strength than do the alleged kings of the forest —
which supports a foregoing statement to the effect
that the annual cultivation of new antlers is a
severe drain on the animal's vitality.

Since, then, it is proved that the crowning
glory of the red deer is more of a hindrance than

24 THE RED DEER.

a help in the attainment of the end for which they
would appear entirely to exist, it would seem to
our crude reasonings that nature is guilty of yet
another blunder. The horns are sexual append-
ages, yet their existence defeats sexual aims. If
they are purely decorative, then they fail in that
respect also. Nature does not waste valuable
material on ornaments that are not appreciated
by the species on which they are bestowed ; for
example, the red back of the male shrike is to
attract the eye of the female shrike, and not to
decorate the woods for the advantage of all in-
terested therein. The hinds do not appreciate the
antlers of a royal head, or they would not meekly
follow at the heels of a hornless rival.

It may be argued that such spreading antlers
were designed by nature to present a wide front
of defence to the massed attack of wolves, the
stag, turning at bay, thus being able to defend his
flanks or even the hinds cowering behind him.
To this I would reply that the closely allied
Whitetail deer of Canada, which is more harassed
by wolves than any other creature on earth, is
designed by nature to go hornless during the very
season when attack from wolves is most likely !
A good vigorous Whitetail sheds its antlers in
mid-December, and wolves hunt in packs at least
till the end of February. In fact, it is realised by
the Indians that wolves are more likely to prove
dangerous during January and February than at
any other time of the year — the very season at
which the deer have no horns wherewith to defend
themselves ! It may further be added that though
the antlers of the Whitetail are far more effective
as stabbing weapons than are those of the red
deer, a hunted stag seldom or never turns to

THE RED DEER. 25

face the wolves. It runs till it dies, or is thrown
in the open, and there is no question whatever
of its defending itself in any way other than by
speed.

As weapons of defence against the wolf-packs,
then, antlers can be written off as worthless. The
deer that turns at bay is just as surely doomed
as is the deer that falls exhausted in the snow.
Speed and stamina are the only weapons it has
against wolves, and heavy antlers handicap the
deer from the outset of the chase — not only by
their weight, but by forcing it to make many
a detour to gain wider gaps in the timber. Far
from the antlers being protective, it may indeed
be that the protection lies in the shedding of them
before the wolf peril reaches its zenith !

Of what possible value, then, are the spreading
antlers of the red deer and its allies ?

There is just one plausible explanation that
might be worth advancing — that the antlers exist
in order to single out the males, and so to prove
the salvation of the females. If the male popula-
tion sank as low as 2 per cent., the species might
yet exist; but a hind killed means a direct loss
to the species.

The stag himself is well aware that his antlers
are his betraying feature — that they mark him
out as one apart, and worthy of special attention.
When alarmed, he will hide himself in the midst
of a parcel of fleeing hinds, and run with his
neck extended, his head held low, so that his
towering points no longer serve as a landmark
proclaiming afar — •' There is a Stag.' Does not
this instinctive striving on the animal's part, his
immediate impulse to skulk low and so hide his
head, seem to suggest that the head is there for

26 THE RED DEER.

reasons which, though beneficial to his kind, are
injurious to his own personal welfare ?

The ears of the hare are not protective ; neither
are the antlers of the stag. They are there to
catch the eye, and for no other reason. They
are there to mark him out as the object of the
chase, while the hinds escape to safety.

The man who understands the ways of wild
nature does not scoff at the seeming futility of
that which we, for want of a better word, call
society. He knows that in every grade of life,
from the mouse colony in the fibrous roots, from
the beaver city by the river, to the cities of
man himself, the whole fabric of Nature's scheme
revolves and pivots on certain laws of intercourse
which mark society in its various settings. We,
like other things, were meant to have our social
strata, and in the grading of societies the chase
stands forward as an important feature. We are
given beasts of the chase, many of which are
designed primarily for that purpose. Nature has
not been ungenerous in providing them with their
own protective means, otherwise they would be
imperfect as creatures of the chase ; but in their
creation she has deliberately included some
feature which stamps them unmistakably as
things to be hunted. They are our natural food-
supply.

The deer, like the hare and the rabbit, is
absolutely a creature of the chase, and, like prac-
tically all others of this class, it is polygamous.
The killing of the males is the preservation of
the females, and in that way beneficial to the
species. In the deer, the noblest creature of the
chase, Nature has adopted no half-measures in
marking out what we may kill as distinct and

THE RED DEER. 27

separate from that which, for the sake of the
species, which is our own sake, we must not
kill. She crowns him with an oak-tree, towering
aloft, proclaiming from afar — ' I am the noblest
beast of the chase ! These drab little creatures
with me are only hinds, unworthy of a worthy
hunter.'

Thus by a system of wheels within wheels
Nature weaves her fabrics. We cannot tread even
upon the fringe of such theories without realising
the unfathomable depths that lie beyond ; but
of this we can be sure, that the purposeless and
wasteful belongs only to the works of man him-
self, and not to the creations of the wild.

THE RUT.

By early October the harts have reached the
zenith of their majesty, and now the lonely corries
begin to reverberate with the challenging echoes
of rival bulls. Some idea as to the strength of
the stag can be judged by the volume of his roar.
It is one of the most inspiring sounds in wild
nature. Under normal conditions it can be heard
at a distance of two miles ; but if the atmosphere
be favourable, and the stag below the listener, it
carries a considerably greater distance.

In Scotland early frosts precipitate the rut, but
normally it begins early in October. The stags
then start to swell in the neck, and to roll rest-
lessly in peat-pools. The rut lasts about a week,
and later the older harts collect and go off to
places of seclusion, leaving the hinds to younger
bucks.

Beautiful at any season, the stag is truly an
impressive beast when the glory of his purpose
reaches its height. He becomes hunched in the

28 THE RED DEER.

back like a greyhound ; he roams from point
to point, roaring incessantly, watching, listening.
The cracking of a twig, and he freezes in his tracks,
one hoof outstretched, antlers aloft, nostrils gaping
wide. He may swim to distant islands in pursuit
of his desires. He is prepared to trample any
moving thing into the earth — prepared and ready
to match his strength with that of any rival hart.
He digs his antlers into the earth, tosses high
the ling-roots, and roars. He rolls his eyes,
and throws himself into his wallows, rolling
grotesquely and with savage energy. He emerges
slimy and dripping, and swings into a stiff-legged
stride as an answering roar rumbles over the
brow.

On the other side the two rivals meet. They
approach with heads upraised, testing each other's
scent, while the hinds stand watchfully by, ready
to throw in their lot with the victor. The rivals
meet with a clash of antlers, and the moonlight
flashes on dilated eyes and madly ploughing hoofs
that cut the soft earth into furrows. Striving
with all their strength to outpush or outmanoeuvre
each other, one at length obtains the advantage
of a sound footing. The other is forced to his
knees, the leverage of his long antlers is used
against him, but by a terrific sidelong and back-
ward bound he manages to extricate himself. Again
the clashing antlers fill the corrie with echoes,
and the contest goes on, until, fairly weighed
in the balance together, one knows himself to
be the victor, and the other knows himself to be
vanquished.

The latter disengages and bounds away, the
master-stag in hot pursuit. The vanquished hart
circles round the hinds, reluctant to leave them,

THE RED DEER. 29

till in the end he is forced to take to his heels and
seek his fortune elsewhere. The hinds then follow
the victor — not probably because they are moved
by any special sense of admiration, but because
they know very well that if they endeavour to
do anything else they will be gored and beaten
by their master till they acquire a becoming sense
of conformity to the rules.

But for so long as the hart holds his harem, the
hinds are a source of unceasing anxiety and vigil-
ance. Every hart in the range is ready and
waiting to fight him for possession of them, and
the difficult task of retaining what he holds is
now his lot. He has no chance of resting, no
time even to eat. In the offing dallies a litter
of younger stags, who, between bouts with one
another, are ever ready to poach on his preserves.
He may encounter a larger stag already possessing
a harem outnumbering his own, in which case
all the wives are pooled, and the winner takes the
pool.

The red deer is not essentially a beast of the
mountains. It is merely that the vast mountain
retreats are the last place of sanctuary in which
it has been able to retain its footing. Thus
the wild grandeur of the hills adds no little to
the romance of a romantic existence. Charles
St John describes how, when sleeping in the
mountains, he had heard stags roaring their chal-
lenge all round him, till the air of the glens
trembled with the majesty of the sound.

Normally, red deer are silent beasts. Almost
the only sound they utter in communicating with
each other is a sharp bark, very closely resembling
the startled bark of a terrier. In this way they
give the alarm, and when a company is separated,

30 THE RED DEER.

they reunite by signalling their whereabouts to
one another in the same manner.

THE YOUNG.

Barren hinds are called Yell or Yeld Hinds.
They come into season when the harts go out,
and are better eating. They can be distinguished
from the breeding hinds by their sleek and compact
figures ; though, as a matter of fact, even the most
experienced hunters are subject to error in their
selection, and it is generally unwise to shoot at
a supposed yeld unless one's opinion as to her
class is backed by a gillie or one's host.

Generally the fawn is dropped in deep heather,
and left hidden till evening, when the hind, having
assured herself that all is tranquil, goes by devious
ways to feed it. Though apparently she leaves
it all day, she is never far away, and should the
little one utter a cry of distress she at once appears,
wide-eyed and stamping, prepared to fight valiantly
in its defence. Her attack, too, is very formidable,
for she can use her sharp forehoofs with deadly
effect ; and woe betide the wild-cat or prowling
dog that falls foul of her defensive 1

The young are born with an instinctive faith
in their protective colouring. The mother makes
her fawn lie down by pushing it with her nose
and patting it with her forehoofs; and when she
has left it, it will not stir on the approach of
danger until actually touched. It is then up in
an instant with a bleating cry to its mother.
When crouching, it lies with its neck stretched
out, its head upon the ground, and only its bright
eyes are likely to attract notice.

A very young fawn does not recognise danger.
It has to be taught by its mother the fear of man.

THE RED DEER. 31

If found and gently handled, particularly if allowed
to satisfy its burning desire to suck one's fingers,
it will follow like a dog, and may prove very
difficult to get rid of. In the Algonquin forests
of Canada a little Whitetail fawn struck up a
friendship in this way with the writer and his
companion, and all attempts to scare it off proved
utterly fruitless.

There is no more beautiful and graceful creature
than a little red deer fawn. To look at it is to
lose one's heart to it; and when older and able
to scamper after its mother, it is indeed the fairy
spirit of the mountain-dells materialised.

A mountain-hind generally begins to breed in
her third year; that is, she consorts with the
stag when two and a half years old, and gives
birth to her fawn the following summer. Most
of the calves are born in June or early July,
the earliest offspring appearing towards the latter
end of May. Two at a birth is very unusual,
though it occurs sometimes, and, according to
the Rev. H. A. Macpherson, was by no means
uncommon with the Martindale deer. As a rule,
hinds living in a wild state do not breed annually,
though this would appear to be dependent upon
feeding conditions. A tame deer may breed
annually after maturity ; and at Hatfield Broadoak
Forest a hind produced offspring annually for ten
years, though she apparently paired with her own
progeny.

The fawns follow the dams till autumn. If the
mothers then join the herd of a master-stag, the
male fawns are apt to be forcibly ejected, and
thereafter are compelled to fend for themselves.
The stag allows his consorts to be accompanied
by their hind calves, and consequently the young

32 THE RED DEER.

are often suckled by their mother for twelve
months.

The males are capable of reproduction at the end
of two years ; but their presence is never tolerated
by the master-stags, wherein we see a double pur-
pose fulfilled by nature.

FOOD.

In feeding, the deer is more omnifarious than
sheep and cattle, and its food depends considerably
upon the country in which it dwells. Red deer
are particularly partial to nettle-roots, which
possibly are medicinal, and, in common with all
split -hoofed animals, salt is essential to their
welfare. They will visit the coast in order to
lick the brine-coated rocks. When hard pressed
in winter, deer have also been known to congregate
upon the sands in order to feed on seaweed ; but
this is taken in quantities only when the stern
alternatives are seaweed or starvation.

In Avinter the food of the Highland deer is not
widely different from that of the reindeer. They
scratch away the snow with their hoofs in order to
get at the mosses and lichens below. They are
fond of heather, but the bright-green, short-bladed
grass that caps the mounds by mountain-rills is
chief among their foods. Coarse bent is also eaten.

In woodlands the deer eat leaves and green
shoots of almost any kind, and in winter mosses,
the bark of trees, and even fungi.

Ever since the deer were preserved as beasts of
the chase they have maintained a lively notoriety
for their depredations upon crops and farm produce
of every kind. Standing wheat and root-fields
have a special attraction for them, and the task
of adequately fencing in the plots that they have

THE RED DEER. 33

once visited is by no means an easy one. The deer
come silently at dead of night, and finding their
usual way of access closed to them, quickly seek
out another. If one lies in waiting for them, it
is probable that the only glimpse one will obtain,
after hours of chilly watchfulness, is that of
towering antlers silhouetted against the sky, and
in a moment gone.

In winter deer have been known to come down
and enter lowland barns in search of hay ; in fact,
it is difficult, when they are pressed by hunger, to
keep farm produce from them.

HABITUAL WARINESS.

Among all creatures of the hills red deer are the
most wary, ever ready to take the cue from the
other creatures of their habitat. The sight of a
fleeing hare in an instant sets the herd on the qui
vive, watching the skyline in the direction from
which the hare came. Even if nothing further
happens they remain suspicious, and soon steal off
to some other feeding-place.

The curlews, the most solicitous sentries of the
hills, are invaluable to the ever-watchful deer ; the
green plovers and the grouse are likewise their
valued guardians. The red deer never miss an
alarm, or ignore the warning of others. The
faintest suggestion of danger, and one hind or
another instantly raises her head ; and should the
alarm be repeated, her agitation is at once com-
municated to the others.

The large stags seldom depend upon their own
vigilance. They depend upon the hinds ; or, if two
stags live together, the smaller does the watching.
Similarly, the master-stag is seldom the leader of
the herd, though if a tight corner be encountered

W.A. o

34 THE RED DEER.

his greater boldness probably causes him to move
to the front ; and when he breaks, all the hinds will
follow him, even though it be through a whole line
of beaters. Usually the leader of the herd is an
old hind who has previously impressed the others
by the soundness of her judgment, and she it is
who sets the routine for the rest, leading them
from hill to hill, or perhaps to some distant salt-
lick. Her selection is by universal suffrage, and,
once having attained to the place of eminence, her
decisions are accepted without comment.

COATS.

Hinds cast their winter coats from May onwards,
though a hind in poor condition may still be carry-
ing her old coat, or a part of it, as late as July.
The stags begin to cast their coats immediately
their horns are shed, and the new coat appears
seldom later than June. The colour varies, and
the shade of the eyes varies with the coat. In this
way we have distinct clans ; but, generally speaking,
the deer of low countries are lighter than those of
the heights. White deer are rare in Scotland. In
winter the colour of the stag and the hind alike is
a general brown, shading off into gray, especially
about the face, while down the spine there exists
a ridge of much darker hair. The belly and the
inside of the ears are generally pure white.

These white ears, with their black rims, render
the animal very conspicuous amidst certain settings.
In summer the correspondingly darker patches are
a rich, reddish gold, sometimes very beautiful in a
prime animal. In the case of the stag the jaws
and the neck are heavily maned, the longer hairs
being tipped with glossy black, and the face is
often very richly coloured.

THE RED DEER. 35

In Atholl I have noticed young hinds more
vividly red than in any other deer forest of the
kingdom.

WEIGHT AND DIMENSIONS.

The Rev. H. A. Macpherson wrote that the
Martindale stags attain 22 stone, but that a stag
of 18 or 19 stone is considered a good one. This
is a fair estimate for Scotland also. Some autho-
rities set down the weight of a good stag as being
400 Ib. ; but this is a big beast, and greater weights
are suggestive of woodland breeding or of inter-
mixture of German blood. Stags have been killed
at Atholl well over 400 Ib. in weight, but such
figures are exceptional. The average mountain-
bred stag does not exceed 250 Ib.

The hinds are markedly smaller than the harts.

A 300-lb. stag will stand close upon 4 feet
at the withers ; but hinds do not normally exceed
3 feet 6 inches.

TRACKS — SOME TECHNICAL EXPRESSIONS.

A stag that leaves a slot fully two inches at the
heel is worthy of the huntsman's attention. A
track three inches in width, and deep and heavy in
proportion, is that of a large, fine animal scaling
well above the average. It indicates an old and
heavy hart that brings his hind-feet up to the
impression of his forefeet.

The track of the hind is longer for its width,
more pointed and more elegant, than that of a stag
— the latter, indeed, can be distinguished by its
comparatively blunt, round tip.

The following terms are used in connection with
deer. Where a stag lies down is called his harbour;
his favourite haunt is called his lair. The swampy

36 THE RED DEER.

spot where he rolls himself is called his soiling pool,
and it is not a very pleasant place. His breaking-
place over an enclosure is called his rack ; when he
goes to water he is said to be going to soil. A
hunted stag that turns back suddenly is said to
have blanched ; a wounded stag is said to be cold.
When a hunted stag goes to water and lies down,
or hides under the roots in a pool, he is said to
have sunk himself.

The terms vary, of course, according to locality,
and in many places most of the old technical
phrases have gone out of use.

Normally a deer runs up-wind, so that it is
forewarned as to what it is approaching; but a
stag pursued by hounds generally runs down- wind
if there is any chance, so that he can scent the
hounds, while they cannot scent him. When he
goes to his harbour he goes down-wind, then lies
with his nose 'watching' his back tracks, and his
eyes in the opposite direction.

Above all things the red deer is a master of
woodcraft, and it can hardly be questioned that
deer-stalking is the finest and noblest sport our
island offers.

THE ROE-DEER, OR THE ROEBUCK.

THIS interesting little woodland deer has
managed to hold its own in a completely
wild state throughout many areas from which the
red deer are long since gone, and it can be said to
be fairly evenly distributed throughout the Scottish
mainland. In the Lowlands it is particularly
abundant to the west of Dumfries, and it is to be
seen almost any day in the forests of Kirkcudbright-
shire and Ayrshire. In the Highlands it has, of
course, free run of the wild. It exists also in
Cumberland and the New Forest.

With regard to the last-named reserve, fallow deer
are perhaps most characteristically representative
of the deer family, though roe are probably most
abundant. There are few red deer in the Hamp-
shire Forest, and those that exist there confine
themselves chiefly to the north end of the reserve.

We have not far to search for the cause of the
survival of the roebuck. In the first place, it is a
woodland deer, and therefore is less subjected to
the weeding-out process inflicted by the elements
than the red. It is hardier than the fallow, which
probably would not survive in this country very
long unless artificial means were resorted to in the
way of winter feeding, whereas the roe will flourish
almost anywhere. The chief reasons for its com-
parative abundance are, however, that it carries
not the noble head of its congener, and that it is
regarded by country-folk as hardly worth killing as
an article of food. So little molested, indeed, are
the roe-deer in most of the Scottish forests that in
the ordinary way they are quite easily approached.

38 THE ROE-DEER, OR THE ROEBUCK.

I have particularly noticed, however, that whereas
one can walk through the woods on Sunday and
see more roe-deer than one cares to count, there
is never a deer to be seen when one is cover-
shooting, and the sound of a shot has once dis-
turbed the echoes.

I remember, after an afternoon's random pheasant-
shooting, we passed homewards through a strip of
covert where we were accustomed to seeing roe-
deer daily ; and on nearing this strip a member of
the party asked our host if there was any objection
to his taking a shot at a roe. ' No,' the host replied
with a covert smile ; ' you may shoot all the roe-
deer you see.'

Exactly what sport was to be derived from
shooting at a half-tame roe-deer with a shot-gun is
difficult to understand, and when such an incident
occurs it is usually a matter of necessity rather
than sport. Roe-deer multiply very quickly, and
unless killed off by some means or other are capable
of considerable destruction, while they do little to
pay their way beyond beautifying the woods. In
most parts of Scotland they are not highly esteemed
as sporting animals, and I have noticed repeatedly
that when roe deer and red have appeared on the
menu, the carver of the roe-deer, who must indeed
be skilled with the carving-knife, has proved the
idlest man at the board.

CUNNING.

I have often wondered what becomes of the roe-
deer when the woods are being scoured for other
game. Where do they hide themselves ? At one
time we used regularly to walk up a narrow covert
completely surrounded by open moorland. It was a
favourite haunt of many roe-deer, but when the guns

THE ROE-DEER, OR THE ROEBUCK. 39

were astir, traversing the wood from end to end, not
one of them was ever seen. The natural conclusion
was that they left the wood at one end immediately
the sportsmen entered at the other ; but that this
was not so I satisfied myself. To have evacuated
by the north end of the wood when we entered at
the south would have meant that they had no
alternative but to face the open moors, which in
that direction rose to a tremendous altitude, and
were unwooded for ten or eleven miles — until,
indeed, the next valley was reached, which was
entirely out of the home-range of this band of deer.
Moreover, a hind living at that end of the wood
told me that he had never seen them cross the
hills. Therefore, either the deer left the wood
by a break in the surrounding wall, and doubled
back till they were behind the line of advancing
gunners, or they took cover where they were
and allowed the gunners to walk over them. I
rather incline to the latter view, as I have heard
a deer, disturbed by a dog, break cover behind us,
in which case we are afforded an example of sagacity
on the part of the roe which is worthy of special
notice. Unfortunately I never knew this wood to
be systematically beaten, or I might have obtained
some clue to the mystery.

If, then, the roe-deer, on knowing itself to be
in danger, seeks out the densest cover and crouches
there like a hare, remaining hidden till the danger
is past, when it steals out and retires swiftly to
safety, we may consider that therein lies one of the
secrets of its survival.

At one time I spent many fruitless days in
attempting to photograph roe-deer in their natural
state, and during this experience I was impressed
not so much by their cunning — for in some respects

40 THE ROE-DEER, OR THE ROEBUCK.

they seemed most foolish — as by their possession
of a subtle instinct which rendered them almost
impossible subjects for the photographer. I was
tolerably familiar with their breaks, runways, and
resting-places, which they were seen to use daily.
On an appropriate occasion a camouflaged cotton-
thread, invisible to the human eye until it was
actually touched by the hand, was stretched across
their path. The camera was then hidden twenty
or thirty yards away ; on one occasion it was built
into a wall, on other occasions it was literally
buried in bracken and moss, while every precaution
was taken against tell-tale scent. Regularly a
box to curtain the camera was hidden for the deer
to become used to long before the camera was
placed inside it.

Immediately the cotton was touched the shutter
of the camera was electrically tripped, but I never
succeeded in inducing the deer thereby to make
an exposure. True, we got several photographs —
one of the keeper, one of his dog, and an excellent
likeness of the local rabbit-catcher, but never of
the roe. Many times I have watched them
approach to within a few feet of the cotton, then
turn hesitatingly aside, leaving their beaten run-
way to cross the burn by a seldom frequented
break.

The keeper on this particular reserve told me
that in the days when it was customary to trap
hen-pheasants by means of the slide-door and a
long length of cord, he has repeatedly seen roe
approach the cord till they almost touched it, then
suddenly turn back. What, then, the roe lacks
in sagacity it certainly makes up by the posses-
sion of an uncanny suspicion and quickness of
conception.

THE ROE-DEER, OR THE ROEBUCK. 41

The only occasion on which I knew a roe to
break the thread in circuit with the camera was
one winter's day after a light fall of snow, and on
that occasion, unhappily, the weight of snow on
the thread had operated the shutter only a few
seconds before the passing of the deer !

These experiences have never ceased to mystify
me. It is inconceivable that the deer actually saw
the cotton, which was no more visible than a
spider's web, while being deeply hidden in the
bracken. Nor was it scent that warned them, for
man's scent was everywhere in the wood. On
some occasions a veritable maze of threads covered
the field of the camera, so that it was impos-
sible for a deer to approach without touching
one or another of them, but the only difference
was that the deer did not approach. Yet these
deer were so tame that, when unarmed, one
could easily approach within ninety paces of
them.

HOME-RANGE.

The home-range of an individual roe is seldom
more than two miles in length ; that is, the deer
lives within a mile of some central point. I have,
however, known them to wander six miles from
point to point ; but this is rare.

The roe-deer is a creature of more or less regular
habits and regular runways, and even a two-mile
range may contain many miles of visible track.
Also, it will contain at least three harbours in
regular use. One of these is probably an open,
sunny plateau, where the bracken alone affords
sufficient cover for safety, while not excluding the
sun. The other two beds may be on compara-
tively swampy ground, in the heart of the densest

42 THE ROE-DEER, OR THE ROEBUCK.

cover, and comfortable only in so far that they
afford adequate shelter from the wind. At these
recognised resting-places dung is dropped more
liberally than elsewhere, the wild deer having no
need for sanitation. The roe-deer can, therefore,
be said to have at least one dry sunning-bed on
its range in addition to other harbours used when
the luxury of warm sunshine is not obtainable, and
chosen with a view to obtaining shelter, food, and
freedom from disturbance.

To and from these harbours the runways extend,
and the following is typical. Coming down from
the north end of the wood the deer hold the high-
land, close to the boundary wall, but on the forest
side, and thus on to the beech-wood. Here there
is a harbour, much frequented by does with their
fawns, which are very limited in range. The trail
then drops to the burn-edge, and, winding in and
out of the rich undergrowth, turns straight back
to the northern boundary, where it crosses the
burn and turns southward down the opposite
bank, encompassing every willow -swamp and
traversing the thickest growths of forest. Here
it taps a new planting, there it encompasses a
small loch, and so on till the southern boundary
is again reached, when again it doubles back,
keeping near the opposite border, and terminating
finally at the sunning plateau. All the runways
are, of course, interconnected, but if left undis-
turbed the deer keep more or less to the same
paths.

Thus it will be seen that, though a roe may
spend the major portion of its life within a mile
or so of some central point, its trodden paths are
many miles in extent ; and if it set out to complete
the circuit in the systematic manner just described

THE ROE-DEER, OR THE ROEBUCK. 43

— which probably it never does — the task would
occupy at least one day of steady walking.

MATING.

The roe-deer is distinct in that it is monogamous
— or, at any rate, very much more so than the red
and the fallow. A stag is not entirely blind to
the charms of his neighbour's wife ; he may even
have two wives ; but, generally speaking, he lives
in consort with his own best beloved, and is
entirely devoted to her.

The courtship of monogamous birds and animals
is not such an elaborate affair as that of the
polygamous, and the roe-deer does not roll himself
in mud-pools, toss up the earth, and make himself
otherwise absurd for the benefit of the community
at large. Nor does he indulge to the same extent
in the terrific duels common among polygamous
deer— which is just as well, since the antlers of the
roe are truly formidable weapons.

June is the mating season of the roe-deer. In
July the bucks become very amorous, and are to
be seen pursuing the does, which run in narrow
circles, encompassing one obstacle, then another,
while the buck persistently follows, the chase often
lasting many minutes, but usually at a more or
less leisurely speed. This habit of running in rings
is peculiar to the roe, and is indulged in at all
seasons irrespective of love interests. Captain
Scott Elliott showed me an interesting example
on his property near New Galloway, where the
deer had trodden out a distinct ring encircling an
old shooting-butt. He suspected it was the work
of fawns.

The union of the roe-deer does not occur till
August, but the mated couple generally remain

44 THE ROE-DEER, OR THE ROEBUCK.

together thereafter. Whether or not they remain
mated for life is difficult to say, owing to the fact
that their respective home-ranges overlap, and to
the difficulty in recognising individuals. Some-
times a doe and a buck and a fawn will be found
living together in midwinter ; sometimes a doe
and a fawn live unaccompanied by a buck ; some-
times a half-grown fawn will be found living alone.
One recognises the company rather than the indi-
viduals, and, having repeatedly seen three together,
it is very hard to tell, when one day a solitary roe
appears in the same place, whether it is one of the
three temporarily isolated, or whether it is a new
and habitually solitary specimen ; moreover, two
parties may unite, and remain united for some
days, so that out of the generous chaos and inter-
mixture one cannot easily arrive at just who is
whose. I am inclined to think that all the roe-
deer of a given locality are well acquainted and
on friendly terms with one another, and that the
individual couples are not inseparable during the
winter months, as they certainly are during
the summer. An almost adult fawn may leave
its parents for a brief period, and browse with
other deer to which it is not related, ultimately
rejoining its mother when she happens to pass
that way. This I have repeatedly noticed in the
Scottish Lowlands.

It is a curious fact that, though mating occurs
in August, a pregnant female shows no signs of
her pregnancy till late in winter, when the develop-
ment of the calf begins. It is born early in May
— a period of nine months' gestation, as compared
with eight months in the case of the larger red
deer. The fawns are spotted when first born, but
the spots fade during the first year of the animal's

THE ROE-DEER, OR THE ROEBUCK. 45

life, only those of the neck (sometimes) recurring
with the winter coat. Generally the little creature
remains with its mother till the next fawn is born
a year later, and may even accompany her after
that, though it does so uninvited. Hence the idea
that milord sometimes has two wives may arise
from his being thus accompanied by two does, one
his wife and the other her fawn.

Normally the doe is hornless, the exceptions
being occasional barren specimens. I have never
seen a horned doe accompanied by a fawn, nor
have I ever met any one who has.

FOOD.

The roe-deer is a woodland feeder. It does not
appear to possess the partiality of the fallow for
horse-chestnuts, nor to my knowledge does it feed
to any extent on heather. I have often found
signs of roe having scratched away the leaves in
pursuit of some favourite root or fungus, which
possibly are eaten medicinally. It lives chiefly
on foliage of various kinds, and is an expert at
stripping the lower branches. It can reach a
surprising height by standing upright on its hind-
legs, supporting itself against the trunk or some
convenient limb by its forelegs. I have seen a
roe stand upright on its hind-legs without any
support at all, and it is a very pretty sight to see
a herd feeding thus. The giant moose and the
giraffe straddle down saplings between their fore-
legs to feed on the topmost and tenderest shoots,
and it is interesting to note that these animals
have developed accordingly, very high in the fore-
legs, and carrying their weight well over the
fo'c'sle.

The roe- deer has developed an extraordinary

46 THE ROE-DEER, OR THE ROEBUCK.

reach for so small an animal, and its activities in
a cultivated garden are usually attended by con-
siderable loss to the owner of the property.

In autumn the roes search out berry-bushes,
and in winter they are compelled to eke out a
living on swamp grasses, the tips of saplings,
fungus, and bark.

FEROCITY.

A buck in the rutting season is just as likely
to prove dangerous as is a stag, and, though
a smaller animal, his antlers are very deadly
weapons. Roe have been known to attack
children returning from school, but when they
are in a truly wild state there is little to be
feared from them. I have repeatedly disturbed
a buck in full rut in order to see if he would
show any signs of fight, and though the animal
has clearly resented such disturbance, I have
never known one to show the least trace of
aggression. A half- tame roe might prove an
entirely different matter, and very often an animal
that would not dream of attacking a full-grown
man will prove dangerous to a woman or a child.
This is particularly noticeable with sheep and
cattle.

Cases are not infrequently reported of roe-deer
attacking men.

COLOURING, &c.

The summer and winter coats are very distinct
in shade. The summer coat, which is assumed
in May, is of a distinctly ruddy tinge. Very
often the dark undercoat tones down the surface
colour, and at any appreciable distance the deer
appears brown. Between October and April the

THE ROE-DEER, OR THE ROEBUCK. 47

coat is much heavier, and seen in the winter light
against a faded landscape the general impression is
of dull brown.

The face-markings are very attractive and dis-
tinct. The jet-black muzzle is set off by a sur-
rounding band of white, succeeded again by a band
of black, one feature showing off the other. The
black muzzle, the large, gray, black-rimmed ears,
and the great luminous eyes, appearing suddenly
from the undergrowth of the forest swamp, catch
the eye with a most striking impression of tense
alertness — no less striking, indeed, than the flash-
ing white rump, which so often is all one sees of
the roe as it bounds lightly through the under-
growth. The object of this white rump may be
to assist the deer in following each other; or,
again, it may be taken as supporting the theory
that roe are among those animals which exist to
be pursued.

ANTLERS.

These vary considerably. Generally they rise
almost vertically for four or five inches, then fork.
The lower prong represents the brow antler of the
stag, and is for purposes of defence or attack.
There is a second fork two or three inches higher,
the rear prong of which points straight behind
the animal as it stands with head up. There
are occasionally as many as five points, but three
are more usual. Freak heads, including the
growth of a third and central antler, frequently
occur.

Of the many antlers I have picked up, none
have exceeded ten inches from the coronet to the
topmost tip.

The bucks drop their antlers about the end of

48 THE ROE-DEER, OR THE ROEBUCK.

December, and by late February the new ones are
almost perfect.

VOICE.

Roe-deer use their voices considerably when
feeding at night-time, when disturbed, and during
the rutting season when a pair accidentally become
separated. The doe is said to have a bleating cry
of her own at this season, which is instantly
answered by the buck, but I have never heard it.
The only cry I know is the sharp, barking note,
which resembles strongly the bark of a dog, but
which, once learnt, cannot be mistaken. The
deer utter it constantly when startled and bound-
ing off, barking as they run, the notes coinciding
with the bounds, as though the impacts with the
earth were partly responsible. If one becomes
separated from the rest, it can be heard bounding
up and down the forest, uttering the call re-
peatedly, and when conditions are favourable, as
on a summer night, the note carries a considerable
distance. I have heard it across the middle of
Loch Ken, over a mile of water, the deer being
high in the forest on the opposite shore.

SIZE.

About 24| inches seems to be the average
height of the Scottish roe (buck), as compared
with 36 inches in the spotted variety of fallow
deer, and 47 or 48 inches in the red deer. A
roe standing 26 inches at the withers is a large
specimen, and the female is considerably smaller.

THE FOX— 'NIGHTS OF PLENTY.'

' • • ••• •

: :•": .-': - • ':, •

THE FOX.

IN the wilderness only the fittest survive. The
jackal and the wolf are gone ; but because the
fox is the wisest of his race, because he has proved
best able to adapt himself to changing conditions,
he has lived on as the lone and last survivor of his
tribe.

There is only one species of fox in the British
Isles, the common Red or Royal Fox. The
beautiful silver, the black, and the cross fox furs,
so much prized as robes of fashion, are merely
northern colour-freaks of the red fox, just as the
Silvertip is a colour-freak of the common grizzly.
Thus a red vixen may produce cubs of different
varieties, one of them being worth as much as
five hundred pounds for its pelt, while the re-
mainder of the litter may be worth only a few
shillings apiece. (In North America there exists
also the Kit Fox, or the Swift, which is a distinct
species from the Red.)

Similarly, the strong and wiry mountain-fox of
the north, dreaded by keepers and shepherds alike,
is a red fox whose wild and rugged surroundings
have changed his habits and his form, so that he
would seem quite a different creature from, say,
the foxes of Leicestershire and the New Forest.

Black fox pelts are so much prized solely on
account of their rarity, for they are certainly not
more beautiful than the red pelts. See our
common fox in his autumnal coat, shaded with
gold and russet, and even touched with silver, and
you will think him the most beautifully clothed
of all living things ; and were he as rare as the

W.A. d

50 THE FOX.

far northern varieties, his coat would be the apparel
of kings.

SCENT.

When foxes are reared in captivity in a hunting
country, the tails of the vixens are often docked
before the animals are liberated, so that hounds
will have difficulty in following their scent-trail,
and they will thus survive to breed and multiply.
Whence comes this mysterious scent which hounds
so easily follow ? Not actually from the tail, but
from the musk-glands which are situated at the
root of the tail. All animals have these glands,
though in some they are more highly developed
than in others. In the weasel and the polecat
they are well developed — hence the unpleasant
saying, ' Stink like a polecat ; ' while in the skunk
they reach the zenith of obnoxious perfection, this
animal being able actually to eject the musk as a
means of self-defence, and a very effective means,
too ! By docking a fox's tail the scent is not so
readily led to the ground, and the animal is
difficult for hounds to follow.

As is the case with all highly intelligent animals,
foxes are much attached to their young. Fox-
farming is now a well-established industry, and on
these farms foxes are reared in captivity for their
pelts, the original stock being taken young from
their dens in the north. Enormous prices are paid
for live black and silver vixens, to be kept for
breeding purposes, and some of the professional
hunters of the north are not particular as to the
means they adopt in hunting. They have been
quick to realise the devoted motherhood of the
vixen, and to profit by it. It is almost impossible
to locate a litter of foxes by tracking down the

THE FOX. 51

vixen, owing to the cleverness with which she
hides her trail in passing to and from the den,
linking up the new tracks with the old, or resorting
to the densest undergrowth, where she can leap
from windfall to windfall. A vixen having been
located, the method most commonly employed is
to run her to earth with hounds. Sometimes the
vixen will not expose her cubs to danger by
denning up with them, however, and sometimes
trained hounds are not available, so that other
methods have to be resorted to. The blood- trail
is, alas ! among these. The man, armed with a
light rifle, lies in waiting for the vixen, and
wounds her more or less lightly, so that she leaves
a blood-trail. Her first thought is of her cubs,
and thither she goes ; but this time the old, old
tricks find the human sleuth still behind her, her
closely guarded secret betrayed by those tell-tale
spots in the snow.

TRICKS WHEN HUNTED.

History lives in Fox Country, but Leicestershire
is not the only county that breeds clever foxes.
Every master of fox-hounds can tell you the
history of some fox, which, surpassing his fellows
in fleetness and cunning, led hounds and huntsman
many a pretty chase, baffled them and checkmated
them, and finally left them with a mystery to
solve — nothing but a mystery !

The beginning of wisdom is in profiting by
previous experience, and undoubtedly the fox does
this. Reynard knows that the scent he leaves
behind is the true cause of his peril, and does all
that he can to break or scatter that tell-tale line.
He will run along a railway track, knowing that
the glazed steel and the tarred sleepers do not

52 THE FOX.

retain the scent well ; and more than once he has
been known deliberately to lead the hounds under
the wheels of an express train, which, of course, he
could hear from afar, with the result that several
of the hounds were killed, and the hunt so broken
up that the fox escaped to safety.

Running water is a never-failing friend to the
hunted fox, and well he knows the value of it.
When fishing by the river Wharfe some years
ago, I heard the hounds coming towards me at
full cry, and as presently the sounds ceased, I
judged the chase had changed in direction. A
few minutes later, however, I saw a fox daintily
paddling down the shallow margin of the river,
coming straight towards me. Seeing me, he turned
without haste, ascended the bank, and made again
for the hills ; but when, a few minutes later, a whip
came galloping up and asked if I had seen the fox,
did I betray him ? At all events— many another
lively run did that same fox give the field !

A fox will deliberately run among a flock of
sheep so as to mix and scatter his scent with
theirs, and he has even been known to jump on
the back of a sheep and ride a considerable dis-
tance, thereby breaking the tell-tale line.

But many a good fox who has fooled and baffled
the hounds and given them a glorious run has
won his freedom only at the cost of his constitu-
tional fitness. Emerging at length from his
sanctuary, after a rest of many hours, he is no
longer the wonderful running-machine that he was
when the hounds took up his scent, but is now a
broken creature — lungs gone, heart gone, merely
a physical wreck. And, again, many an exhausted
fox, seeking shelter in a wet drain, lies there till,
sick and chilled, and his vitality becoming low, he

THE FOX. 53

falls a victim to the fatal red mange, the scourge
of the fox kind. In the mountains of the north,
where the rugged nature of the country does not
permit of fox-hunting, red mange is quite un-
common among the foxes, simply because they
are never run to exhaustion.

The enormous distance a fox will cover in a
single day, leading the hounds at full cry for hours
on end, tells its own story. His powers of endur-
ance may be marvellous, but after all he is only
flesh and blood, and when," at the end of hours of
running, he sets out with pounding heart and
panting breath for quite new country — away over
the hills in a last mighty and supreme effort — we
know that the end must be near. How one's
heart goes out to the fox — dragging on and on
with foes on every side, seen at every open gate,
shouted at and turned aside, and always with that
awful death-like ' music ' at his heels !

Yet not always is the end of the chase a tragic
one. One day we see him, in his burning need
for water, drag himself into the swamps of the
river-margin, the hounds hard behind, and we
apprehend that ere many seconds are past his
gorgeous coat will be dragged and trampled
through the mire. He pauses at the very brink
among the rushes, and looks half-hopefully ahead.

The river ! His old, old friend, truer far than
friends that change or move to distant hills !
Many a time before has she served him with a
generous hand — many a time away in the blue
hills there, where he spent his cubhood days.
Will she fail him now — now in the time of his
direst need ?

A fresh outburst from the hounds urges him on
— he slips into the water, swiftly, silently, and

54 THE FOX.

unseen. For a few paces he swims, and then, only
his nose above the surface, he drifts. The friendly
waters close about him, soothe his burning skin, and
bear him on. The hounds, red-eyed with blood-lust,
surge to the river-bank, and cross. No scent !

Is that a fox drifting down the river, far out in
the central race — that limp, waving object, looking
like an old cast-off garment as it moves with the
tide ? If so, no one sees it, or, having seen it, gives
it a second thought.

Far down the river Reynard drifts, till the
hideous sounds of death are left behind ; then,
refreshed and rested, he climbs ashore. All is
very peaceful and quiet here. Just up the hedge
an old cock-pheasant is scratching in the leaves,
but Reynard, hardly seeing it, heads wearily for
some distant spot whither no hound will follow.
He heads for home, a wiser fox than before, and
— free !

VOCAL POWERS.

Just as foxes are clever and original in deceiving
the hunter, so are they clever and original in their
own hunting. Reynard possesses remarkable vocal
powers, and can imitate exactly the bleat of a
lamb, the squeal of a hare or a rabbit, and numerous
other sounds belonging rightly to the creatures he
is out to kill. One night, when driving home along
a country lane in Dorsetshire at the time of the
year when young lambs are about, I heard what
I took to be the bleating of a lost lamb coming
down the hedgerow towards me. On my making
some commonplace remark concerning the sound
to the farmer who was driving me, he replied,
' That isn't a lamb, sir ; it 's a fox. You can hear
them bleating any night this time of year.'

THE FOX. 55

Many seasons later I again heard the bleating
of a fox — this time in the hills near Burnsall
village. I was spending the evening with a shep-
herd in his tiny cabin out on the moors, and as
we both sat at the open door, smoking our pipes
before he turned in, we heard the bleating of a
lamb coming towards us down the wall-side. The
cry was exact, save for an indescribable sinister
ring about it, which at once raised my suspicions,
bringing to mind the night in Dorsetshire some
years previous. The shepherd reached for his gun ;
but Reynard evidently saw the movement, for
there was brilliant moonlight, and we just caught
a glimpse of him as he slipped, flattened out, over
the wall-top.

Reynard clearly thinks that by mimicking the
cry of a lamb he will spread unrest among the
nursing ewes, and if any ewe has lost one of her
lambs she may set off eagerly towards the sound,
deserting her remaining charge, which is then at
the mercy of the fox.

Rabbits are often called by a fox to within
striking distance, Reynard lying concealed behind
a tuft of grass or inside a bush, and imitating
exactly the squeal of a rabbit in pain. I have myself
called rabbits to within a few yards by this means
— the old bucks or nursing mothers of the colony
coming hopping up, stamping, and full of foolish,
goggle-eyed importance, to see which member of
the community it is that has fallen into difficulties.
If the squealing is kept up for any length of time,
however, such is the intelligence of the rabbit that
the whole colony becomes used to it, and at the
end of five minutes or so they take no further
notice, merely steering clear of the spot from which
the sound issues.

56 THE FOX.

Rats, however, are a very different proposition,
and when one rat sits up and squeals, every rat
within hearing is likely to hasten to the spot, so
that Reynard is pretty sure of a coup should he
consider it worth while to attempt this squealing
stunt in the vicinity of a farmyard.

In Canada I one day saw a fox come out of a
poplar-grove, and peering through the scrub, he
caught sight of a brace of plump, snowshoe rabbits
nibbling the second-growth spruce that dotted the
snow-covered plateau. For a long time he eyed
them covetously, evidently thinking out a scheme
for bringing about their downfall. It was a diffi-
cult problem, however, for the snowshoe can skim
the drifts more easily than a fox, and if once the
rabbits succeeded in gaining the underbrush, Rey-
nard would not get a look in. His only chance
lay in snapping up one of them in the open ; yet
how? The plateau was level as a billiard-table,
and, save for the thinly scattered spruce, afforded
just about as much cover.

Presently the fox began to scratch in the snow,
digging a trench under the jumper, and extending
it out into the open towards the rabbits. Evi-
dently he knew they would return to the grove
this way, for, having extended the trench well into
the open, he was content to lie concealed behind
his breastwork and wait. Sure enough the rabbits
began to nibble their way towards him, but at
this juncture the cold warned me to move on.
There is little doubt, however, that one or the
other of the rabbits would fall to the fox.

In that particular part of Alberta foxes existed
in most surprising numbers, and all through the
night one could hear them yapping. Sometimes
they uttered a long, thin, wavering howl, which

THE FOX. 57

was often taken up by others, till it became a
veritable concert — such as Seton describes in one
of his absorbing animal stories.

TRAPPING.

The cleverness of the fox in avoiding steel traps
has had no little to do with its survival in the
many parts of the world where it still flourishes,
but from which the wolves are long since gone.
So far as one can judge, the wolf of Great Britain
was an arrant ass, and of very much inferior in-
telligence to the gray wolf of the New World.
Remnants of wolf -pits still remain in various
parts of the country, and from these one would
judge that the wolf population of those days was
quite incapable of discriminating between the
most obvious sets and the natural features of
the landscape. In certain parts of the prairies the
wolves and the coyotes bid fair to outli ve the foxes,
probably because they are less given to attempting
raids on homesteads than is Reynard, confining
their depredations to the less-frequented alley-ways
of the night ; but it is little wonder that the foxes
of this country have long outlived the wolves
which once ranged the same forests.

Foxes are quick to locate the scent of steel,
and fear it greatly. Every fox inherits this fear,
springing, as he does, from a line of ancestors to
whom the steel trap has been an hourly peril ; but
if he learns in addition what the steel trap really
is, then keen must be the trapper who is to outwit
him.

There was an old fox which became an absolute
pest to one tiny village away back in the Pennines,
nipping up geese, ducks, and fowls in broad day-
light, and defying the many efforts made to bring

58 THE FOX.

about his destruction. When in the end this old
fox was dug out and killed, he was found to have
one paw badly crippled, having evidently left part
of it in a trap years ago, which accounted for
his extreme wariness thereafter in avoiding such
engines of warfare.

An experienced fox-trapper, however, is pretty
sure of his pelt so long as it is worth his while to
persevere in the pursuit of it. There is one thing
that effectively hides the scent of steel — running
water. Therefore the trapper suspends his bait in
the branches of a bush overhanging a stream, just
so high that the fox, standing in the water, is bound
to jump for it. His traps he sets in the water,
directly below, so that any fox trying to get
the bait is sure to encounter one of them, and
having encountered it, he inevitably springs the
second.

Foxes are fond of following water on their
nightly forays, game being most abundant there ;
so another method is to set the trap in the centre
of a narrow stream, covering it with moss so as to
form a little island directly above the spring-plate.
Baits are then set on each side of the stream, so
that any fox coming along is sure to locate the bait
on his side. Having taken it and found it to his
liking, he noses round for more, and it is then — oh
fatal discovery! — that he scents the bait on the
opposite bank. A fox hates to wet his feet, and
he makes a leap for the deceptive island of moss
in mid-stream, when — ping ! He is caught !

The commonest method employed by game-
keepers in trapping foxes is to utilise the stinking
carcass of a cat, placing it in such a position that
the fox is sure to locate it, and setting the traps
all round. A fox cannot resist the attraction of

THE FOX. 59

such a bait, and in circling round he is sure to
spring one or more of the hidden traps.

VALUE OF THE TAIL.

The bushy tail of the fox has many uses, fore-
most among which is its value as a wrap or a travel-
ling-blanket. In referring to the foxes of Manitoba,
where the cold is intense, Seton says that he does
not believe a fox which has lost its tail would
survive the winter ; but this certainly does not
apply in the British Isles. As already mentioned,
vixen cubs reared in captivity are often docked
before being liberated, and a tailless vixen gener-
ally lives to produce many litters. There is no
doubt, however, that the tail is a considerable
comfort to its possessor, for the fox, when resting,
curls into a ball, its exposed nose and paws packed
closely together ; then it wraps its tail over them,
and breathes through the long, close hair.

Thus curled, a fox is very difficult to distinguish
against a background of leaves or bracken, and
will lie perfectly motionless so long as it thinks
itself unobserved by the passer-by — watching
through the hair of its tail, which thus serves an
additional useful purpose by hiding the bright eyes
that might otherwise give the show away.

Foxes use their tails considerably when fighting,
the combatants striking each other in the face,
and thereby causing a momentary diversion which
serves to cover a snap or a parry. I have heard it
stated in all seriousness that a fox, before going
out in search of a rival whom he intends to engage
in combat, will deliberately sprawl in water, then
roll in sand till his tail, and indeed the whole of his
fur, is filled with grit, which so bunds his opponent
that victory is easily gained 1

60 THE FOX.

Again, the tail of the fox is of value in assisting
him to follow the lightning twists and turns of
Brer Rabbit, acting as a rudder and a stabiliser ; but
nevertheless there are times when this generally
useful piece of equipment is a severe drag. A
hard-run fox that has been compelled to take to
water finds his wet brush a sorry burden, and in
the end the slight additional weight may prove his
undoing. A badly wounded fox in Wharfedale,
which was ultimately shot and killed, was found
to be rendered almost helpless in its enfeebled
state by the heavy load of ice which had collected
in the long hair of its tail. The poor creature was
evidently too done up to bite out the ice-clots,
which rapidly accumulated, and in the end might
conceivably have sealed the animal's fate had not
a more merciful form of death stepped in.

SPEED.

I doubt very much whether the fox is so fast in
a short sprint as the rabbit ; 28 miles per hour is
probably the average maximum, but between the
maximum speed of Reynard and the speed he is
capable of maintaining over a considerable distance
there is but a narrow margin. Thus the prime
fox, whose maximum speed is 30 m.p.h., will prob-
ably prove capable of maintaining 20 m.p.h. over
a distance of four or five miles where the going is
favourable, whereas a rabbit, which may attain
33 m.p.h., could not maintain 20 m.p.h. for more
than five hundred yards.

THE YOUNG.

Gestation occupies fifty-one days. The young
are born early in April, and are blind for about
two weeks. Usually they appear at the den-

THE FOX. 61

mouth when about three weeks old, but they do
not venture far from the area of trodden sand till
about three months old, when, singly or together,
they begin to accompany their mother on breath-
less mouse-hunting expeditions.

In fox-hunting country, where the home-den of
the vixen and her cubs is never disturbed, foxes
often choose the most exposed and open place for
their 'earths,' as the home-burrows are called;
for instance, I have known one to be located in
the centre of an open fallow field, slick on the
skyline, the mound of newly turned earth vastly
visible against the sky. In mountainous districts,
however, where the nature of the country forbids
hunting, the utmost caution is exercised by the
parent foxes in the location of their den. They
choose some little-frequented and almost inaccess-
ible spot as far from human habitation as possible,
knowing full well that their little ones, if dis-
covered, will be dug out and killed by keepers or
shepherds. Very often an old and abandoned
quarry, which catches the sunshine, but shelters
the den-mouth from easterly winds, is chosen, and
here the cubs gambol when old enough to leave
the den, chasing the moths and the insects about
the warmth and shelter of their stronghold,
while the parents, in their coming and going,
take care to leave no beaten track which might
betray their secret.

The dog-fox, in spite of various doubts raised on
the point, is a devoted father, though while the cubs
are small he has little to do with their upbringing.
His share at this time is to bring food to the
vixen, leaving it at the den-mouth for her; and
thus, by making sure that she is well fed, he can
have no doubt that her precious cubs will not be

62 THE FOX.

neglected. Also, he acts as guardian of the den,
making note of any strange figures that appear,
and warning the vixen in case of danger. It
is to be feared that in the days of spring-time
plenty he often destroys more food than is needed,
going out on long excursions of piracy, and earning
a bad name for himself. Should the vixen meet
her fate while the cubs are small, their father nobly
takes charge of them, carrying them perhaps to
some safer locality, and caring for them in the best
way he knows.*

In the mountains of the north the parent foxes
generally work their den so that a root or a boulder
obstructs the entrance not far down, and here, where
the burrow cannot be enlarged, they take up a stand
should their home be invaded by an enemy. Very
often the fox-diggers, having dug down a goodly
distance, and thinking themselves near the nest
containing the young foxes, find to their annoyance
that they cannot dig farther owing to the presence
of a huge boulder which obstructs the way, and far
under which, in all probability, the cubs are hidden.
Even should the diggers find the nest, they are by
no means sure of the cubs, for generally there are
side-pockets, or ' hide-holes,' running off in different
directions, often so small that they become filled
in during the digging, and so escape notice ;
but at the end of each of these secret corridors
is huddled a little fox, who squeezed himself in
immediately the digging commenced. When an
enlarged rabbit-burrow is used as the earth, the

*This is not a random statement. I have known the dog-fox to
return to a completely buried earth, after the vixen had been killed and
the cubs dug out, and to open it ; and keepers in the Highlands set
traps in anticipation of the dog-fox's return. If the cubs are left, it has
been proved over and over again that he will carry them away ; every
cowboy of the prairies knows this. — H. M. B.

THE FOX. 63

foxes * generally redesign parts of it to their own
tastes, filling in the unused corridors to exclude
draught.

CUBHOOD DAYS.

Every infant fox is taught the lessons of life by
its parents, and the cubs of a wise mother grow up
wise foxes.t As soon as they are old enough to
play about the mouth of the den, their lessons
begin. First they are taught to use their noses ;
the parents, having brought food for them, hide
it some little distance from the earth, and leave
the cubs to locate it by their own keenness and
cleverness. Thus the clever cub fares well, while
the dull member of the family comes in only at
the tail-end of the feast. A little later they are
taught to pounce mice out of the grass ; taught
the folly of chasing the fleet-winged grouse that
rise from the heather ; and taught that, above all,
stealth and cunning are the crowning virtues of
the master of woodcraft.

One day their mother leads them to a new track
on the hillside, and sniffing it, she bristles and
growls, looks this way and that, then sneaks
swiftly into the heather, keeping in the hollows,
never showing herself against the skyline. Each
cub sniffs the new track, bristles and growls
because his mother did so, and sneaks furtively
after her, fearful of some unknown peril. And
after that day the scent of that track brings fear
to the heart of the fox-cub, and encountering it in
his rambles, he sneaks off through the hollows, for
it is the scent of the watchful shepherd !

Every nursery of fox-cubs has its playthings, such

* I have seen both parents engaged in digging the burrow. — H. M. B.
+ See HARE.

64 THE FOX.

as the wing of an old cock-grouse, dried by ex-
posure to sun and sand, and durable as leather.
The fittest cub picks it up and 'swanks' — I can
think of no better word — round with it, casting
glances of defiance at his brothers and sisters till a
tug-of-war ensues, the opponents snarling in a most
fear-inspiring and terrible manner. In the midst
of the contest the humorous cub — for every litter
has its humorist — runs full tilt into the wing,
knocking the others flying, and snatching up the
trophy, he tears off with it, running in circles and
colliding with everybody. There ensues a wild
scramble, during which the surly cub loses his
temper, fights in real earnest for the wing, and
finally gets it. Then he carries it off, growling
as he goes, and tries for the ninetieth time to
eat it, so that there shall be no further misunder-
standing as to whose it really is !

Until three or four months old fox-cubs give
practically no scent at all ; so little, indeed, that
hounds will run over them — a very generous pro-
vision on the part of Dame Nature. At the time
when they are old enough to play about the den-
mouth, the vixen, evidently with the idea of
widening their outlook a little, sometimes prepares
for them a yard or a playground a little distance
from the earth, and thither, on fine nights, or
even during summer days if the place be suffi-
ciently secluded, she takes them at regular intervals.
Usually the yard is located in the midst of dense
bracken, or some other suitable cover, and easily
accessible from the den. The dam treads out a
bed for herself at one side of the small open space,
and there she lies watching her little ones while
they roll and scuffle in front of her — keeping,
always, to strictly defined limits. Usually they

THE FOX. 65

show no desire to wander off into the whispering
quietude beyond ; but should one of them attempt
to do so, it is at once called back and severely
reprimanded.

Mountain-foxes are more given to this custom
of instituting a ' home from home ' than are ' long
valley ' * foxes — probably because they inhabit less
thickly peopled regions, and are, therefore, less
likely to be disturbed. Some keepers are of the
opinion that in the case of the true mountain-
foxes the vixen leads her cubs from the den as
soon as they are old enough to follow, and that
thereafter they do not return, making their home
in the heather. Occasionally a shepherd crossing
the hills will come across a fox 'yard' far out
in the open, no earth anywhere near, the yard
being betrayed from afar by the litter of feathers
and, alas ! lambs' wool. If the cubs are there,
they simply crouch in the heather, making little
or no attempt to escape, and a massacre follows,
the shepherd's dog giving short shrift to the
defenceless youngsters. It is surprising to how
great an extent the hatred of the fox is born
in these hardy dogs of the hills ; for generations
past they have shared, fang and nail, in their
masters' feud.

The parents of the cubs are often very fearless
and cunning in their efforts to draw away any
intruder from the vicinity of the family. A friend
of mine rose early one morning in the hope of
catching a glimpse of a litter of young foxes he
knew to be located in a certain wood. As he
neared the spot where they were, stealing as

* I use the term ' long valley ' to distinguish the wide, long valley
of the lower basin of a river from the upper or mountain valley. The
term is used in the East, and might conveniently be adopted by sports-
men and naturalists at home. — H. M. B.

W.A.

66 THE FOX.

silently as he could through the undergrowth, he
was suddenly startled by a vicious snarl just ahead
of him, and a moment later one of the adult foxes
leapt from behind a bush, and momentarily barred
the way, snarling and bristling. Immediately the
fox saw that the intruder was a human being it
slunk off, uttering as it went two sharp 'yaps,'
which were evidently the signal for the cubs to
retire hastily underground.

In all probability this was the dog-fox, and
certainly the part the father plays at this season
is by no means insignificant. No doubt in the
world of foxes there are fathers and fathers, as
there are in the world of human beings ; but
observers are too apt to conclude when a fox is
seen near a den that it is indisputably the vixen,
though as a matter of fact the father is generally
on outpost duty somewhere near, and he is more
likely to be seen than is the vixen. It is he
who gives the first warning of danger, and, if
possible, leads the intruder in another direction ;
the duty of the vixen is to hasten to her cubs,
if she is not already with them, and see that they
take cover immediately.

I give the incident upon which the above
statement is based. A keeper in a non-hunting
country (Upper Wharf edale) sent his dogs into
a wood which he knew contained a fox family,
taking up his station at the end of the wood
near to a point at which he thought the vixen
would bolt. The dogs struck the scent of a
fox almost immediately, and were led hither and
thither through the undergrowth for some minutes.
Presently the keeper saw the vixen cross the boun-
dary wall about two hundred yards from where
he was standing, and lope across to an adjoining

THE FOX. 67

wood. Her tongue was lolling, so assuredly it
was she the dogs had followed, though by some
trick she had now successfully thrown them off
the scent.

Next day the keeper repeated the performance,
this time taking up his station at the point where
the fox had emerged. Exactly the same thing
happened— the fox was viewed by the dogs, led
them on a wild-goose chase for some minutes,
then tricked them. A minute later Reynard
appeared on the wall-top, crossing at exactly the
same place as yesterday, and, of course, met its
fate. On going up, the keeper was surprised to
find that it was the dog-fox he had shot 1

A Highland keeper told me that one day, when
crossing a moor, he was much mystified on seeing
two foxes running apparently aimlessly round and
round a boulder. He thought they were chasing
each other for amusement, and forthwith proceeded
to stalk them. Almost immediately, and without
looking in his direction, the foxes made off,
keeping together for a short distance, then sepa-
rating. The keeper urged his dogs in pursuit, and
was about to make his way to a point of observa-
tion, from which a chance shot might be obtained,
when it occurred to him to look round the boulder
where he had first seen the foxes, for clear it
was that they had seen him before he saw them.
Going to the place, what was his surprise to find
a solitary little cub seated under the rock, so
young that its eyes were hardly open 1 The man
could not find it in his heart to kill the lonely
little wean— apparently the sole charge of its
parents, who, the man now realised, were busy,
when he first saw them, scattering their own
scent about the place so as to overwhelm that

68 THE FOX.

of the cub, finally running off together in order
to leave an unmistakable line to lead away the
intruder !

Early in the autumn, when the cubs have learnt
to hunt and to take care of themselves, the family
finally splits up, the fox and the vixen driving the
cubs out of the home-range, this being a natural
prevention of overstocking, which would result
in many enemies or in scarcity of food. Each cub
now sets off to seek his own fortune, and he
may travel for days ere he finally settles on a
range of his own. During this time of migra-
tion, while travelling restlessly from hill to hill,
from forest to forest, the cub invariably carries
something in his jaws. It may be an old sheep-
horn or the sole of a boot, or possibly it is the
last thing he killed — a water-vole or even a frog.
Exactly what his idea is one cannot say, unless
it is that, feeling himself an emigrant, he is con-
strained by a desire to carry his worldly possessions
with him. More probably, however, the ruling
instinct is that of carrying a small store of food
lest, in his wanderings, he should encounter a
fruitless land and suffer hunger.

Many foxes have little secret caches or hiding-
places, where they bury certain things which
happen to take their fancy. All manner of
strange oddments are buried here — little things
the fox has picked up during a night's wanderings,
carried for an hour or two, then hidden with his
secret store, to be meditated over in leisure
hours. An old barrel mole-trap containing a dead
mole, a medicine -bottle which had held some
strange-smelling concoction, a bit of a slipper,
and an old dog-collar were found in one such
cache, which was located in the decaying root

THE FOX. 69

of a tree in the centre of a lonely forest. Evi-
dently the fox spent much leisure time in the
vicinity of his secret store, for he had amused
himself by stripping the bark from adjacent dead
trees in order to nose out the grubs which lay
beneath it. (Personal observation.)

LENGTH OF LIFE.

The fox is a hard-living animal, and, like all
the canines, is not remarkable for longevity. He
is old at ten years. Eight years is probably
Reynard's allotted span of life, for immediately
infirmity sets in, immediately his senses lose their
keen edge, he inevitably succumbs to one or
other of his foes. He is so much dependent
on his sight for his living that were this to fail
in the least, hunger would hasten the natural
decline of his health, and if not killed he would
probably, in his weakened state, fall a victim to
red mange, and die a month or two later.

NUMBERS.

Taking the number of foxes killed annually
before hounds in Great Britain as 12,000, and
the number killed in other ways as 10,000, making
up a total of 22,000 foxes killed annually over
an area of 80,000 square miles, it is possible to
arrive at a rough estimate of the fox population
of the country. On St George Island, Behring
Sea, foxes are fed and protected for their pelts.
The stock consists of about 270 mated pairs,
and it is found that not more than 500 pelts can
be marketed annually without reducing the stock.
On this basis it may be argued that 11,880 pairs
of foxes breed annually in Great Britain, though
it is reasonable to suppose that this is a very

70 THE FOX.

low estimate. In the first place, the St George
Island vixens produce from 5 to 12 cubs to the
litter, whereas the wild vixens of this country
produce from 4 to 9. Again, it may be taken
that the accidental death-rate is higher among
animals that are purely wild than among those
fed and protected by man, so that in all probability
the stock in this country is close upon 13,000
breeding pairs.

ENEMIES AFIELD.

Afield, Reynard is no more popular than is a
prowling cat in the hedgerows or a sparrow-hawk
in the pine-tree. When out at night-time, I
have marked his passage down from the heather
into the fertile valley-levels by the frenzied calling
of the pewits, circling over him, accompanied
occasionally by the drumming of snipe and the
wild alarm of the curlews. The pewits are truly
the sentries of the night during the spring of the
year, and their unrelenting watchfulness must
occasion Reynard many a muttered oath as he
sallies forth on booty bent. He will hide in a
drain or in a stone wall in order to get rid of them,
for so long as he remains visible they will assuredly
follow him, one bird keeping up the vigil till it is
relieved by another, and so on by mutual arrange-
ment from field to field.

Sometimes comparative silence reigns upon the
uplands. The moon is not yet out and the stars
are dim. One hears the scream of a hare two
fields away; it fades, and the silence closes in
again like the closing of water at the stern of a
vessel. Then suddenly a pewit calls. The call
is answered shrilly, then repeated. Reynard is
abroad, and in a minute or so the whole mountain-

THE FOX. 71

side is apulse with sound, the very rushes seeming
to find voice and to join in the general chorus.

SENSE OF SMELL.

The fox is gifted with extraordinarily keen sight,
and, like all predatory animals capable of speed,
he uses it very considerably in his hunting. His
nostrils, however, are as well trained as those of
the best setter or pointer. In hunting, the general
trend of his direction is against the wind, and his
nostrils are aquiver at every step. Suddenly he
stops, head aloft, ears acock, one paw upraised in
an attitude of sculptured gracefulness — freezes into
a statue, save for that never-ceasing quiver of the
nostrils. He moves a step or two to left or right,
tests the wind again, then slowly sinks to ground.
In that dense clump of heather just ahead a blue
hare is crouching. He cannot see it, but his nostrils
have marked it down to within an inch. He leaps,
pinning down the heather between his forepaws ;
then a thin-edged scream goes up, a pewit rises
a-wing, another follows — but what matters the hub-
bub, now that Reynard has procured his supper?
He lopes easily away, and the night sentries mark
his going, screaming aloft.

When Reynard — and, of course, the same applies
to other animals — hunts by scent, he must, at every
stride, 'watch the wind.' His exquisite sense of
smell would be of no value whatever to him unless
it were worked in conjunction with an equally
exquisite sense of wind -direction. Scent alone
could not have told him just where that blue hare
lay. The scent was of a potency and a property
which meant ' two yards away,' but it was wind-
direction, and wind-direction only, which marked
its exact whereabouts.

72 THE FOX.

Thus the nose of a fox is not only his scent-
machine, but also his wind-vane. Both functions
are performed by that small, moist, cold member
which leads the way everywhere. If you desire to
ascertain the direction of the wind, you moisten
your finger and hold it up before you. The cold
side is the wind side. Reynard's nose is moist by
the natural course of events, and is so sensitive that
it conveys to its owner the direction of currents of
air so slight that they amount merely to faint
movements of the atmosphere. The most breath-
less days are not devoid of such movement, or, if
so, the creatures that are dependent on their ' scent '
for a living would fare badly. It would perhaps
be more accurate if we said that these creatures
are dependent upon their senses of smell and
wind-direction, for one sense is worthless without
the other.

When a dog becomes thirsty its nose dries, and
it is said to lose its scent. Most probably its
' scent ' remains unaffected, but owing to the
drying of its nose the dog is no longer able to
'watch the wind,' and thus has lost its chief
guidance. Keepers seem to have some knowledge
of this, for I have watched a keeper deliberately
moisten a dog's or a ferret's dry nose in order
to assist it in locating game.

When a dog or a fox falls ill its nose becomes
hot and dry. This is one of nature's remedies. A
period of starvation is the finest medicine in the
world, and with the drying of the animal's nose
starvation is temporarily enforced, and, its hunting
abilities gone, the sick creature is content to den
up and sleep itself well. Thus at every turn we
find nature's schemes worked out to attain a definite
end.

THE FOX. 73

It will be seen that the fox has many character-
istics which are not unknown in man himself.
We have our nurseries and our museums — so has
he. His school is the great school of the woods,
in which, during his cubhood days, the fox learns,
lesson by lesson, the things which are to carry him
through later life. If he learns earnestly, he lives ;
if not — well, there is no place in the Wild for the
dull-witted and the foolish. The clever fox lives on
the fat of the land ; the fool is hungry and hunted
till he falls a victim to the merciless weeding-out
process that permits only the fittest to survive and
breed their kind — the offspring of wise parents.

DIMENSIONS.

The length of head and body in an average dog-
fox is about 3 feet, tail 1 foot 2 or 3 inches ; 3 feet
6 inches is a big fox.

THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT
(THE ERMINE).

THOUGH easily distinguishable from one an-
other in habits, the stoat and the weasel are
very similar, and in the following the word ' weasel '
can be taken as applying to both unless a distinction
be made. The stoat is much the larger, and gener-
ally a shade lighter in colour, while the conspicuous
black tail- tip, fleeing always in pursuit of his sinister
little form, proclaims from afar : ' I am a stoat, and
not a weasel ! '

The weasel lives chiefly on mice, moles, rats, and
so on, and though often guilty of grave misdeeds,
such as wholesale murder in the hen-house, it
probably pays its way so far as the farmer is con-
cerned. Gamekeepers, on the other hand, destroy
weasels whenever an opportunity occurs, knowing
that they will attack game of any kind as impartially
as they will attack anything else there is the faintest
chance of their pulling down, and the fact that the
weasel destroys vast quantities of small ground-
vermin does not exonerate him in the keeper's eyes.
On game-reserves, however, the weasel is much
less harmful than the stoat, as the latter, being
larger, is unable to make such free use of the
burrows of small rodents which perforate the fields
and hedgerows ; and, hunting more in the open, it
makes a business of searching during the season for
sitting birds, destroying the mother and the whole
clutch or brood should it locate her.

Though capable of surprising destruction, the
weasel is very little thicker in the body than a

THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE). 75

man's thumb, and is designed in every way for
hunting underground — invading the burrows of
the smallest rodents, and negotiating them at such
speed that their rightful owners, if caught at home,
have no chance whatever of escape. Catching up
a mouse by the head, the weasel kills it instantly,
then, thrusting it aside, hurls himself furiously on
the rest of the family, dealing death left and right,
and never ceasing to kill so long as there is a living
creature within his reach. Such ruthless and un-
warranted massacre is common to all the polecat
tribe. They do not kill merely what they require
for food, but destroy everything that comes within
their reach ; thus, on gaining the interior of a
chicken-house, for example, they go mad with
blood-lust, killing in a few minutes enough poultry
to satisfy their material needs for several weeks.

I once watched a weasel raiding a water-vole
burrow in the centre of an open pasture. About
nine voles, young and old, left the burrow immedi-
ately he entered it, and squatted trembling in the
grass by the mouths of the various holes. The
weasel, working underground, nosed them out one
by one with lightning rapidity. One just saw his
wicked little head dart, like the strike of a rattle-
snake, from the mouth of a hole by which a vole
was crouching, heard a squeal, and the vole was
jerked backwards into the burrow with hardly a
kick in self-defence. A second or two later the
head of the weasel would appear at another hole,
and the same thing would happen, the whole family
being exterminated in the course of two or three
minutes. I allowed this to happen because the
voles were doing considerable damage by under-
mining the artificial bank of a stream near by,
causing it to flood the meadow; but when the

76 THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE).

work was completed I strode up and introduced
the weasel to my terrier, who knew just how to
handle such gentry.

Unlike the stoat, the weasel never hunts on the
earth's surface if there is any possibility of pursuing
his whimsical and murderous way underground.
He will follow stone walls, running along inside
them in travelling across open country ; then, leaving
the wall, he makes for a drain, emerges to follow a
mouse-run, and so on and so forth, seeming to possess
an instinctive knowledge as to where such shelters
exist. This is all the more remarkable since this
little killer never remains long enough in one
locality to become properly acquainted with every
tunnel and cranny. Generally he is exploring new
country, with which he must be totally unfamiliar,
yet when fired at, or suddenly beset by dogs in the
open, he darts unerringly for the nearest tunnel,
the mouth of which may be completely overhung
and concealed by grass.

It may be a matter of surprise to many that
so small and short-legged a creature is capable of
running down animals that are much larger and
more speedy than itself; but one only needs to see
a weasel at work in order to realise that no animal
it normally hunts has the least chance of escape
when pursued, terrorised, and perhaps surprised by
so unwelcome a visitor. The weasel can outrun a
hare, and is bold enough and savage enough to
invade a building literally swarming with large,
ferocious house-rats. One afternoon I was amusing
myself by shooting rats which had taken possession
in vast numbers of an old outlying barn. Having
put some meal down in the open, I waited a little
distance away, armed with a B.S.A. air-rifle, and
almost immediately veritable strings of rats, large

THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE). 77

and small, came streaming forth from the nooks
and crannies to feast on the meal. I had shot
eight or nine of them, when suddenly every
rat mysteriously melted away, and peering up to
ascertain the cause, I beheld a small russet animal
bounding nimbly down the wall-side towards the
barn. It was a weasel, of course !

He saw me instantly, and darted into the wall ;
then, after the manner of his kind, he poked his
head from a cranny much nearer and regarded me
with his small black eyes. Immediately I raised
the rifle he darted back, to appear, almost the same
second, from another cranny several yards distant,
and again to disappear. This he did probably a
score of times, now only two yards distant, now
away up the wall, then actually from under the
eaves of the barn, passing from one point to the
next with such speed that it was almost impossible
to believe there was only one weasel present. One
would have thought there were half-a-dozen of the
little beasts stationed all up and down the crazy
building, and popping out their heads in turn —
such was his quickness in running through the
interior of the masonry. It would have required
a good snap-shot to kill him, even had I been
bent on doing so ; but it occurred to me that
he was capable of playing more havoc among the
rats in five minutes than I could have executed in
a week, so I left him to it. Presently he lost
interest in me, and judging from the stirring-up
and the sounds of murder that then began to issue
from inside the barn, I imagine the rats were well
aware some one had called.*

* To-day, 24th March, I found the skeletons of a stoat and a rat
lying about two yards apart on the moors in the Lyne valley. They had
evidently perished in mortal combat. — H. M. B.

78 THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE).

On other occasions, when carrying a shot-gun,
I have wasted as many as three or four cartridges
before ultimately bagging a weasel taking stock
of me from an adjacent wall. His head would
appear from a cranny, but the very instant I
pressed the trigger he would draw back, the shot
splatting all round the hole the merest fraction of
a second too late. The report seemed not to
disturb the animal in the least, for in a second
he would be peering from another cranny, quite
motionless, his black eyes full of inquiry. Gener-
ally he appears once too often, and a stray shot
gets him, but it would seem that he is usually quick
enough to draw back in time on perceiving the
movement of the gunner's trigger-finger.

When out with a dog, I have had a stoat
follow along the wall, appearing every few paces,
and chattering abuse and defiance at the dog,
sometimes only a yard or two away.

Many wild animals, among which the weasel
family stand as typical examples, adopt the habit
of moving in jerks so rapid as to deceive the eye,
and of 'freezing' between each movement. In
hunting, when it is necessary to escape observa-
tion, this is a very effective way of approaching
game, and is made use of by the American Indians.
In stalking deer I have sometimes desired to raise
one hand, perhaps to remove a troublesome fly
from my face, perhaps to adjust the breech of my
rifle, and I have noticed that if the movement be
made instantly it is very seldom observed, pro-
viding one remains perfectly still before and after,
whereas a slow, cautious movement is almost
certain to give the show away. The deer know
this themselves, and on hearing a suspicious sound
up goes every head in the twinkling of an eye ;

THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE). 79

then every deer remains stock-still till the cause
of the disturbance is arrived at, when they bound
away. Slow, cautious movements, then, are a
mistake except at very close range, and it is to
be observed that all animals that are most expert
in hunting, or in evading those who hunt them,
adopt this method of alternate ' freezing ' and rapid
movement.

HEARING.

The hearing of the weasel family is marvellously
keen, and it is said that these animals can hear the
scream of a mole, a sound so high pitched that
the human ear cannot distinguish it.* Weasels
are guided very considerably in their hunting by
their hearing, and many a time in the dusk of
evening one can observe one of these little free-
booters sally forth, and, as though undecided
which direction to take, sit bolt-upright and listen.
At this hour of half-light, the sun having already
dipped behind the hills, though a sea of crimson
and gold still floods the west, a weasel is very
difficult to recognise when seated thus, and having
once removed one's eyes from him, it is almost
impossible to locate him again. Motionless and
straight as a picket-pin, he looks for all the world
like one of the dead thistle-stems that surround
him, and sometimes for several minutes he will
remain thus, taking no notice should a motor
vehicle or a farm-cart thunder by only a few paces
distant. Then suddenly, having evidently heard
sounds too faint for the human ear, he darts off

* I once caught alive a female mole which was in the act of feeding
its young. As I held the animal by the skin of the back it opened
its month, and though no sound was audible, the fact that it was
'screaming' was indicated by its quickly escaping breath and its
general attitude of defence. — H. M. B.

80 THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE).

in some chosen direction, plainly with some fixed
goal in view.

This habit of evening listening is shared equally,
or perhaps to even a greater extent, by the stoat, or
it may be that the stoat is more conspicuous than
the weasel, and therefore more often seen. In his
winter garments, however, seated thus against a
background of snow, it would require a very keen
eye to locate a stoat at all, or, having located
him, to keep the sight focussed upon him. While
hunting, also, these animals pause to listen every
few paces, evidently making greater use of their
sense of hearing than their sense of smell.

It has often occurred to me that since the hear-
ing of a weasel is tuned to catch sounds much too
high for the human ear to hear at all, it is quite
reasonable to suppose that the other extreme
applies also — that is, that there are many deep
sounds which, disturbing enough to us, escape a
weasel's senses. Certain it is, as already stated,
that a gun-shot does not disturb these creatures
in the least, and the question arises as to whether
so deep a report is within the range of their
hearing.

THE MURDERER ABROAD.

Though the weasel's underground habits tend
to reduce the destruction it does, for the reason
that, progressing thus, the animal comes across
sufficient rodents to keep it busy and prevent it
devoting its destructive abilities in other directions,
at the same time the weasel often uses these
underground runways as a means of circumventing
game which otherwise would be out of reach.
One would not imagine the blind, subterranean
mole to be in any way an enemy to game-birds,

THE WEASEL HUNTING.

F

,'. -. •: ;•: •'•-".
:--' •"'•••'..: ••

THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE). 81

yet indirectly it is, because its underground
passages, running out into the open, enable the
weasel to surprise game which otherwise he would
stand no chance of surprising, except by a very
elaborate and cautious stalk. Locating game-
birds out in the open, he makes the best of his way
towards them through the mole-runs, peeping out
now and then to correct the direction, till ulti-
mately he darts to the surface in their very midst,
seizing one of them ere the startled creatures have
time to realise what manner of death has burst
upon them. A strong cock-pheasant or a grouse
will often succeed in rising in the air, taking the
weasel with it, but generally the bird falls after a
short flight, the weasel's teeth fast in its throat

On one occasion I saw by the tracks in the
snow that a grouse, thus surprised, had carried
the weasel a matter of eighty paces, heading down
into the glen, and evidently intent on making for
the burn, as a hard-pressed bird often will. It
had landed, however, two or three feet short of
the water, on a sandy bar, and here a terrific
struggle had taken place, the grouse making for
the water, while the weasel was fighting to restrain
it. Apparently the weasel had not had it all his
own way, as the tufts of russet fur clinging to the
snow indicated ; but in the end he of course killed
the grouse, and tried to drag it into a tiny cranny
under a shelf. The body of the victim was much
too large to be dragged in, and in his infuriated
endeavours the weasel had actually dragged the
bird's head off!

The ferocity of the weasel passes all belief.
One day my brother and I were motoring slowly
along a tortuous country-road, when on rounding
a corner we saw two weasels, one in pursuit of the

W.A. /

82 THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE).

other, tearing along the road towards us. Their
tails and fur were bushed out, making them look
double their real size, and we could hear the angry
chattering sound they were both uttering. They
saw the car immediately, and swerved ; then the
foremost one, in its eagerness to escape its pursuer,
made straight for the car again, passing clean
between the front-wheels. Without hesitation the
other followed, while my brother and I hastily
dismounted, clutched our sticks, and gave chase.
For fully five minutes we hunted the two little
demons up and down the roadside, several times
being within an inch of killing one or the other ;
yet so preoccupied were they in hunting each
other that they took very little notice of us, at
times breaking cover, and, in the eagerness of their
feud, taking appalling risks of having their spines
broken by our sticks. I believe both stoats and
weasels often hunt each other down in this way,
following and fighting till one or the other is
killed.

When a boy I caught a stoat in the very act
of killing a rabbit, but the little brute saw me and
made for the wall, not abandoning the rabbit until
he was compelled. The rabbit being now quite
dead, I tied one of its hind-legs to the roots of a
Scotch thistle, then, with my stick ready, waited
out of view. After four or five minutes the
stoat reappeared, made a careful survey, then
darted again upon the rabbit, shaking and worrying
the poor dead creature like a miniature tiger. He
next tried to drag it away, and, unable to do so,
his fury was laughable to witness. Quietly I rose
and darted towards the place. Seeing me, the
stoat chattered and snarled, still dragging at the
rabbit ; but he delayed a moment too long, as I

THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE). 83

had thought would be the case, and, much to my
delight, paid the penalty with his life.

Though, like most very bold and ferocious
animals, the weasel family is very low down in the
scale of intelligence, the little renegades neverthe-
less resort to many clever and effective tricks when
hunting. On approaching in the open game that
cannot be reached in any other way, they will
begin a series of the most wonderful feats of con-
tortion— leaping into the air, chasing their tails,
looping the loop a foot from the ground, and so
on, till the creature they are after becomes con-
sumed with curiosity, and, owing to the quickness
of their movements, is unable to judge their exact
distance. Pheasants and barn-door fowls become
so overcome with curiosity on seeing a stoat or
a weasel behaving thus that they actually stroll
to meet him, as though mesmerised, while each
evolution takes the little murderer nearer and
nearer on his way. A final leap, a quick dash,
and his object is reached — out goes another good
pheasant or barn-door fowl 1

The weasel is certainly of royal blood in the
family to which he belongs, and the stoat, though
so much larger, will not face him. The domestic
cat is a fierce and formidable fighter, but I have
seen an old poaching torn flee in furious panic
from one end of a heap of sticks when a weasel
entered the other.* A fox will similarly turn away
from a weasel if he can conveniently do so ; indeed,
it seems that few animals can tolerate this musk-

* Since writing this, I have been informed by Mr F. J. Hutchison
that in the garden of his house, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, he
watched a stoat ' running ' a domestic cat round the grass plot. Finally
they closed, the stoat intent on business, the cat obviously in terror.
Unfortunately, however, a noise from the house broke off the interest-
ing conflict.— H. M. B.

84 THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE).

bearing little fighter, and will give him a wide
margin every time in preference to disputing the
right-of-way. The weasel is quite impartial as
to whom he attacks, having been known to kill
calves, lambs, and even foals, the first named, it
is said, by suffocating them.

MIGRATION.

Like all other members of his family, the weasel
is of wandering habits, and the covert which yester-
day contained no stoats or weasels may to-morrow
be overrun by them. In the autumn their migra-
tory instincts seem to be at their strongest, and
at this season they are most commonly seen by
roadfarers, darting across the open road and
bounding down the hedgerows. These wanderings
are quite unaccountable, as the animals do not
migrate, for example, from the high, bleak hill-
tops to the sheltered valleys, but remain evenly
distributed. One merely takes over the hunting-
range of another, a general shuffling and sorting-
out taking place.

Stoats and weasels very often travel in families,
eight or nine of them keeping together, working
and hunting in unison like a pack of hounds.
Sometimes in wild country family joins family,
till an immense gathering of them is formed —
travelling east or west, and leaving an area of
devastation behind them. An army of weasels
will turn aside for practically nothing, even the
shepherd and his dog being unsafe should they
encounter it. There are many cases on record
of such an army having attacked men, and no more
uncomfortable predicament could be imagined.

A Yorkshire shepherd with whom I was well
acquainted was one day walking the moors, when

THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE). 85

his dog gave chase to a stoat. The man readily
lent a hand, when he was surprised to see more
stoats, and still more, bounding towards him and
his dog, giving tongue angrily like so many little
panthers. The man stuck to his ground, and
during the next few minutes he and his dog
killed a large number of the little brutes. Finally,
however, they were compelled to withdraw, the
dog becoming tired ; and it is a fact that the animal
retained so strong a ' weasel ' smell that for two or
three days after the encounter it was not permitted
to enter the house, having to sleep out in the
barn.

Scottish shepherds regularly recount similar en-
gagements with these small creatures — both stoats
and, less commonly, weasels — which, for their size,
are the fiercest and most terrible fighting-machines
in all wild nature.

POSSIBLE ENEMIES.

Though so fierce and formidable a fighter, the
weasel does not always get it his own way with
the creatures he sets out to destroy, and working
a drain or a barn freely inhabited by house-rats is
risky work for him. Rats have sufficient intelli-
gence to combine against a common foe, and some-
times a veritable army of them will unite to drive
a weasel from their habitat, handling him very
roughly or even killing him. Generally, however,
a weasel succeeds in getting away when thus set
upon, probably leaving a train of dead, limping,
and staggering rats behind him ; for, though he
bites and holds on bulldog fashion when hunting
to kill, he strikes like a rattlesnake to left and
right when fighting in self-defence.

Nevertheless, an old buck-rat will sometimes

86 THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE).

prove more than a match for a single weasel, and
a very ample handful for the sturdiest of stoats.

A doe-rabbit with young to defend will turn
and face a stoat or a weasel most gallantly, driving
him out of her burrow, and stamping on him
with her powerful hind-paws till all the fight
is knocked out of him. Similarly, a mother-hare
will attack one of these creatures with such fury
that, unless he beats it for cover, he may find him-
self with a crippled spine.

Stoats and weasels attack and kill snakes with
great dexterity, even the poisonous varieties often
falling victims to their swiftness. Toads, frogs,
beetles, and worms likewise figure conspicuously
in the bill of fare of these animals ; while any dead
thing they find is welcome to their multifarious
tastes.

HUNTING RABBITS.

When a weasel (the term is here used as apply-
ing also to the stoat) sets out on the trail of a
rabbit, he sticks to that one rabbit, never wavering
from his original selection till he has run it down.
The quarry may run through half-a-dozen burrows
thickly tenanted by other rabbits ; it may cross and
criss-cross its trail with a hundred other trails ; but
every trick it plays, every sidelong leap and double
back, finds the remorseless little pursuer still on
its trail. A young rabbit does not run far when
hunted by stoat or weasel, but after one spasmodic
sprint it seems to give up all hope, and become
paralysed with terror. Immediately it catches
sight of the weasel behind it, indeed, after one
half-hearted endeavour to escape, it throws up the
sponge, beginning to run in foolish circles, while
without haste the weasel follows — by sight now.

THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE). 87

Narrower and narrower become the circles, the
rabbit begins to squeal, then finally it crouches
helplessly and awaits its fate.

An old rabbit, however, will sometimes give a
weasel a good run, keeping him occupied for an
hour or more, and leading him far afield. A rabbit
will even take to water when pursued in this way,
and I have known one to swim a wide river,
arriving at the other side in a much-exhausted
state.

Weasels seem to be capable of exercising a
hypnotic effect upon the creatures they pursue,
and even when a rabbit has succeeded in getting
away, and is on safe soil, it is often overcome by
temporary paralysis. So helpless is it that a man
can pick it up, as I myself have done on more than
one occasion. I have seen a rabbit so paralysed
after having fairly escaped that it was capable only
of dragging itself along on its forepaws, its hind-
quarters trailing helplessly, as though its spine
were broken.

When two stoats or weasels are hunting together,
they work as rapidly and systematically as a pair
of well-trained dogs, one following the trail, while
the other ranges to left or right. Should the trail
turn in the direction of the one that is ranging
wide, he picks it up, thus saving his companion a
wide detour, and in this way they cut out many
a circuit, so saving much time. So keen is their
sense of smell, however, that they can scent the
trail thirty or forty yards away should the wind
be in their favour, and instead of following every
twist and turn, as a dog does, they cut off the
corners, travelling more or less straight, and re-
joining the trail farther up. A weasel seldom
actually treads the trail he is running, but follows

88 THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE).

a yard or more on the leeward side, the distance
depending upon the strength of the wind. This
can be seen by any one who studies weasel signs
in the snow.

It is a fact that sometimes a bitter feud will
open up between a stoat and a fox, the stoat
following the fox for great distances, probably
with the idea in the first place of profiting by
his hunting. It is part of the nature of the stoat
to follow and follow on till he has killed the
creature he is pursuing, and perhaps it is some
such notion that causes him to follow a fox in this
way, irritating and threatening poor Reynard till
he is at his wits' end. A fox will seldom turn on
a weasel of any kind if he can conveniently lope
away, but to be followed and molested for hours
on end is more than any self-respecting fox can
be expected to endure. So, having left the stoat
behind half-a-dozen times, he probably turns in
the end and ' chops ' it, and there is one little
murderer less in the woods.

The weasels are the sworn enemies of every
creature of the moors and the forests, rooks and
crows mobbing them on sight, or hovering about
with loud cries till the little assassins are driven to
take cover. A friend of mine living in the High-
lands kept for many years a tame buzzard, which
used to hop about the garden, and during its career
it succeeded in catching a large number of weasels,
to which it was very partial. Certainly there is
no accounting for tastes ! I knew also of a large
game cockerel, the property of a Lowland keeper,
which not only killed rats and mice, swallowing the
latter whole, but was reputed by its owner to have
killed weasels and stoats. Its method was to
pounce upon the creature, stamping and holding

THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE). 89

it down with its large and powerful feet, then to
deliver several sledge-hammer blows at the victim's
head with its beak — secretary-bird fashion.

The best cure for stoats, however, is the steel
trap, and the destruction of these hateful and
bloodthirsty little animals, which are a terror to
the woods they inhabit and certainly no ornament
at the best of times, is a worthy pastime for the
country boy with idle moments to spare, and an
act which will be appreciated by game-warder and
landowner.

HABITS IN SNOW.

In deep snow, when the Hunger Moon reigns,
the weasels do not share in the general famine
which then prevails over the land. Indeed, deep
snow and frost suit them exactly, for they are as
much at home in the snow as the otter is in water.
Working beneath it, among the roots of the heather
or under the thick entanglement of bracken and
briar, it matters not to the stoat and the weasel
how wildly the blizzard blows overhead, for these
animals live now in an underground world, secure
from gale and tempest, with the frozen snow as their
roof and the crisp leaves as their bed. Sometimes
the animal rises to the surface, breaking through the
crust as an otter breaks the surface of the water ;
then, diving below the surface again, quick as a seal,
he pursues his unseen way secure from his foes.

At this season of the year many of the mice
have stopped up the entrances of their burrows to
exclude the cold, and are sound asleep underground ;
but the keen scent of the weasel enables him to
locate them and dive in upon them, the mice,
torpid in their winter sleep, making never a kick
in self-defence. The rats are gone from the banks

90 THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE).

and the hedgerows to congregate in immense num-
bers about warm outhouses and in man's dwellings,
so that a visit to these habitations is well worth the
weasel's time. Birds, particularly partridges, form
a habit at such seasons of huddling together in
little groups, out in the open fields, and the hunter,
locating them, has nothing to do but run under
the snow till he is directly below ; then, breaking
surface suddenly in their midst, he is sure of a kill.
In the same way he hunts larks out in the open,
dragging them down from below, just as a fly is
snatched from the surface of a pool by the trout
lurking in the depths. Thus he is now independent
of the mice-runs and the mole-runs in catching his
quarry, and heavy is the toll he takes of field and
game covert at such times.

It is only when there lies a thin tracking snow,
and the ground is bone-hard with frost, that hunger
is apt to fall upon the weasel population; and
should such conditions last, they gather into packs,
after the manner of wolves, and work the country
systematically for game. But they are not the
only sufferers at these times ; in the hedgerows
scores of small birds perish by hunger and cold.
Daybreak finds them still seated among the
branches, just as they were when the twilight
shadows closed upon them ; or, perhaps, hanging
by one toe to the undergrowth, to fall with the
first gust of wind into the kindly shadows which
have so long befriended them. Stoats particularly
hunt the hedges for such pathetic tokens of the
Hunger Moon, and it is to be feared that not
only the dead go to fill their hungry maws. At
night-time they hunt the hedges silently for roost-
ing birds, climbing high among the branches, and
surprising the birds where they sit ; for stoats,

THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE). 91

though belonging to the earth, are nevertheless
quite at home in the branches — more so than are
weasels. Even the old cock -pheasant, the survivor
of many a fiery blast of shot and powder, is by no
means secure from them, though he may roost
high up on the limb of some great oak, huddled
close to the sheltering trunk, and screened from
the vision of the human poacher who, armed with
an air-rifle, searches for him from below.

Dead tree-trunks, thickly overgrown with ivy,
afford excellent resorts for stoats during the Hunger
Moon. All manner of birds, including wood-
pigeons, seek the thick shelter of these trees in
times of extreme cold ; while the numerous little
roots and stems of the ivy afford ample foothold
and shelter for the hunting stoat. The remains
of many kinds of birds are to be found among
the dense cover of such trees, indicating that they
have worse enemies than the harsh winter spells —
death, swift and silent, falling upon them while
they sleep.

In his eagerness the stoat will mount the barest
of trees in pursuit of game. During keen spells
the black -game in Scotland come down from
the hills to feed upon the catkins of the alders
in the valleys. I have seen an avenue of these
trees crowded to their topmost branches with
gray hens, and one day I watched a stoat foolishly
trying to get at them, slick in view of the whole
pack. He was about eighteen feet up from the
ground, cautiously climbing towards an old gray
hen, who was cunningly watching him with one
eye. Every time the stoat drew near, the gray
hen moved slowly out on to the thinner branches,
till finally, with a cry of derision, she flew to the
next tree. The stoat chattered abuse after her,

92 THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE).

then began to descend, clutching and falling from
one icy branch to another till within ten feet of
the ground, when he dropped and made off —
perhaps realising the utter futility of such a method
of hunting. Weasels also climb during keen, cold
snaps, though they are less given to this form of
hunting than stoats. They feed at such times
almost exclusively on mice.

TRAPPING.

Weasels and stoats are the easiest animals on
earth to trap, as they make use of every drain
that comes in their way, and, indeed, are not
opposed to going out of their way in order to
run down a drain of any kind. They do not
fear the scent of steel, and will bound on to the
spring-plate of the most obvious gin that clumsy
fingers ever contrived. Keepers use dreadful traps
very considerably for weasels. These consist of
small square wooden tunnels placed through wall-
bottoms so as to lead, perhaps, from the moorland
to the covert boundary, or between any other
favourite hunting-grounds of the weasel kind. In
the centre of the tunnel is the trip mechanism
which the weasel is sure to disturb in passing,
whereupon a heavy log falls like a guillotine from
above, shattering the life out of the little freebooter,
as he himself has shattered the life out of so many.
On one occasion a stoat was taken in a false floor-
box trap set for rabbits, and during the night two
rabbits and a big tom-cat fell into the pit to keep
him company. The company must have been
very lively while it lasted, for next morning the
box was found to contain two dead rabbits, a
dying tom-cat, and a much-mangled, though still
lively, stoat.

THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE). 93

If one can succeed in shooting one member
of a family of these little killers, the extermina-
tion of the rest is merely a matter of patience,
for weasels and stoats always come back for their
dead. The best way, then, is to leave the shot
weasel where it falls, and quietly take cover near
by. In a few minutes one or two of the others
will come back for the corpse, and they too should
be shot and left without being touched, the gunner
still remaining concealed till he has done his work.
One need not be led away by any false sentiments
to the effect that they come back for their dead
prompted by a sense of family love for them,
for the weasel loves no one, and is just as ready
to murder his own mother as he would be to
murder a family of blind and helpless kittens.
He is a renegade and an outlaw, in whose character
there is not one lovable feature, unless it be that
he maintains a lifelong feud against a creature
more loathsome and destructive than himself —
the gray rat of our hedgerows and outhouses.

VALUE TO MAN.

Though a mortal enemy to the gamekeeper,
the weasel is unquestionably a friend to the farmer.
The desirability of reducing the rat population
in every way possible is dealt with in the chapter
treating of that animal, but here it may be stated
that the weasels are one of nature's methods of
keeping within reasonable limits the population
of earth-burrowing rodents. Sometimes a stoat
or a weasel takes up its abode among rat-infested
granaries and outhouses, and the destruction it
works among the rodents is enormous. To quote
an actual example : A farmer in Yorkshire, whose
outbuildings were overrun by rats, one day noticed

94 THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE).

a most objectionable stench in one of the buildings
where grain was stored. In the course of a few
days the stench became so unbearable that part
of the floor was removed to ascertain the cause,
whereupon it was found that numbers of dead
rats lay in the space directly under the floor-boards.
Here and there the carcasses lay in heaps, as though
they had been carried with some idea of storage,
while many more had been dropped on the run-
ways to and from these heaps. Examination
revealed that a stoat or a weasel — or possibly a
whole family of these dreadful little killers — was
responsible for the slaughter, and for the remainder
of that season very few rats were observed on or
about the farm.

Reference has been made to the weasel's sense
of hearing and its value as a guide in hunting
activities. I was one evening strolling over some
lowland meadows, on the off-chance of a shot
at game of some sort, when the village boy who
was with me drew my attention to a stoat
sitting bolt-upright at a wall-foot in an attitude
of listening. Anxious to observe its movements—
for it had not seen us — I refrained from shooting
the little pirate, and after a few seconds it began
to bound off in a northerly direction, pausing
now and then to sit up and listen, then bounding
off in the same direction as though reassured.
All its actions clearly indicated that it was going
in the direction of some sound that had attracted
it, and having travelled fully three hundred yards
— probably considerably farther — it came at length
to a small barn where numerous rats had lived
all summer, and disappeared into the massive walls
of the building.

This passing observation, of which little was

THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE). 95

thought at the time, has since occurred to me
as affording evidence of some importance. In
the first place, it goes to prove the perfection of
this animal's hearing. The stoat had undoubtedly
heard those rats when first we caught sight of
it, and it is rather remarkable that so minute
an atom of sound could be heard so far above
the general chorus of sounds of much greater
volume. An animal's hearing and powers of con-
centration on one individual sound can evidently
be screwed to a pitch far above our under-
standing ; and I have noticed a blackbird success-
fully listening for worms in the earth, while not
four yards away a lusty navvy was hammering
a post into the earth and his mate used a shovel
among loose gravel !

Again, the incident goes to show that the
hearing of the weasel family is one of their chief
guides in their hunting ; and if every weasel passing
within three hundred yards of a barn can tell
at that distance whether the barn is rat-infested,
there must indeed be few barns that escape their
activities at some time during the season.

A weasel or a stoat that takes up its quarters
amidst such buildings probably continues to scatter
destruction in every direction till it becomes ex-
hausted by its gruesome work, and this process
is repeated after intervals of rest for so long as
there are rats to hunt. Thus it is conceivable
that in the course of two or three days a single
weasel might annihilate and drive out the entire
rat population of quite a flourishing rat stronghold
— indeed, this regularly occurs ; and were it not
for the matter of polluting the atmosphere, it
would be interesting to note the results that would
follow the liberating of a small army of, say, semi-

96 THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE).

domesticated stoats among the docks and ware-
houses of London or Liverpool !

STORAGE.

The habit of storing food is curiously developed
in the land weasels — probably because they destroy
so much more than they actually require for food
that the natural impulse is to cache a certain
proportion for a rainy day. But the rainy day
seldom or never comes. I have known a weasel
to drag five young larks into a cranny under a
flat boulder of rock and leave them there, evidently
with the idea of returning. Passing the place
two or three weeks later, I found the larks still
untouched. A weasel family living in a disused
lead-mine had caches in every other nook and
corner; indeed, anything killed and not for the
moment required was tucked into the most con-
venient crevice and apparently forgotten. So far
as could be judged, none of the stores was ever
visited with a view to recovering its contents.
The unquenchable thirst of the weasel is for hot
blood, and though it will eat almost any filth
it finds by way of a change of diet, I cannot
imagine any weasel, save perhaps a maimed one,
returning to a cold cache for its meal in prefer-
ence to pursuing its lifelong march of destruction.
In other words, it would be an exceedingly hungry
weasel that turned to yesterday's store in prefer-
ence to searching for fresh, hot blood ; and since
a weasel is never hard pressed for food except
under the most unusual conditions, it is curious
that it has developed the storage habit so strongly.

The more a weasel kills, the more it stores,
and having spoilt its own hunting on a given
range, dotted all up and down with bulging caches,

THE STOAT OK ERMINE—' WINTER'S KEEN EDGE.'

' * * *f ' ,

THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE). 97

it moves to a new hunting-ground, and there
repeats the appalling business.

WARRENS.

The home -burrow of a weasel, in which the
young are probably born, is often very extensive
— may, indeed, underlie several acres of forest, the
weasel-tunnels tapping the mouse-tunnels in so
many ways that it becomes impossible to tell
where one set begins and the other ends. Where
mice are abundant, the earth for acres may be
a veritable network of creeps and runways just
under the leaf-mould, so that the mouse fraternity
can hold intercourse freely without venturing
above ground. The individual communities live
in the dead tree-roots, &c., each of which is a
castle of habitation, while all are interconnected
by underground corridors. The weasel takes
over one of these castles, and is thus in touch
with the whole mouse community of the forest;
it could live for days without showing itself
above ground. The mouse-creeps lead to and
from the stream, and branch off from hedgerow
to hedgerow, a veritable labyrinth throughout the
wood ; and the weasel, passing like a phantom of
death along these corridors, slaying in every corner
and leaving the slaughtered where they lie, is,
moreover, able to surprise the pheasant scratching
obliviously among the leaves by darting from some
screened opening in the ferns, or even by thrusting
its way through the leaf-mould at the pheasant's
very feet. To most wild creatures the earth is
mother only — she screens their blind and helpless
babyhood in her damp recesses, but thereafter
the earth is regarded by them only as a place of
sanctuary ; but this little usurper of every creature's

W.A. g

98 THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE).

domain uses such sanctuaries at its pleasure, and
moulds each and every one to the murderous desires
of its will. Barring the fox, the badger, and the
otter, no creature of our fields and hedgerows is
safe from a surprise attack by weasels. They
are the most dreaded and the most destructive of
all four-footed things, and were their numbers to
multiply greatly it would be to the extermination
of every bird in the trees and hedgerows, and every
warm-blooded, fur-covered denizen of the earth.

NUMBERS.

But the weasel population does not multiply
beyond certain limits prescribed by nature. If an
area of country were left undisturbed for a number
of years and no weasels or stoats were killed,
they would not become unduly common — not so
common, indeed, as they are to-day in certain
well-stocked coverts where, owing to the abundance
of food, every passing weasel is tempted to dally.
At first thought this may seem strange, but if
we have due regard to the weasel's life-habits, the
reason is not obscure.

Finding conditions suitable, a weasel takes unto
himself a certain hunting -range, and any other
weasel trespassing on that range has either to
fight or to fly. Being a weasel, he probably fights,
and a weasel-fight is generally a fight to a finish.
By the time the conquered one begins to realise
he is getting the worse of it — if a weasel ever
does realise such a thing — he is probably too badly
knocked about to escape from his opponent, who,
knowing he has the upper hand, goes all out to bring
the combat to a conclusion. The more plentiful
weasels are, the more commonly these meetings
occur, and thus we have nature's prevention of

THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE). 99

overstocking. Added to this is the huge mortality
that occurs by family disagreement, a litter of
seven or eight youngsters finally dwindling to
about three ere they have finished running to-
gether. Again, the weasel is no respecter of sex,
and a male weasel meeting a female is just as
likely to kill her in endeavouring to realise his
desires as he is to add to the number of his
kind. These repulsive facts account for the limita-
tion placed upon an entirely repulsive creature.
The weasel is the weasel's worst foe ; traps and
guns contribute little in keeping down his numbers
compared with the measures nature has brought
to bear, and did not such measures exist, the
weasel population would multiply till the exter-
mination of other life alone brought their numbers
to a halt.

BREEDING OF THE WEASEL.

The weasel makes a nest of leaves and moss,
locating it among the roots of a fallen tree, in
the bank of a hedgerow, in the foundations of
a dry rubble wall, or in a rabbit-burrow. Gesta-
tion occupies just under six weeks, and the young
are blind for nine days after birth. They are
totally dependent on their mother for four weeks ;
at six weeks they are well able to fend for them-
selves. The female weasel is a devoted mother,
and has been known to return in the face of
gun-fire, at the cost of her life, as it proved,
to pick up one of her young too badly injured
to follow her to safety.*

Naturalists disagree as to how many litters are
produced per season. Some state emphatically
not more than two ; others infer that four litters

•Personal observation. — H. M. B.

100 THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE).

per year are not uncommon. My own observa-
tions in the north of England and in Scotland,
where the weasels feed plenteously on the titlarks
that swarm in the bent and the ling, go to prove
that at least three litters, and commonly four, are
the regular order. I have seen young weasels
from May till late September.

Mating begins in the middle of February, while
there is still snow on the hills. The first brood is
born at the end of March. Now be it noted that
the young are dependent on their mother for just as
long a period as gestation takes. Since she runs with
her mate throughout the season, it is probable that
she conceives her second litter within a day or two
of her first litter being born. This would mean
that the second family would appear about the
middle of May, the third at the end of June, and
a possible fourth in the middle of August. Even
then, if four litters were produced, the latest kits
would be self-supporting by the end of September,
which coincides with my own observations.

By this reckoning we are not allowing any
wastage of time, and there is no special reason
why we should. A weasel has been known to be
nursing her new brood ere the previous brood was
properly self-supporting, and there is no doubt
that when food is sufficiently abundant this process
is repeated throughout the spring and summer.

The nest, if not deserted, is rebuilt for each new
litter, and the half-grown young have been known
to take shelter in a nest containing their newly
born brothers and sisters.

SIZE.

The length of an adult male weasel is usually
about 8 inches from the tip of the nose to the root

THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE). 101

of the tail. The tail seldom exceeds 2^ inches.
The female is about 1 inch shorter.

PECULIARITIES OF THE STOAT — BREEDING.

Curious though it may seem, there is no evi-
dence to suggest that the stoat produces more than
one litter per season. The young are born in
April, and they take little, if any, longer to mature
than do weasels. I have watched the growth of
the young in Galloway, in the south-west of Scot-
land, but by August I have never seen any but
fully grown stoats. The mated couples appear
more faithful to one another than are weasels.

SIZE OF THE STOAT.

A full-grown male stoat will measure 11 inches
from the tip of the nose to the root of the tail ;
tail, about 6^ inches. The female seldom exceeds
9 inches ; tail, about 5 inches.

DISPOSITION AND COLOUR-CHANGE.

The stoat is described by gamekeepers as a
more playful creature than the weasel, which
means that it is more commonly seen bounding
along hedgerows and hunting generally in the
open rather than about burrows. As already
stated, the stoat is easily distinguished by the
conspicuous black tip that adorns its tail, this
feature being absent in the weasel. During the
periodic stoat plagues that fall upon most of our
woods, the animals can be seen at almost any hour
of the day or night pursuing rabbits, &c., whereas,
if a similar plague of weasels exists, they are much
less conspicuous.

In winter the stoat sheds its russet coat and
assumes one in keeping with the snowy landscape.

102 THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE).

The change is not always perfect, but grades with
the altitude. In the south of England the stoats
often remain brown throughout the winter. In the
Midlands the brown shades into gray, sometimes
only a streak of brown remaining along the
animal's back and about the legs and the paws, its
flanks being gray. In the north of England and in
Scotland the stoat of summer becomes the ermine
of winter, the animal being quite white except for
the black tip to its tail, which remains under
any conditions — hence the black-flaked ' ermine of
kings.' Generally the furs are delicately tinted
with yellow, which, though seemingly a beautify-
ing feature, nevertheless detracts from their market
value.

Ireland has a stoat of its own, smaller than the
British variety, though identical in habits, &c.
The common weasel (Putorius nivalis) is unknown
in Ireland.

THE OTTER.

PROBABLY quite a small percentage of
readers have seen a wild otter in a free state,
and one is unable to form a just opinion of this
beast from the pitiful stuffed specimens one sees
in taxidermists' windows. In truth, the otter is
among the most graceful and beautiful of living
things, a perfect sample of animal activity ; but its
perfection is in its very life, its beauty in its ever-
changing poses, each pose full of grace and ease.

One day, when fishing a Highland loch, I found
my way barred by a tumultuous burn tumbling
down from the heights. In order to cross it I was
compelled to climb up the mountain-side to a much
higher point, on reaching which I chanced to look
down to the spot at which the burn joined the loch.

The scene was one of exquisite beauty, the burn
emptying into a cauldron at the loch-margin, the
mosses and ferns of which stood out in wonderful
tints in the evening sunshine. One could smell
the fresh, scented spray as it floated upwards ;
mountain-ash and silver-birch shadowed the pool,
and the whole little scene lay below, a veritable
fairyland of loveliness.

All at once a shadow appeared in the centre
of the cauldron, and began to slide swiftly among
the moss-covered stones till it reached one larger
than the rest, which it mounted. It was an otter !
There she rested, glancing to left and right ; then
suddenly she uttered a hoarse, penetrating note,
exactly like the call-note of a moorhen.

In a few seconds the first otter was joined by
a second supple, boneless creature, evidently her

104 THE OTTER.

mate, and the two began grooming themselves,
quick and changing in their attitudes as the light
effects upon the water. They might have been
striking poses for a camera the whole of the time,
yet neither of them remained still in any one posi-
tion long enough for one to make a ^th second
exposure of them. Presently, as though prompted
by a simultaneous impulse, they slid back into the
water, making scarcely a ripple, and evidently they
had caught my scent, for they did not reappear.

Before then and since I have watched otters
many times on the Esk, the Eden, the Wharfe,
and on one or two Scottish burns and rivers, and
have always been struck by their beauty and their
extraordinary vivacity, returning home after such a
glimpse with the feeling of having seen something
worth while. To watch otters fishing the pools
of some wide, shallow river about sunset is a
sight worth seeing, as by the ripples above one
can then follow their movements as they glide
hither and thither below the surface. The speed
at which an otter can travel under water is most
astounding, twisting and turning this way and
that, and resembling nothing more closely than a
huge conger-eel, as it threads its way in and out
among the boulders, or flashes torpedo-like across
the shelves. One curious thing about the otter is
that, however rapidly it moves in the water, it is
always deadly silent, never lashing the surface into
foam or creating so much as a bubble by its move-
ments. The creature leaves the water or slides
instantaneously into it, making only the faintest
ripple, and it is difficult to believe that an animal
so much at home there is not really a water
animal, but has taken to that element simply for
convenience.

THE OTTER. 105

At one time the otter was a fierce and terrible
land hunter, like the stoat and the weasel, and it is
probable that he took to hunting the waterways
simply because he found food most abundant
there. Voles had their creeps to and from the
margin, wild-fowl were in the rushes, and rabbits
swarmed within the sandy banks. These were the
otter's natural prey, and so he took to hunting
by the water's edge, where such food was most
plentiful ; but he came upon bad times, when the
river was frozen and there were no wild-fowl, when
voles and rabbits were scarce owing to the floods
of the previous spring, and when only the rapidly
flowing burns were free of ice. At that season of
the year the trout lay within these tiny burns,
weak with spawning, and gigantic salmon rolled
upon the gravel redds. The hungry otters found
the fish easy to catch, affording food in abun-
dance during the Hunger Moon, and so the otter
became more and more of an angler and less and
less of a land hunter. By degrees he grew into
a master in the art of swimming, easily out-
manoeuvring the lightning-darting trout and the
kingly salmon, and earning his living in this way
very much more easily than he ever earned it
on land.

To-day the otter is regarded by most people
solely as a water animal ; yet young otters dislike
the water, and are only made to take to it by their
parents, who, diligently and patiently, teach them
the art of swimming.

NIGHT HABITS.

At what time the otters take their rest no man
can say, for when undisturbed they are never still
day or night. In thickly peopled areas, where

106 THE OTTER.

they are apt to be disturbed during the day-time,
they seldom show themselves before dusk, moving
about under cover of the rushes while daylight
lasts ; but in many a lonely Highland loch they are
to be seen active the day through, and to be heard
during the night.

When fishing at night-time on the Wharfe, I
have had otters come within reach of my rod,
swimming round in circles as though unable to
make me out, and uttering many strange noises
in their conversation together. One of these
noises is a shrill whistle, exactly like a human
whistle, and doubtless produced by quick exhala-
tion through the nostrils. The most common note
is the ' moorhen call,' already referred to ; then
they have a series of friendly, rapid ' duckings,'
used much when playing together. They break
surface clucking, so evidently they cluck when
under water. It is rather an uncanny experience to
have these beasts so closely investigating when one
is fishing alone by a lonely part of the river — the
quietude, the moonlight on the water, the gliding
shadows across the pools all adding to the general
eeriness of things ; and I remember once my com-
panion, who chanced to be a city man, found the
otters altogether too much for him. He stuck it
for some time, then came over to where I was
fishing and confessed that the brutes frightened
him ; nor could I ever again induce him to remain
at the river- side after sunset, albeit the finest
trout rose most freely at night.

When about twelve years of age, I myself was
badly frightened by an otter. It was sunset, and
I was fishing at a point where a large burn joined
the river. Here the water flowed very rapidly
among the boulders, and every trout-fisher knows

THE OTTER. 107

how deceptive the moving shadows are under such
conditions — how, to the imaginative mind, they
are apt to take on the semblance of great, moving,
octopus shapes floundering below the surface.

I was just in the act of landing a fine trout, when
one of these phantom shadows suddenly separated
from the rest, and began to wind a rapid, sinuous
course towards me. All that I saw was a large
black animal, having a snake-like body of appa-
rently unlimited length, gliding, sliding, making
its way through the riffles, while in the dim light
it assumed unheard-of and terrifying dimensions.

Of course it was an otter, but I did not wait to
investigate further. Without delay I dropped my
tackle and fled back to the farm, soliciting the
company of a friendly farm-hand, who accom-
panied me back to recover the rod, not forgetting
to subject me to a goodly amount of chaff then and
thereafter. I have no doubt to this day that the
otter was in pursuit of the trout I was actually
landing, which had attracted its notice by fighting
on the surface.

ON THE SALMON REDD.

A very old and hardened angler with whom 1
am acquainted was one night badly frightened by
an otter. This man was, and is still, the most
notorious salmon-poacher on the Tweed — which is
saying a good deal ! He lives by his rod winter
and summer, and, like so many Border men,cherishes
a deadly feud against the water-bailiffs, who are
set to protect the salmon against illegal capture.
The law enforces certain regulations ; the poachers
say that the salmon come from the sea, and there-
fore belong to no one — which is every one — that
they are the property of the man who catches

108 THE OTTER.

them. Be that as it may, the poaching of salmon
amounts almost to a religious duty with my old
acquaintance, and on the night in question he was
resorting to a most illegal device — namely, ' burning
the water.' This consists in throwing a light on to
the surface of the water ; then, as the fish hoves in
view, attracted perhaps, like a moth, by the light,
the poacher strikes a large gaff into its body, and
hauls the kingly monster ashore.

But Ronald knew where the salmon were, and
the light was good enough for him to dispense
with any illumination. Approaching the shallow
spawning ' redd,' his keen eyes located a veritable
leviathan, and wading in behind it, Ronald began to
stalk slowly upstream, his eyes on the salmon, his
folding cleek in his hand. He was within a yard
or so of his target, and in the very act of striking,
when a movement at his feet arrested him, and
looking down, he saw two green eyes, flaming with
hunting lust, peering up into his ! Also he saw a
very vicious face and a dark outline almost touching
him, for the otter was in the act of stalking the
same salmon, and, like Ronald, was so much
absorbed in the stalk that it had never noticed
the rival angler !

With a yell Ronald fled for the bank, crying out
that the ' devil was in the water ; ' while in the
opposite direction, as much scared as he, fled the
otter.

One evening, when I was fishing on the Tweed,
an otter reared itself high out of the water within
two yards of me, its head and shoulders appearing
well above the surface ; then, having taken a long
and fearless look, it slowly sank, and reappeared
about thirty yards away, only its head up this time,
to look again. This it did time after time, working

THE OTTER. 109

its way up the river, and revealing itself each time
at a greater distance, till fully a quarter of a mile
away I lost sight of it.

FEROCITY.

It is fairly certain that the stories one hears from
time to time about otters following human beings,
apparently intent on attack, are the result of this
animal's uncontrollable curiosity. I do not believe
that one otter in a hundred actually knows what
man is ; they know his scent, and fear it, taking to
deep water or to cover immediately that scent
assails their nostrils ; but man in the flesh is an
unknown quantity to them. I have myself, as
related, known otters to come close up in order
to investigate. Had I moved away, they would
probably have followed, not having caught my
scent, and it would have been an easy matter to
send a letter to the local press relating how an
otter, intent on mischief, had pursued me 1

The most surprising facts concerning an otter's
ferocity came to my hearing in Yorkshire, and
when sifted proved to be genuine. A church-
sexton was one night fishing for eels near Ripon,
accompanied by his wife, when an otter was
observed to slide out of the water a few yards
away and come straight towards them, sneaking
through the long grass on its belly, much like an
eel crossing a meadow. The man at once rose,
shouting and clapping his hands ; but, hardly
pausing, the animal came on, refusing to turn
aside even when something was thrown at it.
The two people then withdrew, but the otter still
followed, till eventually the man tried to drive it
off by striking it with his wife's umbrella. The
umbrella was broken over the animal's back, but

110 THE OTTER.

the otter did not desist till the two gained a foot-
bridge, which they crossed, the otter seeming for
a time still inclined to pursue.

This must have been the case of a female whose
young were very near at hand ; but the story
merely goes to support my belief that the majority
of otters do not recognise man when they see him,
and would be as likely to attempt to drive him
from the vicinity of their young as they would be
to attempt to drive away any other trespasser. If
such acts of aggression on the part of otters were
out of sheer ferocity, it is curious that they never
attempt to attack sheep, &c., which they would be
much more likely to drag down and kill than they
would be to drag down a man.

A gentleman with whom I am acquainted was
recently snipe-shooting in early autumn on a moor
near to Pateley Bridge, when, on reaching a small
tarn in the comer of an extensive bent-allotment,
he sent his spaniel into the water to flush any birds
that might be in the rushes. The dog, having done
its work, proceeded to swim about, grabbing at the
floating weed, and amusing itself as a hot and thirsty
dog will under such conditions. Suddenly it ap-
peared to be in great difficulties, thrashing the
water with its forepaws and yelping, but, in spite
of its frantic endeavours, making no progress
towards the bank. The bed of the peat-pool was
too treacherous for the owner of the dog to attempt
to wade in to the rescue, and he concluded that
the animal must have become entangled in some
submerged barbed wire or weed — probably the
former, as it seemed to be in great pain. Shifting
his standpoint, however, the gunner was astounded
to see that a large otter had hold of the dog by the
shoulder, evidently intent on drowning the poor

THE OTTER. Ill

animal by dragging it under. Both animals were
more or less mixed up ; but taking a risky shot, my
friend managed to effect the dog's rescue, the otter
relaxing its grip and disappearing.

The dog was very badly injured, and had to be
carried by its master two miles or more to the
nearest farm, where a conveyance was obtained.
I myself saw the wound the otter had inflicted,
and have no doubt whatever that had there been
no human help at hand the spaniel could never
have succeeded in gaining the bank of the tarn.

A fact worth relating is that whenever that dog
again passed near the tarn it would hunt through
the rushes with savage enthusiasm, and it became
really keen on hunting otters, though, fortunately
for its safety, it never again found itself engaged in
a single-handed combat with a 'water- weasel.'

The bite of the otter is truly dreadful, and, except
by a stroke of good luck, no dog could succeed singly
in killing one of these beasts in its natural environ-
ment.

MIGRATION.

Like most of the members of the weasel family,
the otter is of nomadic habits. A female with
young, of course, does not go far while her
kits are little, and similarly a pair of otters,
travelling together, may be tempted to stay for a
while in or about any stretch of water which
affords fishing of the kind that suits their tastes ;
but, generally speaking, this animal recognises
neither border nor range. Its whole life consists
of one gigantic migration, which only old age
terminates. Beginning, perhaps, at the sea, it
works up the estuary of some chosen river, passing
huge cities by the way, where railways thunder

112 THE OTTER.

over the steel-girder bridges, and the lights of
'garret and basement' quiver far out on the oily
flood. How many tired-eyed Londoners whose
windows overlook the great Thames realise that
while they sleep this creature, the otter, usually
associated only with the rugged grandeur of High-
land burns or the silent, dew-spangled meadows of
the far-away, passes them almost nightly on its
way to a happier hunting-ground? Yet all the
otters of the upper Thames — and there are many —
have probably passed through the lights of London
at one time or another on their lifelong wanderings.
Away up the river they go, dallying only here
and there, till that which was once a mighty tidal
water, bearing the trading-vessels of many nations
upon its bosom, becomes a tiny trickling brook,
too shallow now to afford fishing and shelter for
the wanderer. The otter then leaves the water at
a chosen place, and makes the best of its way over
the watershed to the source of some neighbouring
river, which it follows to the sea.

SYSTEMATIC HABITS.

The otters have recognised runways by which
they pass from the head- waters of one river they
frequent over to the head- waters of the next, and
— just as it is said that if a bear crosses a certain
creek at a certain place, any bear following, even
ten years later, will cross at exactly the same
place — so the otters tread in each other's footsteps
generation after generation. Thus, if an otter
leaves the stream at a certain tree and begins to
make its way overland, it may be taken that every
succeeding otter will leave the water at the same
tree and make use of the same runway. In
Canada the professional trappers know the otter

' ."' • 'fl

» • >

., .v.

THE OTTER— 'LEAN DAYS.'
H

THE OTTER. 113

runways across the watersheds, and such knowledge
is carefully guarded, to be handed from father to
son or grandson, or whoever may succeed to the
trapping-range ; for an otter runway is a source
of unlimited supply, capable of yielding a definite
number of pelts each year.

The same applies to the otter landing-places.
They have certain recognised landing - stations,
probably flat boulders or shelving plateaux of
sand, which they frequent while fishing, making
use of no other. Having located one of these
landing-places, one can easily keep count of the
otters that pass, and if it be a sand-bank, it is
worth while washing out old prints in order to
keep trace of the new. A flat boulder of rock
at the head of a pool at a point at which the river
narrows and becomes too rapid for the animals to
negotiate is often chosen, and here the remains of
large trout that the otters have taken out of the
water are often to be found. I remember one
such landing-place on the river Wharfe which
told many a woeful story to passing anglers, and
which, incidentally, did the otters no great good
in that locality.

UNDERGROUND HABITS.

Lead -mining was once a flourishing industry
among the hills of the West Riding, and many
great mines existed in the heart of the lonely
moorland districts. The discovery of surface-lead
in Italy was, I believe, the chief factor that caused
their abandonment, and the great majority were shut
down within a year. Veritable hives of industry
some of these workings were, situated in desolate
and wind-swept regions ; now for forty years or
more they have been left to crumble into waste.

W.A. h

114 THE OTTER.

visited only by an occasional shepherd", and answer-
ing no more useful purpose than to shelter the horned
mountain-sheep from the upland gales, and to afford
roosting-places for countless thousands of starlings.
The birds arrive in flocks about dusk, filling the
air with their strange call-notes and chatterings,
and alighting among the ruins till every turret and
pinnacle is black with them.

There is a spirit of romance about these long-
abandoned sites, for each has its strange history
known only to the oldest village-folk. Many of
them had their own reservoirs, designed to feed
underground canals by which the ore was earned
out deep in the valleys, and to supply water for
the great washing-floors, which are still intact. In
the Bolton Abbey vicinity the bursting of one of
these dams one rainy night led to the inundation
of an entire mine, and to-day a few masses of water-
washed masonry lying in a quiet glen are all that
remain of a tragedy about which the outer world
never heard — men, women, and children being
drowned in their sleep by the sudden assault of a
mighty wall of water. In other localities feuds of
considerable bitterness arose between the imported
miners and the dalesmen, free fights occurring
everywhere ; and in one instance, in order to avenge
an imagined grievance, the miners stealthily raided
a village by night and stole the May-pole !

But though tradition lives on, the mines are
fast fading into the blue level of the landscapes,
and only the vast underground workings remain
intact. In many cases the mine -workings tap
natural corridors running for miles under the
moors, a labyrinth of underground rivers and
waterways, which in turn tap the ravines and
canons, thus laying open for the convenience of

THE OTTER. 115

the otters an underworld of dripping corridors by
which they can travel, unseen, far into the heart
of the moors.

To what extent do the otters use these subter-
ranean passages, the innermost secrets of which are
denied to all but themselves ? This is a question I
have tried hard to solve, and the evidence gathered
may be of interest. Otters have been known to
rear their young among the ruins of the lead-mines
close upon two miles, through the deepest heather,
from the nearest trout-bearing waters, and in the
midst of regions where food of the kind they
require must indeed have been scarce and hard to
get. Did the parent otters come and go by the
mine-workings ? If so, the whole vast underworld
of corridors must have been at their disposal.
Some of the underground rivers contain white,
wall-eyed trout, like the subterranean rivers of
Colorado — the offspring of imprisoned burn trout,
no doubt, which, by long confinement, have become
a well-defined underground species. The most
interesting item of evidence I have is that a shep-
herd, whose word could generally be relied upon
in such matters, told me that he was much mysti-
fied at the discovery of one of these fish lying on
a slab of masomy among the mine ruins fully a
mile from the nearest water. The fish was partly
eaten, and the work undoubtedly looked like that
of an otter. If so, the fact proves that the dark-
ness of those profound workings is no handicap to
this creature in its hunting ; and that being so, it
is reasonable to suppose that the otters breeding
among the mines obtain some, at any rate, of their
food from the subterranean streams and rivers.

There is no doubt that an otter losing its way
among these corridors might live for months, even

116 THE OTTER.

years, without seeing the daylight, for frogs and
lizards are plentiful here in addition to occasional
fish. It is further possible that, finding such
habitat to their liking, the otters frequenting these
workings might, generation by generation, become
more and more underground in their habits, and
less and less dependent on the open streams —
finally becoming a distinct species, like the white,
wall-eyed trout, or like the cave-snakes about
which we have read so much.

I have never heard of anything approaching a
species of underground otter, but such things may
exist — if not in this country, where it is only
recently that the workings of man have rendered
such a thing likely, at any rate in countries where
the conditions are more favourable, and where
man's knowledge of nature's doings is at the best
superficial.

SEA-OTTERS.

The 'sea-otter' is often spoken of as a larger beast
than, and a different species from, the river-otter,
but to the best of my knowledge this is not so.
There is only one sea-otter, surviving to-day on the
Asiatic and American shores of the Pacific coast.
It is a highly specialised animal, bearing a strong
resemblance to the seal. In this country there is
only one species of otter — Lutra vulgaris. The
commonly-spoken-of sea-otter is not a sea-otter
at all ; nor does that animal come within the scope
of this book. It is merely that an old and heavy
otter steers clear of the shallow waters of the river-
heads, limiting its hunting to the river estuaries
and the sea itself. Otter-hunters record that the
largest otters are always taken near the sea, and
on the rugged coasts of Scotland and the west of

THE OTTER. 117

Ireland many otters have the sea-caves as their
habitat, these beasts often being of immense size,
and capable of uttering many weird noises of their
own. They are merely old river-otters, which,
having outlived the restlessness of their youth with
its many perils, have taken to a more leisurely life
amidst their ocean fastnesses. ' Land-otters,' pass-
ing visitors, no doubt, occupy the same caves, and
many otters born by the sea seldom or never leave
it, and, thanks to an abundance of food, grow to a
great size. This, to my mind, explains the theory
of the big sea-otter. He is either an old otter
who has taken up permanent residence in the sea-
caves, or an otter that has grown to a great size
owing to abundant sea-food; and all spring from
the same stock.

Much sport can be had hunting these sea-otters
with dogs and shooting them with rifles as they
' emerge from the caves, their skins being valuable,
while they are certainly of no value to man in such
secure retreats, where they are never seen, and do
nothing to pay for the amount of fish they destroy.
It is best to obtain a good seaworthy boat, and
not to land, leaving the dogs to work the shore
while one waits with the rifles just beyond the
surf. A calm day and low tide are necessary ;
otherwise there is a great danger of striking a
submerged boulder, and a greater difficulty in
shooting. If the otters once see the men they
will not bolt from the caves, remaining and fight-
ing off the dogs ; but they are far more ready to
bolt from a white dog than from one that is dark
in colour. Incidentally one gets any amount of
other shooting thrown in ; and if a rifle is used for
the otters, a shot-gun also should be earned, as
often whole flocks of rock-doves emerge from the

118 THE OTTER.

caves, in which they breed, while seafaring wild-
duck of different species are not uncommonly met
with. The sport, combined with the grandeur of
the scenery, the wholesome air and exercise, and
the element of risk, makes a day of this kind
thoroughly worth while. While enjoying a day's
otter-hunting by the river as much as any one,
I must say that my sympathies are too much with
the otter on such occasions, and the nature of the
sport too cut-and-dried for it to compare for real
pleasure with the Bohemian element of an im-
promptu shore hunt. (See Wild Sports and
Natural History of the Highlands, by Charles
St John.)

HABITS ON LAND.

To deal further with the otter's recognised
migrating routes, the following account, apart from
numerous passing observations, goes in support of
what has been said. During one extraordinarily
severe cold snap, when even the most rapidly
flowing mountain-brooks were festooned and in
places partially blocked by fantastic ice-formations,
a moorland boy located the tracks of an otter fol-
lowing the course of a small mountain-brook in
the very wildest of regions at an altitude of 2000
feet or more above sea-level. The brook emptied
into a spacious tarn or loch, which, again, was
drained by a small tributary of the Wharfe. The
otter had evidently come, then, from the Wharfe,
followed the tributary to the tarn, and, fishing there
for a time, was now making his way up the brook
still farther into the heart of this No-Man's-Land.

There was a good tracking snow on the ground,
and it was interesting to note the animal's ma-
noeuvres. The brook was all but ice-bound, every

THE OTTER. 119

pool being frozen over except at the point where
the water, with the metallic ring of extreme cold,
tumbled into it. Accordingly the otter was com-
pelled to travel along the bank, but every now and
then he had dived into a pool, and invariably re-
turned with a fish. If there was no fish in the
pool — or 'dub,' as it would more expressively be
termed in that locality — then he had passed it by
with only a casual glance, and many of the most
promising pools he had treated in this way, taking
his fish from the least likely and least noticeable
places of harbourage. Evidently the animal was
able to tell in some mysterious manner whether or
not the tiny bay contained a lurking trout — and
this with the water covered with ice, upon which
rested a layer of snow, rendering it entirely opaque.
One can only judge that an angler's ' sixth sense '
guided him in his hunting — not an unlikely state
of affairs considering to what extent man himself,
who is but a casual visitor to the water at the best
(or worst) of times, and in no way dependent upon
it for his next meal, cultivates an instinctive know-
ledge as to the whereabouts of fish. Probably if
we thought less deeply and followed our instinctive
promptings without question, as the otter does, we
should be more successful in our angling.

For well over two miles the otter had followed
the burn, which then became so precipitous and
narrow as to bar the ascent of fish, and here the
animal had set out across the heather in the direc-
tion of the Nidd valley, evidently being intent on
striking some tributary of that river. The tracks
appeared very fresh, so out of curiosity the boy
still followed. What was his surprise when, cap-
ping the next ridge, he came right upon the otter
descending to the next burn !

120 THE OTTER.

Seeing the intruder, the animal turned, and for
fully ten seconds stared hard, as though on the
point of showing fight ; then he set off at his best
speed down the icy incline. Naturally the boy
pursued, keeping close up to him, and could have
killed him with his stick had he been so disposed.
The otter's manner of progress was very peculiar,
for, bounding awkwardly a few paces, he would
suddenly fling himself on his chest and belly, his
forepaws tucked limply under him, and giving
himself the necessary impulse with his hind-legs,
would slide quite a considerable distance, not
troubling to get up till he had actually come to
a standstill. Though the ground was in good con-
dition for tobogganing, he made but poor progress,
and seemed too much dismayed to be capable even
of selecting the favourable down-grades ; in fact,
one is inclined to think the poor animal was
dazzled by the whiteness of the snow, as the
sun was shining brilliantly. Finally, however,
he reached deep heather, and diving through the
frozen crust as he would have dived into water,
he disappeared from view, making his way out of
the danger-zone among the roots of the heather.

When the boy recounted his curious experience
that night by the kitchen-fire of the shepherd of
that locality, the man was much interested, saying
that he himself when quite a boy, over forty years
previously, had tracked an otter one winter up the
same burn, and that it had left the burn to make
its way across the watershed at the very point the
boy described !

WINTER. HABITS.

During long spells of frost otters are very apt
to become out of condition, but this applies only

THE OTTER. 121

to those inhabiting streams in which they are
solely dependent on trout for food. During ex-
treme cold snaps the healthy trout become torpid,
and lie hidden under the rocks at the river-bed
except when a gleam of sunshine calls them
forth, the only fish remaining within the otter's
reach being badly conditioned spawning fish, which
afford very little nourishment. At such times an
otter will become entirely diurnal in its habits,
fishing during the hours of the day when the light
is at its best, and when, presumably, it is attracted
forth by the healthy fish astir at that time only.
On one such occasion the river was frozen save for
a narrow channel down its centre, and the otter
could be seen swimming back and forth between
this channel and the ice-covered stretches. Some-
times it would come quite close to the village,
swimming and diving this way and that while
groups of interested villagers watched from the
highway above.

Hard pressed by hunger during a cold snap, an
otter has been known to venture far from its
beloved element in search of food. These animals
have even been found guilty of plundering hen-
roosts and invading rabbit-warrens. I believe also
that during such times they kill a fair number of
water-fowl, either by swimming beneath them and
dragging them under, or by surprising them in
cover. The otter referred to above formed the
habit, during the long cold snap, of hunting in
the wood that bordered the stretch of river it
chiefly frequented. In the centre of this wood,
about half a mile from the river, was a small, round
pond, amply screened by undergrowth, and here a
water-vole had taken up its winter home — seeking,
no doubt, security from the floods, while possibly

122 THE OTTER.

the presence of the otter in the river below had no
little to do with the isolation of the vole's chosen
sanctuary. Anyway, there it was, in a snug little
burrow having its exit below the ice-line of the
pool, and its entrance under a dense entangle-
ment of briar and dead bracken in the bank
above.

But alas for the most carefully laid plans of
mice and men ! True that it lived in immunity
from the flood, which never came, anyway ; but
one day, in visiting the pool, I found that the otter
had been there too. It had laid waste the bank
burrow, and evidently hunted the pool for the
vole, which had escaped by the back-way, but
whether or not its efforts had been crowned with
success I could not ascertain.

On the other hand, I have known water-voles
to live and have their families during the summer
months in parts of the river much frequented
by otters, and I doubt very much whether in
the ordinary way the attitude between otters and
voles is otherwise than one of alert neutrality.

To turn to a cognate topic for a moment : it is a
curious fact that in Canada the otters and the
beavers live on the most friendly terms ; in fact, the
otter is known to go out of its way in order to
share the habitat of the beaver. Where there are
beavers, trappers are fairly sure of finding an
otter or two ; and where there are no beavers,
the recognised way of drawing otters to the locality
of the traps is by the use of beaver castor. The
castor is generally placed on a stick just above
the trap, which is set near to one of the recognised
otter landings or slides.

In countries where the winters are consistently
severe, the otters do not appear to fare badly.

THE OTTER. 123

Adapting themselves to circumstances, they live
under the ice along the margins of the great
lakes, perhaps not appearing above the surface
for days on end. After the freeze-up the lakes
usually sink a little, owing to the sealing of the
creeks, with the result that along the shores and
surrounding the boulders shallow air-spaces are
formed, to which the otters resort to rest and
breathe. Sometimes, where the ice is clear of
snow, the otters in Canada are killed by the
Indians, who follow them about hither and
thither till they become exhausted. They are
then left to drown, and the ice is ultimately
broken ; or, alternatively, a steel spear is carried
in a hollow tube, and when a favourable oppor-
tunity occurs the tube is flung downwards, and
the spear, thus ejected, penetrates the ice and
impales the body of the unfortunate creature just
beneath. This is a method largely employed by
the Canadian Indians in hunting musquash.

A WILD OTTER IN CAPTIVITY.

When a boy of about fourteen, I one day watched
an otter enter a drain which, I knew, terminated
in the centre of a meadow. My first act was
securely to stop up both ends of the drain, then
run for the gamekeeper, who, like myself, had a
perfect mania for catching things alive. Having
heard my story, he produced a chicken-coop which
had the usual type of sliding door, and this we
fixed at one end of the drain, building it up so
that we could push down the door should the
otter prove sufficiently obliging to bolt into the
coop.

When all was ready, a small Welsh terrier,
whose real business was in the badger line, was

124 THE OTTER.

insinuated at the other end of the drain, while we
stood in expectancy by the coop. Sure enough,
scarcely two minutes had passed when something
entered the box, whereupon the door was jammed
home, and — we had our otter !

Just what we meant eventually to do with him
I cannot recall, but our first act was to convey
him to the keeper's wash-house, where, having
stopped up the drain in the centre of the floor,
we climbed to the sink, and from this place of
security cautiously opened the lid. The poor
captive lay flat on the bottom of the coop, re-
fusing to blink an eyelid, when the brilliant
notion occurred to us of flooding the floor of
the place, trusting that the otter would feel
more at home when surrounded by his familiar
element.

We pumped singly and together, and after
about half-an-hour's steady toil succeeded in cover-
ing the floor with an inch of water, whereupon
the otter slid cautiously out and began to investi-
gate. His mode of progress was much as described
in the pursuit across the snow. Lying flat on
his stomach, his forelegs tucked limply under
him, he propelled himself by spasmodic strokes
of the hind-paws, worming like a salmon into
the nooks and corners in search of a way of escape.
We spent a most interesting half-hour watching
him. 'But,' said the keeper, 'you wait till my
missus comes home and sees this mess ; then I
shall get otters ! '

We made the animal a prisoner for the night
in the yard, building a barricade of barrels,
weighted with large stones, closely around the
space containing him; but such was his strength
that he contrived to move two of the barrels

THE OTTER. 125

apart during the night, and next morning he
was gone 1

PLAYFULNESS.

When in danger an otter presses his throat
close to the ground, evidently for protection ; and
the habit of sliding is peculiar to this animal.
In regions where otters are abundant and un-
disturbed by man they have recognised sliding-
places, where a number of them unite for social
amusement. A high, steep bank at the water's
edge is chosen, preferably where the ground is
of clay formation. First of all, such obstacles as
stones and roots are removed from the selected
site. The otters then slide down the bank into
the water, several of them joining in the game,
their smooth, wet fur soon imparting a frictionless
surface to the clay, so that the game becomes
hotter and faster.

Normally, otters have abundant time for play,
spending hours together rolling and tumbling
in the water much as kittens play on dry land.
Indeed, they are among the most light-hearted and
peaceful of beasts, being much attached to one
another, and desirous of avoiding unpleasantness
of any kind.

Otters emerge into the open shortly after dusk,
which is their recognised feeding-time. For an
hour or so they are busy fishing, and the rest
of the night is spent in sportive gambols. An
otter comes to know every current and backwash
of its home-waters, and all these mighty forces
it moulds to its will. First swimming idly up-
stream, it then stretches itself luxuriously in the
central race, and drifting, drifting, is borne under
the stars — over the edge of the waterfall, down,

126 THE OTTER.

down, into the pounding surf — to be caught by the
eddies of the whirlpool and sucked into its very
vortex. Drifting limply, yet with every force at
its command, the otter plays such games when the
lights of the village are dimmed — when the mist-
wraiths beat against the alders, and the woods
resound with a creeping drip, drip, drip ! Rain
and wind detract not a jot from its joy of living ;
moonlight or starlight, its happiness is complete —
this creature that knows no enemy other than man
and his dogs, and for whom nature has provided
so liberally that it spends nine-tenths of its joyous
life in frolics.

AFFECTION.

When good fortune permits it, the otter remains
mated for life, though naturally many bonds are
severed by the activities of otter-hounds, &c.
The faithfulness of these animals to one another is
very strong, and in this connection a miller living
in Northamptonshire tells the following story.

One evening he heard an otter diving and
creating a great disturbance in a bed of rushes
at one corner of the mill-dam. As night fell
the animal appeared to become more and more
excited, snorting and calling, and making as much
noise as a horse in the water. This he kept up
all night, even disturbing the sleep of the house-
hold ; so next morning the miller went down to
ascertain, if he could, the cause of the disturbance.
Among some old logs behind the reed- bed he
found a dead bitch-otter. The poor animal had
evidently been creeping about among the logs,
when she disturbed the whole structure, bringing
a veritable avalanche on to her head, one of the
logs, which still imprisoned her body, killing her

THE OTTER. 127

instantly. The disturbance, then, had been caused
by her mate, who, refusing to leave her dead body,
had shown his grief in the manner described —
perhaps with the thought of keeping any intruder
from the spot till she came round.

If a bitch-otter is hunted by hounds when she
has cubs, she will not leave the vicinity of her
holt, though in all probability the youngsters are
gobbled up by the hounds early in the proceedings.
I remember an incident of this kind when a bitch-
otter tried every trick she knew to save her own
life and that of her kit's, keeping the hounds busy
for over an hour about the same fifty yards of river.
During the hunt I saw a big hound chewing up
something, which, by its tail, was unmistakably
an otter kit, and in the end the poor dam, quite
unconscious, floated to the surface like a wet rag,
to be snapped up by the nearest hound and
killed without so much as a kick.

Before she gave in this otter played every
trick known to her kind, and so well known to
every M.O.H. On one occasion she lay for ten
minutes under a thick scum of decayed reeds, only
her nostrils protruding through the scum, while
she herself was invisible beneath it. On another
occasion she rose under a bush which overhung
the water, and from the submerged branches of
which long streamers of weed and drift moved
with the current. She lay among these streamers,
moving in the same limp manner as they were
moved, and practically indistinguishable among
them. At times whole parties of men and women
stood within six feet of her, eagerly searching the
water ; but it was some minutes ere one sportsman,
more experienced than the rest, realised that that
dark, drifting thing was not a weed, but an otter !

128 THE OTTER.

The other man who had seen her at the first was
not there to betray her.

Again, driven from one hiding, she dived, and
remained below till her lungs gave out ; then,
drifting to the surface, she lay there, only her
nostrils exposed, while her poor tortured body
swung softly with the stream, for all the world
like an old water -logged garment — drifting in
this way, apparently at the mercy of the current,
till imperceptibly she drew near some other place
of refuge.

Otters cannot live long under water — certainly
not so long as most naturalists make out — two
minutes at the most ; and when hunted in this
way they generally creep out on to dry land when
exhausted, to remain at the mercy of hounds and
huntsman. This brave little mother, however,
kept to the water till she met her fate in the
way described — till a dozen lusty hounds and a
dozen lusty huntsmen swooped, with a triumphant
blast of brazen trumpets, on to her poor remains !

That was the end of the chase — that the crown-
ing glory 1 A beautiful wild creature tortured
out of existence, a wonderful fighting -machine
killed without a fight ! And yet how the blast
of the huntsman's horn brings a ribald flush to
the cheek, an eagerness to the footstep, and we
feel that we must be up and away — a crowd of
swarthy men and a pack of ugly hounds to torture
and destroy one small and lovely thing !

THE YOUNG.

The nest of the she-otter is commonly located
in a bank burrow, having its only entrance under
water or covered by the roots of timber. Usually
the kits number three ; two, or even one, are not

THE OTTER. 129

uncommon. Gestation occupies about sixty-one
days, and not more than one litter is produced
each year. The young are born blind, and remain
so for seventy or eighty days, being directly
dependent upon the milk of the dam for fourteen
or fifteen weeks. During this period the father
plays no part in their upbringing ; or, rather, he
plays a very important part indirectly, for, though
he never sees them, he looks well after the dam,
and is eternally on sentry -duty near the holt.
The young first see daylight at the age of about
eighty days, when, with the opening of their eyes,
the mother digs a dry-land exit from the burrow,
and encourages them to creep out into the moon-
light. They do not take naturally to a fish diet,
and it requires many patient lessons and much
persistent example on the mother's part to induce
each cub to swallow his first finny meal. Each
day thereafter the fish diet is increased and the
drain on the mother reduced. At the age of
about ninety days they are taken to the water.
At first they like it no better than so many
domestic kittens, and they have to be taught
lesson by lesson the art of swimming. One
youngster at a time is carried out into the pool on
its mother's back, and deposited there to fend for
itself. At this juncture the father begins to lend
a hand, the dam at last yielding to his burning
desire to sniff one of the tiny mites over, and
thereafter one or another drifts into his charge.

Their training is not hurried, [and many days
may elapse ere any of them can be induced to
follow their parents under the water. They are
taught that the otter who is prepared to dive is
rewarded by a delicious catch of miller's-thumbs
among the pebbles, and thus by easy stages,

W.A. I

130 THE OTTEE.

learning first to hunt the shallow water, they
acquire the arts on which their success in after-life
depends. By the time the kingly salmon reappear
they are as swift as the lightning-darting trout,
prepared to outmanoeuvre and outswim the fittest
and wisest of their quarry — to meet it on its own
ground and beat it at its own game.

Very often the she-otter locates her nest at some
distance from water, in which case it is abandoned
as soon as the young are old enough to leave it.

The incident I have quoted re an otter attacking
a dog may again be referred to. It was early
autumn when this occurred, and the tarn, situated
in the midst of a veritable No-Man's-Land of
desolation, was at least two miles from anything
in the way of a trout-brook. The patch of water
was not more than forty paces in width, much
overgrown with rushes, while the water itself was
stagnant and foul with weed. Certainly the pool
contained no fish of any kind, yet the ferocity of
the otter and the isolation of her retreat would
seem to indicate that she had her holt there.

Thus, her presence not being merely a chance
passing, she would be dependent upon land-
hunting till her kits had their eyes open, and
were strong enough to be taken to the river
and initiated into the great art of the waterways.

I have known otters to breed three-quarters of
a mile from the water's edge, but nesting activities
at a greater distance than this are probably rare.

YOUNG FEMALE OTTERS.

An aged angler who had made a lifelong study
of the otter's habits informed me that, whereas
the dog-kits of a family depart from the locality
of their birth probably the autumn succeeding that

THE OTTER. 131

event, the she-kits remain in the neighbourhood
for at least a year, and probably produce their own
first litter quite near to where they themselves
were born. The only evidence I have in support
of this theory, which I believe to be correct, is
that the otter referred to as hunting in the wood
during the extreme cold snap was a young she-
otter who, presumably, was one of the litter born
the previous spring somewhere among the loose
rocks at the river-side bordering her home. The
rest of the family had wandered off; she alone
remained ; and this supposition that the she-kits
remain resident in the locality of their birth may
account for the apparently resident but unmated
otters occasionally met with on certain stretches
of water.

At all events, the theory is interesting, and, if
true, there must be a very definite reason under-
lying it. Nature's motives may be obscure, but
behind each and every one of her peculiarities there
is a purpose. Even distribution of the species may
be at the root of the reluctance of the young
females to leave the region of their nursery-days.
If they departed with the rest, it is quite conceiv-
able that when the next mating season came the
ambitious young gentry of the species, journeying
upstream on their voyages of discovery, would
find the head-waters of this river and the next
untenanted by the female element, with the result
that they themselves would spend the season
unmated, and that certain stretches of river, in
every way suitable for nursery purposes, would
add nothing to the multiplication of the species.
In other words, if the she-kits remain, the distribu-
tion of the species is maintained within its original
bounds, and the young she-otter, who may lack

132 THE OTTER.

sound judgment of her own, is at any rate backed
by the experience of her parents as regards a
suitable locality for her first home. There the
knight-errant finds her ; there, or somewhere near,
little otters are again brought into the world ; and
in this way the otter population is maintained
more or less in accordance with the food-producing
properties of the chosen waters.

Other questions revolve around this point.
Does every adult otter visit the sea once a year
in order to obtain a change of scenery and diet ?
There is no particular reason why we should
believe it does, whereas there are certain facts
which seem to point in the opposite direction.
In the British Isles such peregrinations are not
impossible, but it is hardly reasonable to think
that otters found in, say, Canada, one or two
thousand miles by river from the nearest salt
water, ever so much as sniff the scent of the brine.
In certain parts of the North American continent
the otters undoubtedly follow the movements of
the migrating fish to some extent, in the same
manner as does the mammoth brown bear, and
that they make immense journeys cannot be
doubted ; but there are others, haunting waters
which the migrants do not reach, that restrict their
wanderings to a circuit of inland creeks, certainly
never visiting salt water till old age falls upon
them, when it is possible that, like the senile
caribou and the mammoth trout of the lakes,
they wander off into regions they have never seen
before.

I believe that in this country quite a large per-
centage of the otter population, particularly the
male element, wanders back and forth between
the sea and the head- waters of the rivers ; but the

THE OTTER. 133

condition of things in other lands proves that a
periodical change of diet in the way of sea-fish is
not essential in this animal's bill of fare, and there-
fore it can safely be assumed that the nomadic
habits of the species are not caused by necessity,
and many of them, no doubt, remain exclusively
in fresh water till old and heavy.

If change of diet is necessary for the otter's
well-being, it is found in the ordinary course of
inland travel. During the early spring, when the
courtship of the frog is at its height, many otters
leave their home-streams, and, guided doubtless by
their hearing, hunt the stagnant ponds in fields
and forests in search of frog communities. A pair
of otters will in a single night entirely deplete a
pool of its frog population, leaving the skins and
the eyes of the victims scattered broadcast every-
where. Their liking for frog amounts almost to
a mania, and I remember one ' frog pond,' at least
a mile from the river, that the M.O.H. always
insisted on drawing early in the day — very often
with profitable results.

TRAPPING.

If otters are to be trapped at all, it may as
well be done humanely, and the beaver set is the
most humane method I know. When a beaver
is trapped it instantly dives, and such is its
strength that, unless measures are taken to pre-
vent it, it will amputate its imprisoned limb. The
same applies to an otter, except that a trapped
otter is more likely to make for dry land than
for deep water.

Find one of the otter's landing-places at the
edge of a deep pool. Set the trap here, preferably
just under water, and cover it with soft mud. If

134 THE OTTER.

possible, the process should be carried out from a
boat, as the animal becomes very wary immedi-
ately on encountering the scent of man. Attach
the chain of the trap to a stake driven vertically
into a part of the bed below deep water. The
chain should have an iron ring, a loose fit over the
stake, at its extremity. The stake is trunnied (so
that the ring can slide freely down it), except for
two snags left near its pointed end. The first of
these snags is short, so that the ring will readily
slide over it, but the second is employed to pre-
vent the ring sliding off the end of the stake when,
at the close of the operations, the stake is pulled
up, in order that the trap may be retrieved.

Caught in the trap, the otter attempts to ascend
the bank, but, unable to do so, it makes for the
deep water. At this juncture the ring slides down
the stake and becomes hitched beneath the first
snag, so that the otter is unable to regain the
bank. The weight of the trap speedily pulls the
victim under, and it is drowned within a short time
of encountering the jaws. The dead otter is re-
trieved from the water by pulling up the stake,
which need not be very firmly driven in, the ring
hitching up on the bottom snag.

It need not be added that the occasions when
the trapping of an otter is in any way excusable
are few and far between.

FOOD.

Many a time has the otter been accused of
murders he has never committed ; and I remember
a farm-labourer killing one of these poor creatures
he found asleep on a tree-trunk because, he said,
they were worse than foxes for killing lambs.
That isolated cases are on record of the otter as a

THE OTTEK. 135

lamb-killer I do not doubt ; yet one can live in the
midst of otter country all one's life, seeing the
traces of their habits every day, and come across
no single instance of destructiveness to the pro-
perty of man. Fish are the otter's birthright,
and while it follows that where there are many
fish there are naturally many otters, it may be
asked, How can this be so if otters are so destruc-
tive to our fisheries? I know of certain small
lochs which are swarming with trout, and yet
which never harbour less than two otters ; and
the fact remains that fish maintain their numbers
so long as there are only otters to hunt them.

The fact of the matter is that otters do more
good to our fisheries than they do harm — firstly,
by destroying the eels, their favourite diet ; and,
secondly, by killing off the older generation of
trout. These trout, if not killed off, become
cannibals, each one of them destroying vast
numbers of the rising generation of its own kind.
The monster lies in the depth of the pool, never
rising to a fly, and doing nothing to warrant its
existence or to counterbalance the harm it does.
Nature can keep pace with the requirements of
the otter, and it is only when man steps in that
her whole balance is upset. I know certain lochs
which used to afford the most excellent fishing
when only a few of us and several otters fished
them ; but now that hatcheries have been set
up, restrictions laid down, and the otters driven
away, the fish have either become small and too
numerous, or large and given over to cannibalism,
so that the fishing, once excellent in its wild state,
is worthless in its new. Indeed, I am of the
opinion that if some of the carefully stocked and
preserved reservoirs of the south of England were

136 THE OTTER.

subjected to the activities of otters, the sport they
afford would be much improved.

Otters kill a goodly number of salmon on the
spawning-beds, eating only a small portion of the
fish they kill — sometimes taking only one bite
from the back of the salmon's head, and leaving
the rest of the carcass to drift away ; so that many
an old Highland woman, who knows where to
look, keeps herself abundantly supplied with
salmon while they run, thanks to the activities
of the otters.

So long as there are eels to be had, however, an
otter will disturb neither trout nor salmon, first
ridding the water of these vermin ; and so far as
otters disturbing the water goes, I have seen
trout rising freely in a pool while an otter was
hunting all around them.

One hears the otter accused of robbing the nests
of game-birds after killing the brooding mother ;
but I simply do not believe such stories, for the
reason that I have repeatedly known water-fowl
successfully to rear their broods among the rushes
of lochs where otters were to be seen or heard
nightly, making use of the tracks the birds them-
selves used. The fact of the matter is that the
otter can more than supply its needs by the
natural procedure of fishing, and only in very
exceptional circumstances does it trouble to seek
a change of diet, such as when the folly of the
moorhen proves too tempting to resist, or during
the frog harvest. Practically the only exception
I myself have come across has been in the otter-
killing gulls that roost on the mud-banks of rivers
near the sea. An otter, coming up from the sea,
may conceivably have struck very bad fishing, in
which case it is not surprising that he is attracted

THE OTTER. 137

by the crowds of -white gulls roosting full in his
course of travel.

Let those who find pleasure in the otter-hunt
continue to do so, by all means. Sport is a natural
asset to the country, and the healthy outdoor
variety needs to be encouraged in every way ;
but there is positively no need for otter- hunting
enthusiasts, backed by the daily press, to court
popularity and support by emphasising the pastime
as a boon to our fisheries and a necessity from the
point of view of the angler. Such a course is un-
fair to the otter, and incidentally, by giving the
animal a bad name, does not improve the hunting.
How many otters are shot and trapped annually
owing to the bad repute in which they stand ?
Remove all ignorance on the subject, let the otter
multiply within reasonable limits, and there will
be better hunting and, I believe, better fishing.

I have fished side by side with otters night
after night. I have never known the fishing to
deteriorate one jot owing to their presence. It is
the tyro in waders, who wades where he should
fish, and fishes for the most part in the trees, who
spoils water. The expert angler who takes, prob-
ably, ten times the number of fish does no per-
ceptible harm ; and the otter stands out as facile
princeps among all experts.

LENGTH OF LIFE.

What is the span of life allotted to the otter ?
Probably it lives longer than a dog, but not so
long as a badger. Its slow rate of maturity would
seem to argue long life, but I have never heard of
one of these creatures living in captivity for any
lengthy period. The only captive otter I knew
died in its ninth year. Death seemed to be from

138 THE OTTER.

some natural cause, yet in its latter days there
were no signs of senile decline. A large dog-otter
shot in the Wharfe showed signs of considerably
advanced years. His mask was almost white ; one
of his corner-teeth was broken ; his eyes bore
evidence of declining sight. With only guess-
work to go on, I should say that sixteen years
is the average life of this creature, and at eighteen
years senile decay is far advanced.

WEIGHT AND SIZE.

What was considered a record otter, killed in
Kirkcudbrightshire, on the Dee, in the winter of
1918, weighed 42 Ib. ; 18-22 Ib. appear to be the
average weights killed inland by hounds. In the
' Kenmure Arms,' New Galloway, there is a stuffed
otter that must scale fully 45 Ib. The tip-to-tip
measurement is generally about 42 inches ; tail,
16 inches.

THE PINE-MARTEN.

THIS beautiful and graceful creature is now so
rare that to most people it exists only as a
name on the list of our British Fauna. It can
still be said to inhabit north Devon, Yorkshire,
Cumberland, and Durham, but in all these Eng-
lish counties its occurrence is such a rarity that
when one falls foul of the gunner, the event is
considered worthy of wide comment in the press.
In the north and west of Ireland, the Highlands
of Scotland, and the wilder parts of Wales it is a
little more plentiful ; but it is to be feared that the
depredations of this active little weasel must ere
long lead to its final extermination. Indeed, if
the marten is to keep its place among the wild-folk
of our woods, its protection should be made as
thorough in this country as is that of the osprey ;
for, considering its rarity, the era is long since past
when the pine-marten could justly be persecuted
on account of its destructiveness. The obstacle in
the way of its preservation is, of course, the diffi-
culty of inducing any game-preserver to realise, when
his preserves are subjected to the ravages of such
a visitor, that he is under an obligation patiently
to endure such things solely with the end in view
of establishing an undesirable strain. Many game-
preservers can think no further than the creatures
they are out to preserve, and this being so, it is of
little use appealing to their sympathies for the
protection of those ' undesirables ' that are border-
ing upon extinction. Their extermination is just
what the average game-preserver — or, perhaps more
justly, the average gamekeeper — wishes to see,

140 THE PINE-MARTEN.

and since the matter is in his hands, little can be
done. Legislative protection only leads to secret
kilh'ng, though it is of value in so far as many
gamekeepers are not without their enemies, who,
as a rule, are pretty well ' in the know ; ' but even
so, the activities of rural police are not generally
unbiassed by personal considerations, which far out-
weigh their interest in the fauna of the land. The
buzzard and the peregrine are on the schedule of
protected birds, yet during a recent spring Scottish
and Cumbrian gamekeepers made no secret of
their destruction ; and of two buzzards' nests, one
peregrine's, and two ravens' the writer had under
observation, the young were in each case destroyed
or the old birds shot with the connivance of the
local police. One cannot blame the gamekeepers
for such activities, for, after all, the preservation of
game is their business and the means whereby they
live ; one can only regret their lack of discrimina-
tion in killing such birds as the buzzard and the
raven, and hope that some day tenants and estate
owners will fall into line with the true sporting
gentry of the country, who make the protection of
rare beasts and birds a matter of personal interest.
'Like master, like man,' is never so true as when
applied to those occupied in the preserving of
game, for gamekeepers are, as a rule, a highly loyal
fraternity, readily adapting their views to those
of their employers, and the keeper who is told to
preserve such creatures as he would normally dub
vermin will do so with a solicitude just as eager as
that which he extends towards his game-birds.

Legislation is effective, then, only up to a certain
point, but it cannot prevent the extermination of
such creatures as the pine-marten and the peregrine
— whose preservation is a matter purely of senti-

THE PINE-MARTEN. 141

ment — unless backed by intelligent interest. The
matter lies in the hands of shooting tenants and
landed proprietors, and more harm than good
generally results from over-zeal on the part of the
nature-lover. It has become customary for natu-
ralists to plead the cause of the birds and the beasts
they wish to see protected by under-estimating the
amount of harm they do, and by putting forth
sentimental claims which merely irritate the man
who knows. Accurate reports, backed by authentic
figures, are far more likely to yield the desired re-
sults ; and while admitting the regrettable activities
of such birds and beasts, we can at least base the
plea for their preservation on the fact that their
rarity reduces the actual damage they do to a
point far below that done by more plentiful
creatures. The latter may, on account of their
very commonness, escape systematic persecution.
The keeper who destroys a dozen gray rats living
within his preserves, or who shoots three crows or
magpies during his weekly round, has attained
results more beneficial to his interests than he
would have attained by shooting one peregrine,
or half-a-dozen ravens and buzzards.

While it must be admitted that the pine-marten
has few characteristics to excite our love and
sympathy, it should nevertheless be preserved —
firstly, on account of its rarity ; and, secondly, on
account of its unsurpassed beauty as a creature
of the trees. In forests that are given over to
the production of timber rather than the pro-
duction of game-birds the presence of the marten
is undoubtedly beneficial to man, as it keeps
down the squirrel and rabbit population, and is in
no way harmful to young forests. The problem
as to whether or not it would actually pay

THE PINE-MARTEN.

its way from the gamekeeper's point of view is
by no means an easily decided one. True, the
marten may destroy pheasant-nests, chicks, and
even the old birds ; but the question arises as to
whether it would do more harm in this way than
the numerous squirrels, gray rats, stoats, &c. that
it ousts. In this way nature usually strikes a
balance to prevent the extermination of any one
species, the presence of a large killer bringing
about the removal of many smaller killers, the
total of whose depredations would be at least equal
to its own — a fact which is very easily lost sight
of, especially when the traces of the murderer are on
every side and the evidence in its favour is purely
a matter of conjecture. It must be borne in mind,
furthermore, that the pine-marten is a creature of
the trees, and far less likely to destroy the nests
of ground-birds than are stoats and weasels. Tree-
birds of all kinds, from hawks and ringdoves to
the smallest songsters, are its natural prey, and
its cleverness in circumventing them is largely
due to its knowledge as to the whereabouts of
their favourite perches. It will lie invisible in the
crotch of a tree, and the very instant a bird alights
near — while, indeed, the unfortunate victim is
absorbed in gaining a footing — the marten darts
forth like a streak of light and clinches the matter.
The trouble with the marten is that there is
never any telling what it will do next. For a time
it may occupy its allotted range without com-
mitting any grave offence ; then suddenly one
night it sallies forth and commits some unspeak-
able crime sufficient to raise the whole country-
side in arms. For this reason I do not see the
feasibility of cultivating martens as an ornament
to our suburban parks, as advocated by one

THE PINE-MARTEN. 143

prominent naturalist, for it is easily conceivable
that a brace of these picturesque little cut-throats,
enjoying the liberty of, say, Hyde Park, would
establish a highly successful business among the
duck community for so long as it was permitted
to last.

DESCRIPTION.

The pine -marten is a beautiful tree -weasel,
possessing the gifts of all the musk-bearing fra-
ternity to which it belongs, together with several
unique accomplishments of its own. It does not,
however, secrete musk ; in fact, while a weasel in
spirit, and of the pukka fighting breed, it seems
to have been shorn by nature of the repulsive
features most conspicuous in the land-weasels—
the polecat, the skunk, the mink, the fisher, and
the two smaller members of the family resident in
this country. It is so large and formidable a beast
that it has no wild enemies on British soil ; while
all, excepting the fox, the badger, and the otter,
probably come within the scope of its destructive
powers. Even wild deer enjoy no immunity from
the marten cat, for the tiny mottled fawn, lying
among the leaves, has been known to fall to it.
It will, moreover, dispute the right-of-way with
any wildling of our woods, and has been known
vigorously to pursue a fox out of its home-range.

The exquisite sable is a marten, though in this
country the marten's fur is not of great value. In
general colour the creature is chocolate-brown,
the longer hairs being richly glistened with sepia
and umber. The under-fur is squirrel-red ; the
paws are generally black ; and the tail is long and
bushy. The hall-mark of the marten is, however,
its flaming orange breast, touched with lighter

144 THE PINE-MAIITEN.

shades towards the sides. Sometimes, but rarely,
the breast is pure white.

SIZE.

The tip-to-tip length of adult specimens is gener-
ally about 22 inches, the tail being from 9 to 12
inches.

The marten differs from the true weasels, among
other points, in possessing four pairs of premolars
in each jaw, while they possess only three.

IN CAPTIVITY.

In a small town in the Vosges which served as
a base-hospital during the war, there lived a tame
(beech) marten which afforded me many an hour's
happy diversion during brief spells of alleged
' rest ' from the line. The town was subjected to
shell-fire almost daily, and aircraft usually helped
to enliven the hours of darkness; in fact, the
condition of things became so bad that there
eventually followed an almost complete trek of the
civilian population to healthier quarters. This
meant the departure of the marten's mistress, duly
succeeded by an influx of American soldiers, each
intent on occupying in the little captive's heart the
place previously held by that lady. Bread, nuts,
biscuits, cheese, and chewing-gum littered the cage
in unsavoury confusion ; but whether these atten-
tions or the shell-fire were responsible, the marten
became so fierce and distrustful in disposition that
it was the height of folly to attempt any liberties.

I was told that before the war this creature was
as gentle and lovable as a kitten, curling itself
round the woman's neck in poses of affection, and
spending hours gambolling on the veranda and
about the eaves while she sat at her sewing. It

THE PINE-MARTEN'S LAST LEAP,
j

THE PINE-MARTEN. 145

was said to be seventeen years of age ; and the son
of the house, who was aged twenty-one, told me
that he could remember its existence in the yard
for so long as he could remember anything. This
fact would appear to indicate that the pine-marten
is a long-lived creature, albeit the most active and
restless of all the wild beasts with which this book
deals.

The cage which held the captive was about six
feet high, three feet wide, and nine feet long, and
the antics it performed in this confined space were
truly marvellous. Choosing a quiet time, and sit-
ting at some little distance, so as not to excite
the animal's interest, I have watched it for minutes
on end looping the loop round its cage at a speed
which made one giddy and bewildered to behold.
It would mount the wire-netting on one side at
a speed which carried it, back downwards, across
the narrow span of corrugated iron roof, obtain
fresh impetus as it descended the opposite wall,
head down, to tap the floor, and bound up the
wire again so lightly that the movements of its
paws were scarcely audible. It was more like
some accurate machine on frictionless wheels than
a living creature of flesh and blood. Occasion-
ally it would vary the programme by lengthen-
ing the loop, mounting the wire, and descending
the wall at an angle from the perpendicular. It
must have run miles in this manner every day, and
except for the very natural sense of pity one felt
for so active a thing in confinement, its evolutions
were certainly a joy and a wonder to behold.

Even in this way a captive specimen, with a
warm bed and all the food it required at hand,
obtained less exercise than was necessary for its
perfect health ; so one can readily imagine that a

W.A. j

146 THE PINE-MARTEN.

wild marten, hunting for its living and with all
the great woods at its disposal, would hardly prove
a sluggard.

The only wild marten I have been fortunate
enough to see in a natural state lived in some
low crags in the heart of a beech-wood in a
secluded West Riding valley. I saw it on two
occasions, and each time its behaviour was
identical. As I silently approached the foot of
the crags it darted from a cranny somewhere
among the heather and ferns at the brow of the
cliff, and ran up the slanting trunk of a blasted
mountain-ash growing from a shelf. Here it
crouched, tilting its head first on one side, then
on the other, as it regarded me with an air of
playful innocence. One could not but be struck
by its exquisite beauty — a picture, indeed, amidst
its rugged setting ; yet in those bright eyes was a
hint, the merest hint, of the devilish brain which
commanded that death-darting body. After a
few seconds of closest scrutiny it descended the
trunk a little, as though to obtain a better view ;
then, like a flash, it was gone.

This was the only specimen I ever knew to
exist in the secluded dales of the West Riding,
and the marten seems now to have departed even
from the wilds of Wigtownshire and Kirkcud-
brightshire. Seton, however, in dealing with the
Canadian species, comments specially on the
marten's powers of avoiding detection. While in
northern Ontario we used regularly to take
marten in steel traps and dead-falls, but I have
never seen a wild one in those woods ; neither have
I met any white man who has. I remember
a correspondence in Rod and Gun in Canada
some years ago, following an article the writer of

THE PINE-MARTEN. 147

which alluded to the various martens he had seen,
in which one trapper stated that, though he had
lived in marten country all his life, and took as a
rule seventy or eighty marten-pelts in his traps
each winter, he had during his whole experience
seen only three wild martens at large in the
timber 1 It is possible, therefore, that this beast is
not so rare as is generally thought, and that where
it exists its presence may be unknown even to
the oldest woodsmen. Seton comments also on
the animal's preference for dense timber, and on
its habit of retreating to more remote cover, never
to return, on being disturbed by man ; and if
this be so in the wilds of Canada, where most
animals are utterly fearless of man, owing to their
ignorance of his ways, it would certainly apply with
far greater strength to the wild martens of our
own woods, where man is a much more potent
enemy than in a bush country. Among most of
our northern hills vast coniferous forests clothe
the mountain-sides over great areas, forest adjoin-
ing forest, and here occasional martens might live
unknown to man, the indications of their work
being taken for those of stoat or weasel.

FOOD.

Mice, birds, squirrels, rabbits, hares, rats, berries,
fish, lambs, and occasionally poultry, are, in the
order given, the pine-marten's special fare. As
the otter has specialised as a water-weasel and
become a past-master in the art of swimming,
so the pine-marten has developed the art of climb-
ing to such a standard of skill that it can truly
be described as the weasel of the trees. Like the
otter, the marten is a creature of exceptional gifts ;
but whereas the first named is of a loving and

148 THE PINE-MARTEN.

sociable disposition, the pine-marten is fierce and
solitary, avoiding its own kind at all times except
during the mating season.

All the weasels are notorious for their reckless
bravery, which often outruns sound judgment,
and the marten is by no means an exception. It
is both nocturnal and diurnal in its habits ; in-
deed, like the otter, it is one of those creatures
which seem never to rest. Probably it curls up
in some sunny or sheltered spot after a meal,
and when the meal is digested, an hour or so
later, sallies forth again on its lifelong pathway
of destruction.

Martens have been known boldly to raid heron-
ries, attacking the young birds in their nests,
forthwith to be themselves attacked by a croaking,
gasping, screeching army of bayonet-armed de-
fenders! Herons readily unite to help members
of their own clan, and the marten that failed to
make himself scarce when the massed attack
descended would have a very thin chance of
getting to earth alive. This animal has been
known to fall upon a nesting ringdove, shattering
the life out of the brooding bird ere she had time
to know what manner of death had descended
upon her ; in fact, any birds that nest in trees,
barring, perhaps, the larger owls, are subject to
the attacks of this gifted little climber.

The squirrel is no sluggard in the branches, yet
compared with the marten it is an indifferent
climber. In hunting squirrels the marten is at
a disadvantage at the outset, for, being a heavier
animal, it must leap sooner and alight later in
passing from tree to tree ; it cannot run to the
extreme end of the slender branches as does the
squirrel, and so must take much longer leaps at

THE PINE-MARTEN. 149

every turn of the chase. Well the squirrel knows
this, and tries to profit thereby, seeking the slen-
derest branches and making the longest leaps ; yet
its chances of escape are as good as nil from the out-
set. Its stronger and more agile foe is its superior
in both speed and distance, and a short run, generally
tending earthwards, usually suffices to bring the
little drama to a close. The squirrel is caught
and killed instantly, then speedily borne off to
some fork high up in the timber, where its remains
are left to bleach.

Very often, however, in the lightning fury of the
chase, the marten miscalculates its own abilities,
and if there is no undergrowth to break its fall,
it may be crippled or even killed on striking the
earth below. Martens have been found lying dead
owing to a fall of this kind, and in the slender
likelihood of such a mishap lies the squirrel's only
chance of escape.

In the Highlands at one time a good many
lambs were killed by martens, and the little
murderers have been known so to mangle the
faces of the defending ewes that, but for man's
merciful intervention, a lingering death would
inevitably have followed the injuries.

As a raider of hen-roosts the marten is a very
occasional offender, save in those localities where it
may have become more or less indifferent to the close
proximity of man, and in these its raids are common.
A half-tame animal is at any time calculated to
be infinitely more destructive to man's property
than a truly wild one ; and whereas a wild marten
characteristically steers clear of all human habita-
tion, seeking the most lonely glens and corries, a
marten educated out of this highly desirable
characteristic will very readily attack hens, ducks,

150 THE PINE -MARTEN.

geese, turkeys, even cats — anything that suggests
a meal and a lively exchange of civilities. At the
same time, it is not entirely unknown for a wild
marten to enter a Canadian trading-post and steal
dried fish or other such stores, intended as, though
not really fit for, woodsmen's food. Indeed, I
heard once of a marten which was caught in a
store-room owing to its inquisitive investigation
of a patent trap lying on the bench for demon-
stration purposes, and this at no great distance
from Toronto city.

The marten will pursue hares and rabbits in just
the same manner as does a stoat, and in the case
of a well-seasoned hare the chase is often of con-
siderable length. This may be owing to the fact
that the pine-marten is scentless, and therefore
incapable of exercising upon the fugitive the
same hypnotic effect as do its musk-tainted
relatives. (It cannot be doubted that the stink of
stoat or weasel is as fear-inspiring to its normal
prey as is the very sight of the beast itself, for
many animals well able to defend themselves, such
as foxes and cats, will turn away in fear from that
ominous taint.)

The pine-marten is an expert swimmer, and has
been known to live by hunting such creatures as
musk-rats and beavers, so no doubt it just as readily
hunts water-voles and gray rats, whose swimming
powers would not suffice to save them from it. In
common with its near relative, the fisher — which,
by the way, does practically everything except fish
— the marten can be said to hunt for fish only in
so far as it will attack partially stranded speci-
mens, lying in such shallow water that they are
unable to escape ; though one or two authorities
hold that this animal will systematically work

THE PINE-MARTEN. 151

a stream, as does a cat, while the trout are
running.

Berries the marten eats readily, but probably
more by way of medicine than as a staple article
of diet ; and, so far as I know, this is the only
exception to an otherwise strictly carnivorous fare.
If facts were obtainable, I believe we should find
that all our four-footed, warm-blooded carnivores
eat berries to a greater or less degree. From the
evidence afforded by the captive (beech) marten
in France, I should say that the marten, in spite
of its squirrel-like form, strictly eschews anything
in the way of nuts.

MATING.

During my early studies of this animal I was
of the opinion that at any rate it observed the laws
of propriety and decency so far as its marriage
customs were concerned — that, indeed, the marten
was strictly monogamous, and that both parents
shared in the upbringing of their young. The
occasional newspaper reports that ' two martens
were shot at So-and-so' were probably respon-
sible for this belief, together with the fact that I
had often heard Highland keepers state that, one
marten having been shot, it was usual to find
' the other ' somewhere near. Unless, however,
the British marten differs widely from its Canadian
cousin in this one respect, and unless the habits of
caged martens serve as no criterion for the customs
of free specimens, the marten is totally despicable
in its mating habits. In this respect, if in this
respect only, its habits indicate a lower standard
of sexual morality than that of the common stoat ;
for in the wild the attainment of a higher standard
usually begins with the observance of marriage-

152 THE PINE-MARTEN.

bonds and some sense of tenderness on the father's
part towards the young.

Seton says that after the young are born, the
less they see of their cut-throat sire the better.
He also says that no two martens have ever been
known to meet with feelings other than those of
deadly enmity. It is probable, then, that the
' mated ' couples run together only for a short
time, and that thereafter, though their respective
home-ranges may not be far apart, they do not
associate as mated couples. This would account
for their distribution being usually in pairs, while
at the same time supporting the probable fact
that a marten is a marten the world over, whether
caged or free.

Wild British martens kept in captivity behave
in just the same way as do those on the fur-
farms in Canada. The big cage system, in which
a number of martens are allowed to run together
in a large confined space, has never yet proved
possible. This is owing to the fact that the
member of the clan who is strong enough to kill
all the rest cheerfully proceeds to do so — or, rather,
he kills the survivors of the general melee with
which the social intercourse begins. In this way
a cage of promising martens has been reduced
to one tattered and moth-eaten specimen when
the man came next morning with food for a
dozen — a somewhat expensive process, by which,
nevertheless, a very fit strain can speedily be
arrived at !

Thus fur-farmers, having found that the big
cage system merely resulted in providing amuse-
ment for one solitary specimen, soon tried the
separate cage method, which is to-day yielding
good results. Marten -farming, however, is not

THE PINE-MARTEN. 153

likely to prove widely profitable, as owing to the
disposition of the marten its rearing is somewhat
precarious. Overfeeding leads to infertility, and
a large cage must be employed for each individual
specimen ; otherwise the beast suffers from lack of
exercise. The violence of the males is, however,
the chief difficulty and the most common cause of
loss. The cage of the female must be provided
with shelters into which she can retreat in order to
escape her lord, though even when every provision
is made in this way the female is apt to be killed
by the male's long corner-teeth penetrating her
brain.

It is probable that in a wild state such mortality
does not occur. It is as unjust to judge the
characters of wild creatures from examples afforded
by their less fortunate kindred kept in captivity,
as it would be to attempt to gauge the character
of man by a study of prisoners in solitary confine-
ment ; and particularly as concerns the mating and
breeding habits of animals does captivity upset the
natural order of things. How can they be natural
when everything that nature gave them as a birth-
right is taken away ? And we can only hope that
a more intimate knowledge of the marten of our
woods will finally dispel many of the evil charges
which experience with his captive kin has caused
to be brought against him.

THE YOUNG.

The wild marten usually adapts a bird's nest as
a nursery for its young, though it may choose a
hollow tree or a crevice among boulders, in the
latter case loosely constructing a nest of grass and
moss.

Gestation lasts about ninety days, very consider-

154 THE PINE -MARTEN.

ably longer than with the otter and the polecat ;
but whereas the young of the otter are blind for
three months or more, the young martens receive
their sight at the end of four weeks. In other
words, dating from the day of the parents' mating,
young otters reach that stage of development when
their eyes open at the end of about 150 days, and
young martens at the end of 120 days. When
they are about six weeks old the parent marten
begins to take meat to her offspring, and by about
the end of the seventh week they first leave the
nest. They are full-grown at six months.

The number of young per litter ranges from two
to five. Three is the usual number, and occasion-
ally as many as seven occur. Sir Harry Johnston
thinks it probable that two litters per season are
born ; but in view of the fact that the first litter
must occupy the mother well on into the summer,
this would seem rather an open question.

It is probable that the young begin to breed the
spring succeeding their birth ; so, considering their
longevity, martens cannot be said to be unprolific
creatures.

FIGHTING.

The marten has not developed its climbing-
powers at the expense of its powers of running.
On the ground it is considerably the fastest of
all the weasels. A boy of twelve can easily out-
run a stoat on open ground, while an otter is
comparatively helpless if surprised far from its
beloved element. A marten, on the other hand,
can hold its own over a short distance against a
normal sheep-dog. True, it will tree-up at the
first possible opportunity, or seek refuge among
the rocks ; but nevertheless it will probably escape

THE PINE-MARTEN. 155

the dogs unless the run be a long one. The
marten is a past-master in keeping up a running
fight, and will punish an inexperienced dog severely
at every effort made to close.

A Canadian trapper wrote me some time ago
on this animal's tenacity of life when trapped :
' Mink and marten live longer than any other fur-
bearers we get out here when held in a trap. I
have known a marten to live two days, and then
to face you with a most diabolical fear and ferocity
when you went up to it. Skunk and otter die
fairly soon comparatively, but the mink and the
marten seem impervious to cold, and will linger
on indefinitely. For this reason we usually set
our traps on a log elevated from the ground, so
that when the animal is caught it falls off and is
suspended. They die much sooner this way, and
are not so likely to escape maimed. I think the
Indian dead -fall is the best for these tenacious
animals.'

He continues : ' You ask me about the food
of the marten. In summer, I reckon they eat
pretty nearly anything they can catch, barring
black-bear and moose. In winter, God knows what
they eat up in this country [Mattagami River],
but the Indians say that the number of martens
depends on the number of snowshoes [snowshoe
rabbits], which would seem to indicate that rabbits
are their staple diet. I asked Joe Long [Indian
chief] what you asked about whether marten ever
kill porcupines like fishers do, but he said he
had never heard tell of it We generally use
partridge [spruce partridge] meat for marten,
though they will come for any raw, bloody meat,
the same as a skunk — something with feathers
on it preferred. Of course, where birds are plenti-

156 THE PINE-MARTEN.

ful the martens kill a fair number in the trees
and in the drifts. I don't reckon they suffer
hunger anyway.'

STORAGE.

Martens, like weasels and stoats, store food
during times of superabundance, but the storage
habit is not so strongly developed in them as
in the common weasel. The marten leaves what
it does not want, and may return for it later if
there is no more killing to be done. The creature
will leave a partly devoured bird resting in the
fork of a tree, and there it may remain for some
days, conspicuous as it moves in the breeze, till
eventually the destroyer happens to pass that
way again.

INQUISITIVENESS.

The marten's hankering to learn and to know
is a characteristic by which hunters are often
able to profit. The unaccustomed sound of an
axe is calculated to bring any marten hearing
it to the ' spot, to peer through the leaves in
eager inquiry, then to dart off to the uttermost
corner of the forest on having satisfied its curiosity.
Any unwonted sound has the same effect, and a
trick sometimes practised by keepers is to remain
perfectly still, making at intervals the grouse-call
by sucking between closed lips through the stem
of a pipe. The marten will then come quite near,
moving from point to point in search of a better
view, and a quick shot probably puts an end to
the little creature's craving to see and to know.
In the same way it is sure to be attracted by
anything moving which it does not immediately
recognise, and a common method of trapping it is

THE PINE-MARTEN. 157

to use as a lure some conspicuous object, such as
the wing of a partridge, so placed that the bait
moves from side to side as the wind blows. A
marten will always go for a moving bait even
though he is suspicious of it, and such a set
generally yields good results, as the animal is not
likely to escape seeing it.

SEASIDE HABITS.

More especially along the west coast of Ireland
martens regularly become attached to the sea-
cliffs, making their homes in the rocky fastnesses,
and seldom or never venturing inland. They
become almost a cragland species, and, owing to
the constant abundance of food, are apt to grow
into finer specimens than those inhabiting inland
forests.

Naturally the marten is thoroughly at home
among sea-cliffs, and a vast variety of food is
always at hand. Rabbits are generally abundant
among the crags, shore-scavenging rats exist in
thousands in many parts, and countless numbers
of wild-fowl throng the ledges. These seaside
dwellers are said also to quarter the sea-shore in
search of shell-fish or any stranded sea-life washed
up by the tide.

Probably the day is not far distant when the
marten will no longer exist as a creature of our
woods, but long after that day has dawned it
will continue to hold its own here and there along
the coast-crags. It is not likely to be exterminated
on the west coast of Ireland for many decades to
come, for among those wild and inaccessible crags
it is practically secure from man's destruction.
The only trouble is that a little' marten goes a
long way — by which is meant that, since they are

158 THE PINE-MARTEN.

not sociable beasts, two martens for every mile of
coast would be a comparatively dense population,
and the rising generations that could not claim
and hold a hunting-range along the crags would,
perforce, have to travel inland in search of their
fortunes. So, when the day comes that it can
truly be written, 'The marten no longer exists
except here and there among the inaccessible
crags of the west coast of Ireland,' then the
marten will indeed be a rare animal, exterminated
in so far as it is possible for man to bring about
its extermination.

Is the marten doomed to become extinct ? In
Ireland, no ; but in Great Britain it is most assuredly
following the beaver and the wild cat. Our chil-
dren's children will probably read with regret
that 'what is considered to be the last pair of
wild martens existing in the Highlands,' &c. The
shrinkage of its home-range during the last few
years has proceeded rapidly. So far as I can
ascertain, it is eight years since the last pine-marten
was shot in Wigtownshire, where once it was
abundant; while it is entirely gone from Kirk-
cudbrightshire and Dumfriesshire, where it is a
creature unknown to the present generation of
gamekeepers, though comparatively familiar to
their fathers. The marten can be said, therefore,
to have gone entirely from the Scottish Lowlands,
or, at any rate, to have become so scarce as to be
undetected. In the Highlands its range is slowly
gathering in on every side. In England it can
only just be said to exist.

Why preserve the marten ? Why preserve any
other gem of nature or of art ? If there is anything
at once tragic and pathetic in the ways of Dame
Nature, it is that she should have presented this

THE PINE -MARTEN. 159

least lovable of all our fur-clad fauna in the most
lovely form. The beauty of the marten is in its
quickness, its restlessness, its darting, animated
poses — in its very life. Take that life away, and
there is left but a piece of carrion, no more beauti-
ful than a paper rose. A dead marten is an object
from which we shrink, knowing it to have been a
bloodthirsty and cruel thing; but to have seen a
living marten in the trees is to go your way the
richer and happier for the view, for you have seen
Life — Life radiantly materialised, the most living
and lively of all God's moving things.

Is the marten to go ? That is what we have to
decide, and to decide to-day. To most lovers of
the great outdoors the interest of a landscape is
decided to some extent by the wild life that dwells
therein. One looks over miles of rolling forest
conscious not only of its beauty, but of a sense
of charm and romance because one can say, ' Herein
still dwell the wolf and a thousand other unlovely
things God gave when the world was untarnished
by man's hand.' One can wander for days in the
wild woods of the Highlands, through the lovely
glens and corries, gray and cloud-wreathed, end-
lessly happy in the thought, 'Here the wild deer
and the marten have their home.' On the Conti-
nent one may view panoramas just as lovely, just
as wild, but holding no lasting charm because
therein is no wild creature in whose existence lies
the true romance of the Wild.

Outside its beauty the marten has perhaps but
one feature to plead its case — its rarity. One
would plead for the protection of the hated wolf of
the northern wilds if it had become so rare as no
longer to exist as a source of danger to man and
his interests ; yet the wolf is not beautiful. We

160 THE PINE-MARTEN.

can gain nothing by allowing the marten to die
out, while few would learn of its final departure
with feelings other than regret. Our mammals
are so few that we can spare but one of them,
and that one is not the marten.

THE BADGER.

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THE BADGER.

THOUGH now scarce or utterly exterminated
in many districts where once it was abun-
dant, the badger can hardly be set down as a rare
animal. In some places where it is still compa-
ratively numerous, its presence is unknown except
to a few local followers of woodcraft, for the badger
is so much of a recluse, so strictly nocturnal in its
activities, and, above all, so cautious in secreting
its runways where one would least expect to find
them, that the naturalist must first know some-
thing about Brock's habits in order to locate him.

Coniferous forests are the badger's chief abode
in the British Isles, and he is particularly partial
to pine-woods generously surrounded by cover.
This is probably because pines grow, as a rule, on
water-washed hillsides and ridges where the ground
is of sandy formation, which suits Brock's sub-
terranean architecture. Fir-forests, where the
undergrowth is rank with bracken and bramble,
similarly meet his tastes, and in certain parts of
the New Forest, particularly the vicinity of Boldre-
wood, badgers are as numerous to-day as ever
before. In fact, provided one is acquainted with
the district, I know of no better country than
the New Forest for studying the badger at home.

Amidst the game-preserves of Northamptonshire
the badger still holds out in many localities,
and considerable warrens are to be found if one
knows where to look. In parts of Wales he is
common ; in fact, Wales may be set down as his
true home, so far as Britain is concerned, and
the keen and plucky terriers used for badger-

W.A. k

162 THE BADGER.

hunting are bred chiefly in the Principality. In
most parts of Scotland the badger is now rare,
though occasional families are to be found in
remote Highland localities.

PROTECTIVE COLOURING.

Judging from its markings, one would con-
clude the badger is truly a beast of the night.
In daylight it is conspicuous, the markings of the
face seeming to catch and hold the light; but
when at night-time Brock moves among the silver
patches of moonlight and the ebony, shifting
shadows, he himself is a shifting shadow of silver
and ebony — so wonderfully camouflaged that the
keenest night-watcher must keep very wide awake
indeed if he is to see anything at all.

HABITUAL CAUTION.

I have said that the habitual caution of the
badger renders it difficult to locate. One must
know where to look and what to look for, as
the lifelong endeavour of this animal seems to
be to avoid encounters with man and his dogs.
I know of one warren situated in the heart of
a small, dense pine-forest, surrounded by open
fields. In passing to and from this forest during
their nocturnal pilgrimages the badgers prefer
always to follow the course of a hedgerow rather
than venture into the open moonlight. They
will even make a detour of two or three fields
to avoid passing an open gateway, and in this
way they gain a strip of wild undergrowth border-
ing a stream, which they visit regularly for the
roots of the common wild hyacinth. The un-
dulating portions of the New Forest are drained
by means of narrow canals or gutters, which

THE BADGER. 163

follow the ridings, and are generally about two
feet in depth and a foot in width. In due course
these canals become overgrown with grass, a pit-
fall for the unwary, and they are greatly used
by the badgers as runways in passing from one
place to another. It is possible for the animal
to escape unseen within a yard or so of one's feet
by means of these artificial cuttings ; but their
use entails a counterbalancing disadvantage from
the badger's point of view, in that, though he is
unseen, he himself cannot see, and should his keen
nostrils fail to give him warning, he can very easily
be surprised as he noses about the trench-bottom.

The New Forest badgers obtain a good deal
of their food from these canals. Beetles, worms,
and all sorts of small life fall into them and are
unable to escape, while snails, slugs, &c. abound in
the long grass and the brambles overhanging the
cuttings. On one occasion a friend of mine located
a badger simply by the ungenteel sounds of enjoy-
ment the animal made while eating its way along
one of these herbaceous tunnels. The ditches are
often tapped by an emergency hole from the warrens.

POWERS OF DIGGING.

Seton states that a badger spends thirty hours
underground for every hour it spends on the earth's
surface, which is probably a pretty accurate esti-
mate. Its whole mode of living is to come up
for a few hours, gorge itself to the extreme limits
of repletion, then remain underground or about
the warren in a more or less torpid state till
again hungry — possibly a period of four or five
days. On many occasions after a badger-earth
has been stopped prior to a meet of the fox-hounds
(a fox will readily hole up with a badger), it has

164 THE BADGER.

been some days ere the badger inside troubled
to unearth the entrances. In some cases he would
partially open the hole from within, scratching
away just enough earth to admit air, though not
sufficient to allow the passage of his body. This
was done a few hours after the holes were stopped,
and thus matters would remain, perhaps, for seven
or eight days, at the end of which the animal
would finally take the trouble to liberate himself.

In soft, sandy ground a badger, when disturbed,
will sometimes bury himself where he stands,
sooner than take to his heels, going practically
straight down, like a mole ; indeed, his powers
of digging are almost proportionate to those of
the mole. For this reason it requires a keen and
plucky dog to keep a badger in one place in his
earth while the diggers get down to him. A
half-hearted dog, that does not keep its quarry
employed defending himself the whole time, is of
no use to the badger-digger, for the badger im-
mediately turns his tail to the dog and begins
to scratch, throwing out a blast of sand behind
that no animal can face. The dog has to draw
off, blinded and suffocated, while Brock rapidly
extends his tunnel. If one can succeed in stop-
ping up the pocket behind the badger he can
scratch no further, being unable to dispose of
the earth he loosens, and thus he becomes jammed
up, powerless to escape.

In the hills of the north, where these animals
are now comparatively rare, one regularly comes
across solitary male specimens, which wander from
valley to valley and forest to forest. On hearing
that badgers have taken up their abode in a certain
locality, it is often found that one of these nomadic
old dogs is at the bottom of the rumour. An

THE BADGER. 165

old badger, living thus, will convert a chosen
patch of land into a veritable warren in a single
night, but by the time the warren is located
he has betaken himself to the next valley. Thus
the would-be badger student, after watching an
abandoned prospect shaft for two or three con-
secutive nights, is apt to become somewhat dis-
heartened, and finally turns to a more fruitful
field for his activities.

THE WARREN.

The badger-warrens I have studied were all
models of system and cleanliness. The animals
never occupy the same warren for more than two
or three months at a spell ; it is then completely
forsaken for a corresponding period, and thus
given a chance thoroughly to sweeten, the colony
removing itself in the interim to another country
residence, probably not more than a mile distant.
In the meantime their old residence is taken over
by rabbits. As regards the numerous stories one
hears about Brock as a rabbit-killer, I can only
say that I know of numerous warrens in which
rabbits and badgers share the tenancy. Generally
the rabbits occupy one end, while the badgers
inhabit the other, but all the holes are intercon-
nected, and the little community appears to dwell
in an atmosphere of perfect goodwill.

The badger is a slow-footed animal, and though
perhaps he would possess few scruples if the oppor-
tunity of dining off Brer Rabbit occurred, it is
not worth his while to hunt his active neighbour
when there is so much other food ready to hand.

Badgers are a good deal troubled with neighbours
of a more personal and intimate character, and
the cleanliness they exercise in their home-life

166

THE BADGER.

has not a little to do with these gentry. One
can always tell whether or not a badger-warren
is occupied by the condition of the bedding that
litters the ground and carpets the entrance of
every earth — the dry grass or bracken they use
being strewn everywhere about the warren and

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Plan of Badger- Warren in New Forest, showing Runways, Earths (E),
Sunning-Nests, Sanitary Pits, &c.

along the runways. During every night of activity,
which appears to be about one night in five, the
animals, having fed, spend the small hours raking
the old bedding out of the warrens and substi-
tuting new, dry material. A bed is never allowed
to become old and stale, and the huge dump-
heaps at the burrow-entrances will, if examined,

THE BADGER. 167

be found to consist of 50 per cent, old bedding,
drawn out and intermingled with the sand. Very
often a single dump-heap of this kind would form
several cartloads — the work of generation after
generation of badgers who have occupied their
spare time in tidying up and enlarging.

NESTS.

From the mouth of the main burrow there
generally exists a clearly defined runway to the
patch of open ground at which the bedding
material is collected. Dry grass is preferred on
account of its softness, but often the badgers make
shift with bracken. Following the runway, one
arrives at an opening amidst the trees (probably
within a distance of fifty yards) from which all
the low herbage has been dragged and clawed up,
so that the entire plot has an untidy appearance.
(Indeed, the whole area of the warren is untidy
owing to the litter of bedding, this being the
chief indication that it is a badger-warren.) This
is the hayfield of the colony. All these features
are clearly shown on the rough plan-sketch repro-
duced herewith, which shows the lay-out of a New
Forest warren close to the main Bournemouth
road, and is typical of many others in the locality.

The grass or the bracken as collected is rolled
into tightly packed balls, a number of which appear
to be made in readiness for transportation before
the badgers leave the field, as one often finds these
balls lying forsaken on the ground ; and the
amount of bedding rolled into such small com-
pass is surprising. The animal carries the ball
between its chin and its forepaws, cuddling the
bundle against its chest, and half-pushing, half-
supporting it in this way.

168 THE BADGER.

On one occasion Smith, the keeper at Boldre-
wood, watched a badger thus occupied in the dusk
of evening, being unable to tell what the animal
was about as he stood on a neighbouring ridge.
It was a small badger, and it had collected rather
more grass than it could conveniently carry, so
that it had some difficulty in surmounting the
obstacles of the runway. Finally emerging into
the open riding, the animal made better progress ;
but here, unfortunately, it caught wind of Smith,
and promptly made for the dense cover. The
keeper was standing clearly in sight the whole
time, but he is of the opinion that badgers (like
the bear and the wolverine, and, indeed, all animals
of the undergrowth that are short in the leg) are
possessed of very poor eyesight. They depend
almost entirely on their keen hearing and scent,
and I doubt very much if the average badger
would recognise a man even at forty paces, and
provided it could not scent him, the animal would
probably not be greatly afraid.

In addition to their nests underground, badgers
make use of sunning-nests, which they construct
for temporary use at the mouth of the main earth.
This is a point concerning which many naturalists
profess disbelief; but having seen such nests and
photographed them, I am naturally satisfied.

The sunning-nest is a large and untidy bundle
of bedding, trodden out to the curvature of the
animal's body, just as a cat or a dog hollows out a
bed for itself. It is always placed directly above
the mouth of the earth, so that, should its
occupant be disturbed, he or she has nothing to
do but roll out and tumble underground in the
twinkling of an eye. Also, the nest is so situated
that it catches the sunlight falling through the

THE BADGER. 169

trees during the warmest hour of the day, the nest
standing out as an excrescence amidst the darkness
of the undergrowth.

Though there are indications that a nest has at
one time been in use at the mouth of the main
burrow of almost every warren, one may search
far and diligently before rinding an actual
example ; for, having sunned himself so long as
the light lasts, it would appear that Brock drags
the material into the earth after him, making good
use of it below rather than allowing it to become
damp and rotten on the earth's surface. Thus, if
one locates a sunning-nest, and returns only an
hour or so later in order, perhaps, to photograph
it, a hundred to one it will be gone — especially
if one handled it on first arriving. Nor has
any man I have met actually caught a badger
asleep in its sunning-nest. One might as well
attempt to catch a fox asleep in a hen-house.
Smith, the keeper at Boldrewood, tells me that
on several occasions he has arrived to find the
nest still warm from contact with the badger's
body, but Brock himself had heard or winded the
intrusion, and tumbled underground with seconds
to spare.

SANITATION.

In sanitation the badger stands out as a model
of system and virtue many beasts would do well
to copy, the perfection of his sanitary arrange-
ments being unrivalled by those of any other
woodland creature, not even excepting the beaver.
Only once have I found any traces of uncleanliness
about the warren, which in this instance was occu-
pied by young badgers, who evidently had not
learnt the full value of systematic cleanliness.

170 THE BADGER.

One of the most distinct runways from the main
earth will be found to terminate, after a few paces,
at a hollow in the ground — often the pit left after
the filling in by the earth-stopper of an old bur-
row, which the family has not troubled to reopen.
Here vertical holes (about six inches deep and four
inches wide) are dug, each hole being used so long
as its capacity permits, when another is dug close
to it, and so on till the bottom of the pit becomes
covered with these scratchings. Thereupon it is
forsaken and an adjacent plot taken up, every
warren having several of these special allotments,
old and new, within easy reach of the burrows.
The amount of deposit left in a single night is
really surprising, and the exhaustion of available
space for this purpose may have something to
do with the periodical abandonment of warrens.
It is also true that, after a warren has been in
use for some weeks by a large family of badgers,
the place is none the worse for a rest.

These few facts are sufficient to excite our
admiration for the badger as a beast of cleanly
habits. That he is seldom an offender against man
I hope shortly to show ; and since he is so easily
located by those who know him, and so much at
our mercy when located, having only his own
powers as a marvellous fighting -machine with
which to withstand our unjustifiable persecution,
the lover of wild woodland life has every right to
call for the badger's protection. The killing of a
badger is never excusable. Dig him out where
he is too plentiful, for this must be so at times ;
but having caught him alive, enclose him in a
wooden box and send him to some part of the
country where he is rare. Many Scottish land-
owners would be glad to have him back on their

THE BADGER. 171

estates, and would willingly pay for the oppor-
tunity. Brock is worth more alive than dead.

INTERCOMMUNICATION.

Badgers, like bears, possess the habit of measur-
ing their full height against some obstacle which
affords exercise for their claws, and thither, to
the recognised scratching-post, the whole family
adjourns at more or less regular intervals to leave
the sign of their passing. One sees the claw-
marks of father and mother high up on the scale
of reach ; lower down are the claw-marks of the
cubs, each having registered its height ; and from
surrounding signs we should judge that this is a
recognised rendezvous of the family.

There is every reason to think that these
scratching-places afford a system of intercommu-
nication for the badger population of a given
district, for I have noticed the claw-marks of
strange badgers on a tree-trunk habitually visited
by one family in a locality where badgers were
none too plentiful. For example, an old dog-
badger living alone has his own individual scratch-
ing-log, which he visits, perhaps, once every ten
days. Near to the log is a boulder of rock having
one sharp edge against which he invariably rubs
himself when calling. Another badger crosses the
range, and, guided by some subtle sense, it visits
this place. It registers its height against the
trunk, and scratches its neck on the other side
of the sharp edge of rock. The owner of the
rendezvous returns. He knows immediately that
another badger has been there. Whether he is
sufficiently astute to read if it is larger or smaller
than himself is, of course, open to question ; but,
at any rate, the main fact is instantly conveyed

172 THE BADGER.

to his conception. If it is a nomadic old dog-
badger that has passed, he is not interested ; but
if, on the other hand, an eligible lady-caller has
seen fit to leave the sign of her passing, he is
all on edge. In all probability he follows, and so,
in due course, they make each other's acquaintance.

Intercommunication in the wild exists for but
one purpose — that of bringing the sexes together.
The wolves have their calling- posts, the beavers
have their castor-signs, the weasels have their
musking-places, and it is reasonable to think that
the scratching-post of the badger answers the
same purpose as the rest. It is the marriage ex-
change of the district, the agony column of the
local press. Of course, a badger may exercise its
claws against any tree it happens to pass, but
there is always one tree in particular recognised
for this purpose.

Moreover, a badger living in solitude resorts to
the practice more regularly than the mated couples
— it may, indeed, have several calling-places all up
and down its range, and the necessity for claw-
exercise alone cannot demand such activity. It
would seem that the more earnestly a dog-badger
desires a mate, the more blatantly does he advertise
the signs of his stature, and the more diligently
does he search for the records of other badgers
left in the same way. That the habit plays some
important part in the multiplication of the species
can hardly be doubted, and possibly the old male
badger wandering restlessly from place to place is
searching chiefly for such signs.

DESTRUCTIVENESS.

I would see the peregrine preserved just as we
would preserve a picturesque landscape, a beautiful

THE BADGER. 173

picture, or any other gem of nature or of art ;
but having beheld a peregrine hurtle through
a pack of grouse, knocking four of them side-
ways, and never even looking round as they
fell, it gives me infinitely more pleasure to
see him on my neighbour's moor than on my
own. A good deal of nonsense is talked by
naturalists about the non-destructiveness of cer-
tain birds and beasts they would see preserved,
their service to man, and so on, but generally it
would be more useful to refrain from allowing
one's keen sentiments to get the better of one's
sane judgment.

As regards the badger, I have studied him very
closely, and can honestly say that I have yet to
discover this creature guilty of a crime sufficient
to warrant his destruction even in a single instance.
There is no doubt that should he stumble across
a game-bird's nest, he will devour its contents as
greedily as he will devour the contents of a wasp's
nest ; but he certainly does not go out of his
way to look for the nests of game-birds. In
one instance a pheasant brought off her brood
amidst some long grass directly overlooked by
an occupied warren and within forty yards of
it, and had the hunting of eggs been in any
way the badgers' line of business, they could not
have failed to locate this feast. The fact is that
normally in the spring the badger is surrounded
by such an abundance of food which requires no
hunting that there is no need for him to hunt
live prey ; and since he is a slow-moving beast,
he would not be exactly successful as a hunts-
man even were he so disposed. True that he has
flesh-tearing teeth — and goodness knows he needs
them for purposes of self-defence — but, like the

174 THE BADGER.

black-bear, he can and does subsist very comfort-
ably on an exclusively vegetable diet, with a little
rubbish thrown in, should he actually stumble across
it in his short-sighted, pig-like forages. Except in
the spring (when the badger has vegetable foods
everywhere), the sort of game man protects is
chiefly of the variety demanding, and often defying,
the swiftness, cleverness, and long-sightedness of
Reynard at his best. At all events the keepers
of the New Forest, who know as much about
badgers as any one, have no quarrel with them
except that their many earths require a good deal
of stopping before each meet of the fox-hounds,
which is the only reason why badgers are kept in
check in this region.

FOOD.

Roots, insects, worms, beetles, frogs, and berries
when in season, are the chief food of Brock at
home. In the forests of the Vosges Mountains,
south of Verdun, there are many badgers, and
during the war they seemed to lose much of their
fear of man, often appearing on the mountain-roads
quite near the muleteers, and occupying the forests
right up to the fighting-line, apparently undisturbed
by the noise of the guns, since no one had the time
to hunt them. Here their food consisted in the
season entirely of the wild raspberries that are
abundant on the open hillsides, while earlier in the
year beetles and other insects formed their staple
diet. In the New Forest they appear to live
chiefly on beetles, destroying thousands of the
common black-backed variety to be found in the
roots of moss, the wings of which they do not
digest. In winter roots, or almost any other soft
substances they can nose out of the ground, are

THE BADGER. 175

acceptable ; in fact, the badger will eat nearly
anything he happens to stumble across.

HIBERNATION.

The badger does not hibernate in the true sense
of the word. During a spell of wild winter
weather he may extend considerably his periods
underground — may not emerge, indeed, for two or
three weeks ; but immediately the conditions change
he is up and about, as lively as at any other time
of the year. In high, wind-swept country he
makes this winter denning more of a permanency ;
while in warmer latitudes — the Gulf states of
America, for example — the badger does not den
up at all. During the chief period of hibernation
he generally stops the mouth of the den to exclude
draught, which would seem to indicate that his
respiration at such times becomes very low ; indeed,
it must be something approaching a death-like
stupor that tides so heavy-feeding an animal over
such a long period without food. But with practi-
cally every beast hibernation is merely a matter of
convenience, which can be put off when desired ;
and even the black-bear of the Far North, which
normally hibernates in the true sense of the word,
is ready enough to remain awake and active when
kept in captivity and liberally fed — even though his
home be an Arctic trading-post. In this country,
then, the badger hibernates if his environment and
the conditions of the season demand it; but normally
his hibernation is on a par with that of the squirrel,
eagerly cut short should the wintry weather relent.

THE YOUNG.

I imagine the young, varying from three to five
in number, are born in February, as I have observed

176 THE BADGER.

their tracks on the 15th of March at the earliest.
Generally they are to be seen at the mouth of the
earth in March, seldom venturing farther than a
few yards till early in April. In May the home
den is forsaken, the whole family journeying to
a new warren. Sometimes, but not always, the
dog and the 'sow' badger remain together the
whole year round.

Badgers are not playful animals, and, except in
their cubhood, they seldom frolic, devoting their
time to the more important business of nosing for
food. The old game of King of the Castle is said
to be systematically indulged in by the cubs, even
their mother occasionally lending a hand. One of
the youngsters mounts a dead tree-stump or a
boulder of rock, and from this point of eminence
menaces his brothers with naked fangs. The others
then set to work to drag him down, attacking from
every point of the compass, while the central figure
twists and turns, till finally he is dislodged and
another scrambles into his place. And so the
game goes on during the chilliest hour before the
dawn ; but it is a game unlike those of our own
little people in that it is played in silence — such is
the degree of caution instilled into the young by
their parents.

This game is said to be a recognised institution
of the badgers, each family having its own ' castle '
and its special little plot laid aside, the ground soon
becoming trodden hard and bare of verdure by the
beating of active paws. Normally the youngsters
just roll each other about, butting at each other
and pulling at the loose skin of each other's necks,
much like little bears, which they closely resemble
in many ways.

Badgers are good-tempered beasts, and the old

THE POLECAT.

L

THE BADGEK. 177

saying ' surly as a badger ' lacks support in actual
fact. Naturally Brock is surly when imprisoned in
a box and tortured by men and dogs, but I believe
that in their home -life badgers live in perfect
harmony, with never an ill word. The devotion
of the mother is heroic. She has been known, in
one instance at least, to hold the den while her
little cubs made good their escape, facing hope-
less odds, and gamely meeting her death in
covering their retreat. On this occasion the
warren was invaded because, as the farmers said,
the sow-badger had been proved guilty of killing
young lambs. When she was dead and the cubs
were gone the lamb -killing still continued, and
finally it was traced to some far more likely, though
less suspected, cause.

FIGHTING ABILITIES.

Many extraordinary beliefs exist concerning the
badger. I have been gravely told by country-
people that his legs on one side are shorter than
those on the other, with the result that he is com-
pelled to walk on the hillsides, where the angle of
the ground counterbalances this natural deformity.
How he fares when it comes to going home is
not generally explained. Presumably he has to
complete the circular, route of the range ! Similarly
some peasants believe that the jaws of a badger are
provided with a patent locking device, so that,
when once he has obtained a firm grip, he is unable
to let go. One man actually told me that by
thrusting a piece of red cloth fixed on the end of a
wire into a burrow you are easily able to catch a
badger, in much the same manner as one fishes for
crabs, the badger being pulled out immediately he
has locked his jaws on the fabric !

W.A.

178 THE BADGER.

In the same way one hears that a dog cannot
hurt a badger — that he is so tough of hide as to
emerge without discomfort from any kind of an
encounter with terriers. Nothing could be further
from the truth. A badger feels and suffers just
the same as any other warm-blooded beast. I
have seen the state of a dog after an underground
encounter with Brock, and how he will fret and
suffer, unable to eat his food owing to the mangled
condition of his muzzle, even though every care
and comfort man can give him be his. How
much worse must be the plight of the poor wood-
land creature, injured and frightened by the
invasion of its sanctuary, and having no human
mind to understand or human hand to help ! I
am convinced that many a badger that has been
baited and worried underground emerges in appa-
rent safety, only to hide away and die a linger-
ing death from the wounds about its mouth and
tongue. Yet badger-digging is considered by some
as the sport of gentry 1

To send terriers in to a badger among rocks is a
doubly cruel business, for the cruelty embraces the
dogs also. A keeper with whom I am acquainted
lost both his terriers in this way. The den of the
badger was at the foot of a wood, where large and
small boulders, overgrown with bracken and fern,
lay in wild profusion. One terrier was sent in, but
appeared to be in difficulties ; so the other was
liberated. For a long time the sound of fighting
came from below, but suddenly all was quiet.
Dusk fell, night followed, but still no terriers. At
dawn next day a horse and chains were taken to
the spot, and one by one the boulders were removed.
Both terriers were found bitten through the throat,
just as they had fallen after a terrific encounter,

THE BADGER. 179

and there were indications which showed precisely
how their deaths had taken place.

At this point the underground passage was
barred by a shelf or step, which rose vertically
about two feet, the passage continuing beyond it.
On the top of this shelf the badger had crouched,
so that the dogs were at a hopeless disadvantage,
having to leap up at him as he lay, his own body
protected, just out of convenient reach. The
keeper believed that Brock had brought about the
end by resorting to an old badger trick, that of
tucking his head down between his forepaws, so
that only the tough muscles at the back of his
neck were exposed. Immediately a terrier gripped
him by this portion of his anatomy he uncurled,
so that the terrier's throat was exposed to his fangs,
which, of course, settled the matter.

POWERS OF DEFENCE.

I have many times heard it disputed as to
whether one terrier is able to hold a badger out
in the open. Some assert emphatically that no
terrier on earth can hold a full-grown badger that
is bent on gaining a place of safety, while other
authorities on the subject are equally emphatic in
backing their belief that any terrier can hold any
badger so long as he concentrates his energies on
doing so. The evidence on both sides seems equally
strong. Mr Smith, the keeper at Boldrewood,
was one night out earth-stopping, when a badger
bolted for the very hole he was in the act of
closing. A terrier caught the animal at the mouth
of the hole, between the keeper's legs, and in
the scuffle that followed the lamp was upset, and
a general melee ensued. Nevertheless, the terrier
was successful in preventing the badger from

180 THE BADGER.

gaining earth ; and this, be it noted, within a yard
of the burrow-mouth, when the animal would
undoubtedly put forth all its energies to gain
the goal so near at hand.

On the other hand, an experiment was carried
out in order to settle a wager between a Welsh
landowner and the owner of a set of terriers
reputed to possess exceptional mettle. The land-
owner was convinced that four of the terriers could
not hold a badger out of cover, and the proud
owner of the dogs was equally convinced that they
would not only hold him, but would make very
short work of his execution.

Accordingly the unhappy badger was taken into
the centre of a field and dumped, blinking, out of
a bag. Gaining his bearings, he began to amble
off for the nearest cover ; whereupon the terriers
were released. They immediately closed, but the
running fight continued steadily in the direction
of the patch of cover. At times all four terriers
gained a hold of the unfortunate beast, yet doggedly
and persistently the badger bore on his way, and
in a very short space of time disappeared under-
ground at the very feet of the surprised dog-owner,
who, resultantly, lost his bet !

Of course, there are exceptional badgers, just as
there are exceptional terriers, but I doubt very
much whether any terrier could hold its own in
single combat, either closed or open, with an old
fighting male badger or with a sow defending her
young — assuming that the badger had not previ-
ously been scared out of its wits. Though retiring
and peace-loving by disposition, this animal is a fierce
and terrible fighter when roused, and long perse-
cution has taught the badger to use its fangs and
claws with deadly effect. Even when terrified by

THE BADGER. 181

man, and forced to make a stand amidst surround-
ings and conditions new to it, a good badger will
hold its own for an indefinite period against entirely
hopeless odds ; and fighting amidst its own chosen
environment, uninterrupted by man, it would very
speedily wear out and probably kill a terrier handi-
capped by the conditions that were in the badger's
favour. In other words, let Brock choose his own
ground and do not interfere, and it will go badly
with the terrier facing him, even though the latter
be of the best fighting blood obtainable.

The front part of a badger's skull is extremely
strong, like that of a bear. (In bear-hunting one
never shoots at the head of the beast, as the thick,
slanting skull is very apt to deflect the bullet, and
a blow on the skull has the effect of sending a
bear temporarily mad. The neck is the proper
target, as one then stands a chance of severing the
jugular vein or of paralysing the animal by injur-
ing the spine.) The back part of a badger's head,
however, is extremely poorly protected, and a
blow behind the ears stretches him out instantly.

How TO IDENTIFY HIS WHEREABOUTS.

The best way to locate any animal is, of course,
by its tracks. Learn to read the writing of the
woods, and half their secrets are yours. The
spoor of the badger is easily recognised by what
keepers call the ' bar.' This is the oblong or oval
tread of the ball of the foot, which in most other
animals leaves a round, or almost round, indenta-
tion. Also, a badger-track is considerably larger
than that of any other wild beast likely to be
sharing its environment, and once the track has
been seen, there is no mistaking it, as it is so
distinctly sui generis.

182

THE BADGER.

\A\

FORE..

Track of old Dog-Badger, actual size. The fifth toe does not leave
an imprint except on very soft going.

THE BADGER. 183

A badger-warren can always be recognised as
such by the litter of bedding that strews the earths
and the runways ; while if there are badgers in the
district they generally advertise the fact by rooting
up the ground, in the same way as a family of
little pigs. If the earth is nosed away round the
trunks of fir or pine trees, so as to explore the bark
below ground-level, it is assuredly the work of
badgers, this being one of the most certain tell-
tale signs they leave. Perhaps some grub to which
they are very partial exists round the trunks of
these trees ; or it may be that insects, particularly
wood-lice, follow the trunk of the tree and seek
hiding and shelter just below the earth -line, where
they are easily nosed out by the badger.

A trick which I have tried with success, when
in doubt as to whether or not badgers were in a
certain locality, is to bury a few raisins two or
three inches underground near to the suspected
spot. The keen nose of the badger is sure to
locate these dainties, and he will root them out
when next he sallies forth on his nocturnal
wanderings.

The foregoing will serve to show that there is
much to rouse our sympathies in the character of
this quiet dweller of the forest shadows, and it is
sincerely to be hoped that such sympathies may
prove instrumental in relieving this ancient and
much-persecuted creature of some of the miseries
that have so long and so unjustly been its lot.
One sees in the badger a brave, indigenous beast
struggling to retain a footing in the land of its
heritage against the cruelty and ignorance of those
who still seem to regard it as designed for the
' sport ' of man. The badger was once diurnal to
almost the same extent as it was nocturnal. Where

184 THE BADGES.

undisturbed by man it is still diurnal in its habits.
In this country, through sorrowful experience, it has
become solely nocturnal. It has retreated to the
depths of our deepest forests in the hope of finding
security from man, and every movement of its life
is characterised by the earnest desire to avoid
encounter with man and his dogs. Because the
badger is a brave and an able fighter, it has been used
as a means of trying out the mettle of beasts as
brave and able as itself, which, in the broad light
of things, savours of the barbarous, and of a spirit
hardly worthy of the lovers of cricket.

DIMENSIONS AND WEIGHT.

The measurements of an adult female killed in
Yorkshire were — from the tip of the snout to the
root of the tail, 31 inches ; tail, about 7 inches.

The only two badgers I have ever weighed were
evidently far below average; they were 16f Ib.
(female) and 14^ Ib. (male), both killed in the New
Forest. The average weight of the Cornish badger
is given as 30 Ib. ; and, according to Sir Harry
Johnston, the heaviest specimen known was killed
in Warwickshire, and scaled 43 Ib.

THE POLECAT.

Known also as the Foumart or the ' Fitchet.'

FROM the polecat tribe spring our tame ferrets,
the dark variety of which is distinguished from
the more common albino strain by the designation
'polecat' ferret. The polecat is, in fact, a wild
ferret, and has often been trapped in the act of
visiting the cages of tame ferrets, with which it
will readily interbreed.

The polecat is to-day a rare animal, and except
for the sorrow one naturally feels at the loss of any
one of our fauna, there is no special need to regret
its rarity.

SIZE AND DESCRIPTION.

This animal is the largest of our true weasels,
and an adult male will measure 17 inches from the
tip of the nose to the base of the tail. The tail,
which is of the bottle-brush variety, measures about
6^ inches. In all the true weasels the female is
very much smaller than the male, and an adult
female polecat seldom exceeds 18 inches, tip-to-tip
measurement.

The colour varies with the altitude, and, to a
less degree, with the seasons, sunshine and warmth
being conducive to darker shades. The lips are
white, enclosed by a belt of dark brown encom-
passing the muzzle and the eyes. A lighter band of
gray succeeds this marking, and includes the fore-
ead, the temples, and the cheeks. Sometimes this
band is quite white, and the dark colour begins
again behind it. The ears are white-rimmed, and

186 THE POLECAT.

the body-colouring varies from quite black to a pale
ochre. The general impression of the summer coat
is usually a blackish-brown, and in old specimens
the hair is sometimes found to be matted, like that
of the fisher. Its call-notes and its menaces are
identical with those of the ferret.

CHARACTER,

In character the polecat is no more lovable than are
its congeners, the stoat and the weasel, and, being a
larger and stronger animal, it is far more destructive
to man's interests. It feeds on anything and every-
thing it can catch and kill. It never engineers a
home of its own ; and though probably less nomadic
than the stoat, it will live for weeks within a limited
home-range, sleeping where and when conveni-
ence dictates. In habits it is both nocturnal and
diurnal ; that is, it hunts when hungry and sleeps
when fed — a state of things which applies to most
of the blood-loving ' killers.' If it feeds in a warren,
then in the warren it sleeps ; if it kills its prey in the
open, it speedily drags the victim into a cranny, and
there, having fed, it rests till such time as it is
hungry again. I do not think the polecat adheres
to any particular denning-up place except while its
young are small.

In common with all the true weasels, the polecat
destroys for destruction's sake. On coming upon
a brood of pheasant-chicks, it will kill every chick
in the brood, finally carrying one of them away to
feast at leisure. If it visits a poultry-yard, the same
process is followed. It will kill turkeys and geese
too large to be dragged away. A brace of polecats,
hunting together, have been known to attach them-
selves to an extensive rabbit-warren, and in a
comparatively short space of time so to deplete the

THE POLECAT. 187

burrows as to spoil their own hunting, thus forcing
themselves to find fresh quarters.

On game - reserves the polecat is undoubtedly
the most destructive of all the weasels — infinitely
more so than the marten ; and while the latter
has beauty to recommend it, the polecat is perhaps
most remarkable for its offensive stink. Its rarity
alone warrants such protection as may be forth-
coming.

Living at Upton, near Northampton, the writer,
when a boy, one day put up a polecat in a root-
field quite near to the house. It bounded off after
the manner of a ferret, and was sufficiently swift to
gain a strip of coppice about a hundred yards away
ere two spaniels could overtake it. Doubtless it
was attracted to the vicinity of the house by the
cage of tame ferrets kept in some outbuildings.

Subsequently the same dogs pursued the crea-
ture several times, but never succeeded in out-
manoeuvring it, and in due course it disappeared
from the locality.

Some weeks later my brother and I were walk-
ing up a fallow field about three miles from the
house, when the polecat suddenly appeared, bound-
ing along a furrow at some considerable distance
from us. My brother gave it the ' choke ' at long
range, whereupon it arched its back and bounded
along sideways, uttering the familiar clucking chal-
lenge of an excited ferret. It was, however, very
slightly wounded, and made good its escape.

Up to the last fifteen years polecats were com-
paratively common on the wild stretch of moor-
land that lies between the upper basin of the
Wharfe and the Nidd valley, and keepers and
shepherds used regularly to trap and shoot them.
I remember, in boyhood, seeing as many as four

188 THE POLECAT.

freshly killed polecats, destroyed by the shepherds,
nailed to a barn door at Gate-Up Gill, Grimwith ;
and I recall an exciting chase after another of these
creatures in that secluded moorland district. It
hissed and chattered at us as it bounded from
cover to cover amidst a fusillade of stones and
sticks, and going up to the place later, we found a
filthy brown secretion left on the rocks over which
the terrified creature had run !

On this moor, as on others, the destruction of
the polecat was so vigorously pursued that since
about 1905 it has no longer figured among the
moorland keeper's foes, and it is probable that in
less wild regions its extermination was considered
complete long before that date. Even in the
wilds of Scotland it no longer holds a place in
the list of living 'vermin,' while in the Lowlands
it is practically extinct. In England occasional
specimens occur from time to time, particularly in
Hampshire, Cumberland, and Durham ; but so rare
is the foumart that, even when one is in intimate
touch with things of the fields and the woods,
news of its passing is seldom gleaned.

FOOD.

In addition to the articles of diet already re-
ferred to, the polecat feeds on snakes, lizards, frogs,
fish, and eggs. In moorland districts lizards and
mice are probably its staple summer diet ; in winter
it feeds largely on birds that roost on the ground —
larks, redwings, and game-birds.

There seems to be, at any rate, a foundation of
truth for the old belief that the polecat feeds
largely on frogs. It has been said that a nesting
polecat bites a frog through the head so as to
paralyse but not kill it, and in this unhappy plight

THE POLECAT. 189

the amphibian is carried off to the nest, where it
is stored to await the pleasure of the family of
budding cut-throats. One observer claims to have
found a regular horde of live, paralysed frogs
stored up within reach of the young polecats.

Be this as it may, stoats and weasels feed very
largely on frogs and even toads. A ferret, too,
appreciates such fare. I have known a lost ferret
to live for several weeks along the bank of a
stream where there was little food for it other than
frogs and toads, on which it fared so well as to be
in perfect condition when ultimately found.

NESTING.

The polecat is most at home in loose, rocky
country, broken by strips of forest, with the
sandy earth liberally tunnelled by rabbits. The
nest is commonly situated in a rabbit-burrow,
though any suitable cranny will serve the purpose.
I knew one pair to breed in the foot of a high
boundary wall between the pine -forests and the
heather of the moors. This ancient structure
was about twelve feet in height, and was built of
massive boulders at its base, gradually decreasing
in size towards the coping. The polecats did a
good deal of their hunting along the base of the
wall. Hares, from the lowlands, had their creeps
through it leading up to the heights, and the
rabbits from the heights had to pass through it on
their way to and from the lowland pastures. A
large number of rabbits lived permanently in the
thick base of the wall, and repeatedly the polecats
were seen by shepherds working their way along
the structure. This was in Upper Wharfedale.

The polecat is particularly partial to deserted
and partially ruined buildings, amidst the tumbled

190 THE POLECAT.

masonry of which it makes its stronghold and rears
its young. It is also said to breed in the thickets
of whins, to which it is probably attracted by the
rabbits which habitually make their home amidst
such thorny shelter.

The young, which are born blind, come in May,
and number from four to seven. Only one litter
is produced annually ; and since the sexual excite-
ment of the species — that is, the time when the
males become most restless — is about the middle
of March, the period of gestation is probably about
seven weeks.

Apparently the polecat is no less monogamous
than the stoat. When permitted to do so, a mated
pair remain together at least from early spring
till the hardships of winter necessitate for each a
separate hunting-range ; and where food is plentiful,
they may remain united throughout the winter.
The young accompany the parents till almost full-
grown, though the family union does not appear
to be so strong as is the case with the other true
weasels (stoat, weasel, and mink).

HUNTING.

In hunting, the polecat follows the mode of
procedure adopted by the stoat ; that is to say, it
hunts above ground, and does not adapt itself to
the use of underground alley-ways and passages
to the same extent as does the weasel. When
hunting it listens repeatedly, sitting bolt-upright,
drawn this way and that by every sound it hears.
If startled or alarmed, it instantly darts under-
ground, presently to peer with caution from a
distant cranny, taking stock of the situation. In
disposition, it is less given to arguing the point
than is the stoat ; that is, it does not chatter abuse

THE POLECAT. 191

for the sake of hearing its own voice, but will, if
possible, make clean away from the danger-zone.

The polecat is a good swimmer, and will take
to water readily in pursuit of its quarry. It is less
arboreal than the stoat, though it can climb moder-
ately well. One was shot in the act of climbing a
wire-netting screen some ten feet in height. It
was near the top and making good progress, and
on the other side of the screen were about two
hundred quarter -fledged pheasant -chicks ! This
was near Brancaster, in Norfolk.

THE BROWN HARE.

ONE of the marvels of wild nature is that
the hare survives — not only survives, but,
if given any chance whatever, thrives and multi-
plies. It is one of the few wild-folk to whom
nature has given no secure sanctuary. The
common prey of all, pursued first by one, then
by another, only its marvellous speed and its
superb staying-power enable the hare to hold its
own against so many foes. The foxes and the
rabbits have their burrows, but the hare has no
such shelter ; he meets his foes on their own
ground, and beats them at their own game. He
is a superb running-machine, wise in the wisdom
of the trails, and withal a joy to behold. Away
he goes — starting from a tuft at our feet, floating,
gliding, over the pasture, light as a thistle-seed,
keeping always to the hollows, seldom showing
himself on the skyline. And what lover of the
great outdoors has never felt the desire to follow
on in wild pursuit ?

Truly he is the common sport of all, this
creature which is always game to the end — living
a life of hair-breadth escapes till he can hold out
no longer against his foes. Particularly is this so
when the snow is on the ground ; for it is not the
hard, swift run that kills the hare ; it is the slow
' tramp, tramp, tramp ' of a dogged pursuer on his
trail. In times of snow the shepherd and the
farm-man know that the hare is at their mercy,
and taking down the old gun from its shelf, the
hunter sallies forth. Here is the quarry's over-night
trail ; there is nothing to be done but follow that

THE UKOWN HARE— 'AWAY!'

M

THE BROWN HARE. 193

chain of tracks to the winter form, which is found
in a sheltered hollow of the pasture, facing south.
The man stops short in readiness ten paces away.
The tracks lead to that tuft, but beyond the tuft
the story of Jack's life, written in the world's
oldest writing, ceases abruptly. Stooping, the
man picks up a twig, and throws it at the tuft ;
then away goes the hare, ears laid back, eyes watch-
ing behind, eager to place some obstacle between
himself and his pursuer. There is a loud report,
a squeal, and the hare zigzags ; another report,
and silence. There, tinting the snow with his
life's blood, lies the hero of many a fiery run,
who owes his fate, like so many of his kindred,
to the tell-tale writing of the snows !

One glorious winter day, when there was a
light tracking snow on the ground, I saw a run
which opened my eyes as regards the staying-
powers of the hare. I was high up in the hills,
commanding an incomparable view of the wide
valley, and had with me a hound which was both
fast and powerful. Putting up a hare, the dog
set off in pursuit, pressing the animal hard down
the mountain-side ; for, owing to its long hind-legs,
a hare is not at its best when running down-
hill, and has often been known to fall badly.
Once in the valley, a mile away, the hare began
a wide circuit, over field after field, round the
village, over the pine ridge, and across the burn,
the dog, with lagging steps, following by scent
now. Yet another circuit of the Boulder Hill,
adding three more miles, much of the pursuit
hidden from our view ; then we saw the hare again
on our side of the hill — saw him pause and listen,
deliberately tying knots in his trail. Finally he
sought the cover of the frozen swamp, and after

W.A. m

194 THE BHOWN HARE.

some minutes the dog reappeared, tongue lolling,
almost at a walk. Skilfully, yet laboriously, he
unravelled the tangle of tracks, headed for the
swamp, and again put up the hare.

Numbers of people who had seen or heard of
the chase now began to appear at gates or on
the hill-tops to watch the sport, and the hare once
more set off, now with weary steps, but never-
theless leaving the hound. Behind a gate a
labourer was waiting for him with one of the
fastest, best-winded sheep-dogs in the country,
and the poor exhausted hare ran right into them.

Was he exhausted ? Be that as it may, he
instantly doubled his speed, breasting the steep
mountain-side at one long, floating glide. Up
went the little spurts of powdery snow from his
heels, and between him and the fresh dog the
white expanse of snow rapidly grew in width.
Up the mountain-side he came, passing quite near,
and behind him that great iron-limbed hound.
Down into the valley once more, round the village,
over the burn, then westward through the foot-
hills— hard pressed now. Through Bethman's farm-
yard, scattering the hens ; and then — Bethman's
dog was after him, the third fresh dog, running
hard and fast, and gaining, gaining, gaining !

At a gate a woman turned the hare — through
the churchyard then, and along the road, down
the steep bank to the river, here ninety yards in
width and thundering between the rocks. We
watched long for him to emerge on the other side ;
but no. We saw Bethman's dog, dripping wet,
come back ; and just then my old dog, still
patiently following the trail at about three miles
an hour, came plodding towards us, imagining he
had done marvellously.

THE BROWN HARE. 195

' That hare is drowned ! ' we all agreed, and
went our respective ways.

But just on the edge of dusk, as I was descend-
ing the mountain-side, I saw a very tired and
bedraggled hare wending his way towards me.
Constantly he paused and listened ; then, making
off by the old familiar runs, he departed into
the gloom, heading for the mountain heights.

Did I recognise him? I can't swear to that;
but I know there was only one hare on that part
of the mountain-side, and I know the hare I
saw, returning wearily home at dusk, followed the
private runway of the creature we had pursued.

How far will a hare run before dogs ? Some
say eight miles at the most. Personally, I think
eighteen a fully conservative estimate. Before
a pack of hounds he will not run far, because
his spirit is broken by fear ; before a single dog
no faster than himself he is capable of putting
up a very different show.

HABITS WHEN PURSUED.

Each hare has its own runways — or, rather,
passes to and from its feeding -grounds by the
same routes. Normally it will never go through
or over a wall if there is a gateway through
which it can pass, and it is to be feared that this
partiality towards open going often proves the
hare's undoing. The poacher knows it well, and
has nothing to do but place his net across the
gate-gap, and then drive the hare into it, using
his snares in the same way. But occasionally an
old hare knows these things, and once having been
frightened, he never faces a gate again.

The hare is one of the few animals that can
see behind it as it runs, and it is owing to this

196 THE BROWN HARE.

faculty that the animal is so well able to dodge
hounds at close quarters, doubling and twisting
in the ace of time, and thus tiring and dishearten-
ing its pursuers when every one thinks the run
is at an end. So absorbed does the hare often
become in looking behind that it forgets to
calculate for danger ahead ; and many a hare,
pursued by dogs, has been known to run into
the legs of spectators, never seeing them, so
intent was its backward gaze.

Most motorists have indulged in a short, if
unsuccessful, pursuit of a hare, the animal sticking
to the open roadway ahead of the car, watching
the vehicle as he runs, never thinking of turning
aside till the car is actually on him. Pursuing
a hare thus, I have timed it by speedometer to
maintain a pace of twenty-eight miles per hour
over a short distance, which seems about the
animal's limit.

One wet night I was motoring near Birmingham,
when a hare got up in front of the car, and posi-
tively refused to get off the road, setting the
pace for over two miles. During the run we
noticed that the lamps were getting dim, and it
appeared as if we were passing through a heavy
shower. Finally the hare dodged off, and descend-
ing, we discovered that the dimming of the lamps
was due to the mud thrown up on the lenses
by the hare's hind-legs ! The whole front of the
car was literally drenched in dripping mud, the
wind-screen was opaque, while we ourselves were
splashed about the face. One would never have
believed so small an animal was capable of dis-
placing so much* liquid in so short a space of time.

The hind-legs of a hare are most abnormally
developed, for, like those of the kangaroo, they

THE BROWN HARE. 197

are the animal's propelling-members. Often the
creature's life is dependent upon a sudden, lightning
spurt — shooting off into space to foil the first
dash of Reynard, who has discovered it in its
form, and knows well that if once the hare gets
on its legs the game is up. A hare has even
been known to break one of its legs in shooting
off the mark, the bone proving insufficiently strong
for the sudden strain thrown upon it. The fore-
legs are comparatively feeble, functioning more
or less as pivots over which the creature bounds,
and it is because the forelegs are inadequate for
the strain thrown upon them by the gigantic
bounds that a hare is so much at a disadvantage
in going downhill. If by any accident one of
the hind-legs becomes injured, the cripple will
most assuredly disappear, for, robbed of its powers
of flight, it can no longer hold out against its many
foes. The first fox it meets knows instantly that
'there is something wrong with that hare,' and
Reynard soon succeeds in profiting by the poor
creature's disablement.

LIMITATIONS.

A good hare will run any ordinary dog to a
standstill, with miles of energy to spare ; but
though one of the most marvellous running-
machines in creation, he is, nevertheless, a creature
of mortal limits. Pursued by beagles, bounding
ahead of them mile after mile, and keeping them
on the distant skyline, in the end he mounts a
wall as a point of observation, and hounds and
huntsmen, coming up, find him crouching there,
still watching his back trail ! But it is a limp
and lifeless form the huntsman tosses to the
hounds ; for here, again, the old, old tricks are

198 THE BROWN HARE.

set at naught, the marvellous uphill sweep has
failed to leave his pursuers behind, and he has
died as he has lived — watching his back trail.
Looking behind ! That is why he holds the road-
way ahead of the motorist ; that is why he often
falls when descending a mountain-side at speed ;
and be his last effort the act of climbing to a
point of observation, or launching himself into
space in a final supreme effort to outstrip his
pursuers, he is always looking behind.

No creature has so many foes, no creature is
so widely coveted. Snares, nets, dogs, guns —
these are but a few of the perils that beset him
every hour of his life ; yet he has survived, while
so many wild-folks that once shared his habitat
have quietly laid down their arms and retired
from the field.

DISPOSITION.

In disposition hares are the most solitary of all
four-footed, warm-blooded things. They never
associate except for the brief period of the honey-
moon, being, of course, polygamous animals.
Something of the solitude of their disposition
begins to show immediately after birth, when very
often the youngsters separate, and each makes
for itself a solitary form, uniting only when the
mother calls them at meal-times. If two hares be
started side by side, they invariably run in different
directions, the only exception to this rule I have
come across being that subsequently recorded of
two Jacks running together to engage in combat.
If a honeymooning couple be flushed together, they
separate immediately, to reunite later on, guided
as to each other's direction by their sense of smell.
The scent-glands are highly developed, purely for

THE BROWN HARE. 199

mating purposes. Were these glands less developed,
the animals would never find each other where
mating is most necessary for the survival of the
species — that is, where hares are few and far
between. I have never heard of hares uniting in
any way purely for social amusement, though such
a thing does not seem to be unknown among
certain northern varieties.

NATURAL AND ACQUIRED ENEMIES.

A wild animal has two kinds of foes — hereditary,
and those which are brought about by a change
in the conditions under which it lives. The former
it contends with guided by inherent knowledge,
which is instinct ; the latter it learns to circumvent
only by experience. The hereditary foes of the wild
hare are the fox, the weasel, the hound, even man
himself. Against each of these the hare has its means
of defence. A young hare that has lived its life
in perfect immunity instinctively dodges through
a narrow opening to baffle a pursuing hound, and
as instinctively doubles back and leaps aside when
going to its form in order to delay a pursuing
stoat. All these tricks, clever in their way, are
the outcome of endless decades of experience ;
they are, indeed, inherited habit. A young hare
obtains little or no education from its mother.
The fox-cub or the otter-kit is taught by its parents,
lesson by lesson, the things on which its later life
depends ; but this does not apply in the case of
the hare. The leverets leave the dam when about
a fortnight old, and each day thereafter they
become less and less dependent upon her. Her
duty in life is merely to suckle them ; and as they
become independent of her for support, the family
bond is split asunder, and leveret and mother live

200 THE BROWN HARE.

their lives apart. Not one single lesson as regards
the circumventing of their numerous foes is taught
the young hares by their mother, yet they grow
up to hold their place among the wiliest of all
four-footed things.

Among the comparatively modern enemies of
the hare, regarding which it must learn by experi-
ence, are the hempen-net, the snare, and the net
set across the open gateway. If hares, like foxes
and deer, possessed among their gifts the ability
to hand on their experience to their children, then
these modern engines of man would be set at
naught by their cunning. A hare lives to grow
wise ; by chance rather than sound judgment it
has evaded death time and again ere, in its
old age, the wisdom of experience is added to its
inherited knowledge. But the children of that
hare profit in no way by its learning. They are
as unsophisticated as regards the modern engines
of mankind as are the first brood of a dam who
has lived in perfect security. This is yet another
factor that makes it difficult to understand the
hare's powers of survival. It is surrounded by
foes ; anything that can catch a hare can kill it ;
it is prone to all the ills and ailments of mortal
flesh — barring, perhaps, kleptomania and orator's
throat ; the knowledge of the parents is denied the
children — they have no friends or guardians, save
the strength and agility of their own hind-legs and
their own powers of reproduction. Truly the hare
is among the marvels of modern existence.

My sympathies are all with the village poacher,
though hating the petty meannesses and unmanly
vengeances peculiar to the class. The hare is a
glorious creature of the chase, to be coveted not
so much for its value as so much meat, but for the

THE BROWN HARE. 201

joy of having outwitted a waiy quarry. The hare-
poacher, whatever he may be as we see him to-day,
the product of rough beds and tap-rooms, must at
some time of his life have possessed a very real
love for the great outdoors, backed by a sense of
romance concerning the life that dwells therein.
Meagre results, irregular hours, a temperament
which shuns the prescribed pathways of life for an
existence of freedom and excitement, have reduced
him to what he is as viewed by the world at large ;
but beneath the rough exterior there often dwells
a spirit of kindly and sympathetic understanding.
He might, indeed, have been a poet, had not society
designed for him the fate of the moucher.

Concerning the hare's modern foes, it is interest-
ing to note that in bush countries, such as northern
Canada, man is not among the hare's natural foes.
I have sat by a camp-fire in the Ontario bush, and
seen a ' snowshoe rabbit ' hop to within reach of
my axe, and sit there calmly grooming itself. Yet
these same hares, which simply did not recognise
man as an enemy till they had learnt by sad
experience his true nature, would bolt from a dog,
and put up as fine a run for their lives as any
creature of their size in this country. It was
merely that the dog came within the scope of their
hereditary foes, while of man they possessed no
inherited dread.

Will the hare come in time to eschew the open
gateway or the gap in the boundary wall ? Will
the hempen-net and the drift-net and the snare some
day rank among this animal's hereditary foes ? Not
in our time, nor in the days of our grandchildren's
grandchildren. Such knowledge takes as long
to acquire as the growth of new teeth to suit
changed conditions of diet, or the cultivation of

202 THE BROWN HARE.

a new coat to suit a landscape which has changed
in colour. It is not a matter of ten years, or
yet of ten hundred, but of unchanged conditions
throughout immeasurable time, that produces in-
herited knowledge.

The wolf and the coyote have learnt the meaning
of strychnine and of the buried trap, and how to
evade them. They have changed with the times ;
they have become modernised, and thus have
managed to hold their own. But in their case
the experience of the parents is handed on to the
children ; only thus have they survived, and the
hare is denied the privilege which comes to them
as a birthright. He is a creature of the open,
trusting solely to his superb powers of flight to
evade his foes. Denied the benefit of the experi-
ence of his parents, he will make for the open
so long as he is pursued, and will fall to the
poacher at the gap or the gateway at which his
mother and his mother's mother fell.

A good many hares are killed on the railway-
lines, and a railway workman employed in Norfolk
told me that in the early summer, when the young
hares of the season are first abroad, he procured
many a Sunday dinner in the shape of a partly
mangled hare found on the line. Evidently
they run in front of the train just as they run
ahead of an automobile on the road, sticking to
the open way instead of turning aside and so out
of danger. An old hare, however, is seldom killed
thus, just as an old partridge is seldom killed by
flying into the telegraph-wires.

MATING.

March is the hare's love-making season ; hence
the saying, ' Mad as a March hare ! ' Hares are

THE BROWN HARE. 203

truly mad in March, and during that month many
a stern battle takes place between the gentlemen
who, unfortunately, fall in love with the same
lady, which appears to be the common order of
things. Neither are the contests worked out on
Marquis of Queensberry rules, the chief ambition
of every gentleman hare in March being to kick
every other gentleman hare into insensibility.
The one who can jump highest and kick hardest
wins the fair lady, and it is a laughable sight to
see two hares indulging in one of these sky-
hopping contests. Taking a run at each other,
they collide in mid-air, striking furiously, each
trying to kick the other over the wall and into
the next field. I have seen two hares, startled
by a common foe, make off side by side, and
simultaneously take one of these running jumps
at each other ere going fifty yards, to come to
earth and repeat the performance time and again
till finally out of sight. Also, a male hare, on
seeing a rival, will stand straight up on his hind-
legs, appearing of enormous size, and utter such
a scream of rage that the other hare will bolt
rather than remain to fight this veritable elephant
among hares I

BREEDING.

The Mad Moon lasts generally into the second
week of April,* and at about this time the first
leverets of the season come into the world. Hares
continue to breed till September, and at least three
litters are produced annually. Curiously enough,

* In Scotland and in the Pennines hares may be seen in pairs, or even
in groups, during the dusk of the evening, till well on in the month of
May, or even later in very high country. Much depends on the weather
conditions. — H. M. B.

204 THE BROWN HARE.

the young are born with their eyes open, though
they remain in the form till about a fortnight old.
Gestation takes approximately four weeks, and
two or three at a birth is the usual number.
During the periods of abnormal increase in their
numbers, to which subsequent reference is made,
five or even six may be born, but the number
always returns to the original two or three.
The young are mature at one year, and the
first two years of a hare's life are the most
critical. If it survives these, it is well on the
way to becoming a wise hare, which is the only
hare that lives till the decline of its powers
heralds its going.

As soon as the young are old enough to leave
the nest they are able to dispense with the services
of their mother. Each day thereafter they become
more and more independent of her, living their
lives apart. By this time she has probably formed
new associations, and is well on the way to the
production of another family. It is seldom that
the young are seen following the mother, except,
perhaps, during abnormally dry seasons, when water
becomes necessary to their existence ; then, occa-
sionally, the young may be seen accompanying the
dam down to the drinking-place. She will, how-
ever, fight on their behalf till she becomes occupied
with a second brood, and the squeal of one of her
leverets brings her instantly to the place, prepared
to do battle with cat or stoat as the occasion may
demand.

In passing to and from the form in which her
young are hidden, a mother -hare exercises the
utmost care to break the line of tell-tale scent she
leaves. This she does by back-tracking a certain
distance, so as to leave a dead end in her trail ;

THE BKOWN HARE. 205

then she takes a terrific leap to one side or the
other, and repeats the performance. I knew one
hare whose leverets were hidden at the edge of a
swamp, and in coming and going she always
threaded a tortuous course through this swamp,
jumping and back-tracking many times, and seeking
out the wettest patches, where the scent would
not lie.

I have heard of a hare leaping on to a hedgerow,
then off again at a tangent, in order to break the
line ; and I have watched one leap into a swamp
that lay out of its direct pathway when going
down to its feeding-grounds — the diversion being
made, apparently, for the sole purpose of breaking
the line.

INTELLIGENCE.

Just where does the hare stand in the scale of
animal intelligence ? Higher than the rabbit, yet a
long way below the deer and the otter. It has not
even advanced to the first stage of civilisation by
keeping its home clean and sanitary, and in this
may lie the secret of the fearful epidemics which
occasionally devastate the whole hare population
of certain areas.

But the hare profits by previous experience, and
in this lies the beginning of wisdom. A mother-
rabbit blunders into the same mistakes season by
season, and her young are taken from her by the
same harsh fate ; but a hare seldom blunders
twice into the same mistake. ' Once bitten, twice
shy,' is the axiom of her existence. The whole
trouble lies in the fact that the young do not
profit by the experience of their elders. Each
has its own way to make and its own experience
to gain. Were this not so, the hare would

206 THE BROWN HARE.

assuredly be among the fittest of the land, for to
its natural gifts would be added the ability
to adapt itself to changed conditions, and thus
to become modernised, as have the deer, the
otter, and the fox.

DISEASES.

But it is as well the knowledge gained by
experience is not transmitted, or nature would
fall back upon disease to make up what was
lost by the baffling of the hare's foes. In this
country the hare population is reasonably free
from disease, owing to the fact that they are
never over-plentiful ; but in other countries the
number of hares periodically becomes so enormous
that they literally overrun the land. In certain
parts of Canada, for instance, hare plagues occur
regularly. In two or three seasons their numbers
increase from a moderate sprinkling to tens of
hundreds per square mile. It becomes impos-
sible for man to cope with their numbers, for
thousands may be killed without making any
appreciable difference. One can stand in a
clearing of the forest and count literally dozens
of hares without moving one's standpoint. Seton
estimates their numbers at such times as five
thousand to the square mile, allowing one mile
in two as not suited to the hare's tastes, and,
therefore, being unoccupied by them, which means
ten thousand to the square mile of suitable
grazing.

Such plagues do not last long — a few months
at the most sees them through ; for disease, every
disease under the sun, soon becomes rife, and in a
season or two not a hare is left. It takes not only
the weak, but also the strong ; it clears the whole

THE BROWN HARE. 207

country of its hare population, and the dead bodies
of the victims are littered like leaves over hundreds
of miles of territory.

HABITS IN SNOW.

The ' long valley' hare, like the rabbit, is subject
to fits of torpor during periods of deep snow and
cold. Seeking out its form, it allows itself to be-
come snowed in, and there remains, perhaps, for
several days in a more or less torpid condition.
This is about the wisest thing it could do under
the circumstances, for a hare in deep snow is de-
prived of its only weapon of self-defence — its speed
— and is, therefore, at the mercy of its foes — man
included. Its enemies, moreover, realise its help-
lessness at such times, and are quick to profit by
the fact. One cannot imagine a kestrel being
guilty of attacking a hare in normal times, but
this small hawk will readily do so when the
hare is at a disadvantage in the snow. One
snowy morning I was walking down a hedge-
row in Northamptonshire, when I heard a hare
screaming in a thicket ahead. Going up to
the place and beating the hedge, I was sur-
prised to see a hare make off from one side
and a small kestrel from the other. Evidently
the hawk had attacked the hare out in the open,
but, unable to hold it, had been dragged into
the hedge.

I once shot a merlin which was seated, as I
thought, on the snow. Going up to it, I found
that the little bird had just killed a white
mountain-hare, which was several times larger
than itself.

Thus the hare's possible enemies in normal times
become probable enemies in snow times, and wise

208 THE BROWN HARE.

is the hare that during such season hides deep
under the drifts.

SWIMMING.

Few people, perhaps, have seen a hare de-
liberately take to the water, for this animal
is no more partial to such an element than is
the cat ; yet a hare, hard pressed, will enter water
and swim for its life as readily as any other
creature.

When fishing in the Galloway highlands, a
friend and I noticed a hare browsing on a point of
land jutting far out into the loch, so we promptly
cut off the only possible land retreat and began
to approach the animal. Speculation was rife
as to whether it would take to the water, or
whether it would try to dodge between us, which
it could easily have done without passing danger-
ously near. Finding itself in difficulties, the hare
ran backwards and forwards once or twice in
search of a dry way of escape, but discovering itself
marooned, it jumped unhesitatingly into the loch,
and struck out manfully for the nearest point, fully
ninety yards away. Its action in the water was
truly ludicrous, for it swam in a series of bounds,
propelled evidently by the hind -legs. At first
each stroke raised it head and shoulders out of
the water ; then it would sink back till almost
totally submerged ; but as the distance increased
the strokes became feebler and more erratic, till
we feared the poor beast would drown. It just
succeeded in getting across, however, but had the
water been really cold it would probably have
perished.

I have at other times seen hares swim short
distances, but from the exhibition just described,

THE BLUE HARE— 'WHERE NONE DARE FOLLOW.'
W.A. N

* ^

•«»»

THE BROWN HARE. 209

I should put this animal down as a very feeble
swimmer.

SECRET OF SURVIVAL.

Wherein lies the secret of the hare's survival ?
In its fecundity, and there alone. It survives
simply because it is better able to stand the huge
drainage on its numbers than the creatures that
once shared its environment, but are now gone.
In some districts its numbers have dwindled to
the merest few, and were it nowhere preserved
its extermination would be a matter of ten years
at the most. Over vast areas of country the
hares are totally exterminated by the end of
winter ; but during spring and summer, when the
warfare against them abates a little, other hares
creep in from the sanctuaries farther afield, and
make good the shortage. Our old English and
Scottish estates are responsible for keeping the
hare alive ; and were they to go, the hare would
most assuredly go with them, and we should lose
a creature that is not only inoffensive to man,
but is a joy to behold — truly a child of the wild
March winds and of the great open places.

SPECIES.

Ireland rejoices in a species of hare — among
other things — quite its own. The Irish hare has
been introduced to Great Britain, and the British
hare to Ireland.

LENGTH OF LIFE.

I have no notes on the length of life of captive
hares, but there is no doubt that if both were in
captivity the hare would in all probability outlive
the rabbit by two or three years. In the wild this

W.A. n

210 THE BROWN HARE.

does not apply, for, whereas a wild rabbit may live
to become old and decrepit, a hare never does. As
soon as its senses begin to lose their keenness, it
inevitably falls a victim to one or other of its foes.
A rabbit can seek the shelter of mother-earth, and
becoming conscious of its enfeebled state, it ceases
to wander far afield, remaining always near to some
place of sanctuary. Not so the hare. When old
age comes upon him, he must still sally forth into
the open, meeting his foes on their own ground ;
and the day of his first and last failure inevitably
dawns with the falling off of his powers.

The average hare is well past its prime at nine ;
it is old at ten ; and few, if any, live to see twelve.

WEIGHT.

The mean weight of the brown hare is between
7 and 9 Ib. A 9-lb. hare is a good one ; and 11-lb.
hares are occasionally heard of, though seldom
bagged.

THE BLUE OR MOUNTAIN HARE.

Known also as the Snow- Hare, the White Hare,
the Varying Hare, &c.

'TpHOUGH indigenous only to the Highlands
J- of Scotland, this distinct species has been
introduced to most parts of the Scottish Lowlands,
where it now flourishes exceedingly, also to Wales,
Northumberland, Yorkshire, Cheshire, and other
English counties. In Scotland generally it is on
the increase, and in some parts its progress is
marked by a proportionate decrease in the number
of brown hares — probably a matter of cycle in
both cases.

Both in character and in appearance the blue
hare is more nearly related to the wild rabbit than
is the brown. Whence came its name it is difficult
to ascertain, for it is not blue. The species is most
easily distinguished from the brown hare by its
ears, which are proportionately shorter and smaller,
while the black tips are less distinct ; the ears of
the blue hare are, indeed, very much like those of
the rabbit. Its limbs are shorter, more compact,
and designed less for speed. Its head is more
stubby and rounder, and its tail consists of a white
ball of wool, like that of the rabbit. It is consider-
ably smaller than its congener, and its coat is softer
in texture, more woolly, and shorter ; while the
species is without the strong, cat-like whiskers of
the brown hare. The undercoat is seal-blue, the
hair being tipped with rabbit-brown, and in parts
touched with the russet shades of the common
hare, so that when the coat becomes worn a dis-
tinct bluish cast predominates, rare individuals

212 THE BLUE OR MOUNTAIN HARE.

being quite blue. Normally the blue hare is no
more blue than is the brown rabbit.

In December the blue hare begins to 'turn
white,' in order ' to match the snow.' Asa matter
of fact, the 'turning' process is effected by a moult,
as in the case of its near relative, the snowshoe
rabbit of North America ; and so far as the animal
matching its winter surroundings goes, it would
probably be better off if it remained brown. The
change is not always complete. A certain amount
of colour-pigment generally remains down the
spine, and the ears always retain their black tips
by way of a striking contrast. This fact would
seem to support the theory that animals that are
essentially creatures of the chase are coloured so
as to attract, rather than evade, detection when
they rise in flight. By the end of December most
of the hares are in full winter coat, which they
carry till March, when they quickly reassume their
spring-time garb.

DISPOSITION.

The blue hare is a less cautious and a less wary
animal than the brown. When disturbed it does
not run right away, but generally sits up and looks
curiously round after running a few paces, and
this it repeats several times ere finally passing out
of sight. I have known one to come limping un-
concernedly up to the butts where the guns were
in full blast, and to regard the sportsmen with cool
inquiry ! Often these hares are a great nuisance
on the moors, as their stupidity is apt to distract
the attention of the dogs.

Though a comparatively solitary creature, the
blue hare is nevertheless more gregarious than
the brown. Sometimes, during a severe winter,

THE BLUE On MOUNTAIN HARE. 213

the animals will migrate from one range to an-
other, or from the heights to the more sheltered
levels, and at such times quite a string of them
may be seen moving in company, apparently enjoy-
ing each other's society by jumping and skipping
together.

If the white coat of the blue hare were intended
for protective purposes, nature would seem to have
made a badj'auxpas. True that during the winter
months the hills of this creature's habitat are
generally white ; but if there is a black spot any-
where, such as under the shelter of an overhanging
rock, any white hare in the vicinity is sure to go
and sit on it, vastly conspicuous from afar. Also,
the hares naturally seek out any patch on the hill-
side that is wind-swept of snow, so that when pro-
tection is most needed — namely, when they are at
their feeding-grounds, or when basking in the day-
light— they are more likely to be rendered con-
spicuous by their ' protective colouring ' than they
are to derive protection from it, especially when
it is borne in mind that the most deadly of the
snow-hare's natural foes are the eagle and the
peregrine.

RANGE.

Normally the blue hare and the brown do not
interbreed, though their ranges considerably over-
lap. I have known brown hares to live the season
through at an altitude of sixteen hundred feet,
coming down to feed during the winter months in
the valley-levels, but immediately returning to the
heights when disturbed. Two thousand feet is
probably the topmost altitude of the brown hare's
range, except during hot summer months, when it
may mount to an altitude of two thousand five

214 THE BLUE OR MOUNTAIN HARE.

hundred feet. Above that the territory is sacred
to the blue.

Blue hares, on the other hand, observe no fixed
rule as to boundary. The heights are theirs un-
dividedly, but they are quite at home in the
valleys. Occasionally a very severe winter will
drive all the blue hares from the heights into the
sheltered lowlands, where they remain at river-level
intermingling with the brown. Particularly does
this occur along the Scottish coast, and it may
be well into spring ere the last of the mountain
residents find their way back into the mountains.
In such cases interbreeding often occurs, but the
offspring of such unions are evidently pukka
hybrids, for, so far as I know, no intermediate
strain has ever been established.

The blue hare is not very much valued by
sportsmen. Existing as it does in the realms of
nobler game, it is generally regarded as vermin.
Systematic hare-drives are regularly organised in
the hills in order to keep the number of blue hares
within reasonable limits, and in some parts of the
Highlands it is no uncommon thing for as many as
a thousand hares to fall to six or seven guns during
a day's drive. For the table the blue hare is
regarded as inferior to the brown, but the quality
of its flesh is entirely dependent on the nature of
its food. A hare that has lived on heather and
similar mountain vegetation is not good to eat,
but one that has fed in the valleys is as good
as any other hare. The snowshoe rabbit of the
Canadian woods is quite unfit for human con-
sumption during the winter months, when the
animals live exclusively on the tough evergreens
and the bark of sapless trees ; but a spring-fed
snowshoe is excellent eating.

THE BLUE OR MOUNTAIN HARE. 215

The snow-hare has larger feet than the 'long
valley' hare, to enable it the better to skim the
drifts, and, needless to add, it is a much hardier
and more violent animal.

BREEDING.

Whereas the brown hare produces on an average
three litters per year, the season for the mountain-
hare is shorter, and it seldom, if ever, produces
more than two litters annually. What it loses in
this way, however, it makes up in the number of
young per litter. A brown hare may breed three
times during the year and produce a total of seven
young ; a blue hare may breed twice and produce
eight. For, whereas two or three kits per litter is
the normal number of the brown hare's brood, four
or five regularly occur with the blue.

A brown hare may, certainly, have as many as
eight kits per litter, but hi that case she breeds
at the most only twice, possibly only once, in the
season. A blue hare may similarly have eight or
nine to the litter ; but even if the number mount
to ten, she is still fairly sure to produce her two
litters. Thus, not only on account of its hardy
disposition and the seclusion of the regions it
inhabits, but also on account of its fecundity, the
blue hare is better able to hold its own than is the
brown; and with the increasing rarity of eagles
and peregrines the reduction of its numbers is
almost undividedly in the hands of man.

The mating activities of the blue hare occur
almost entirely by night. Very little seems to be
known as concerns this chapter of the animal's
existence. There is no particular reason to suppose,
however, that its mating customs differ widely from
those of the brown. That the same old fights

216 THE BLUE OR MOUNTAIN HARE.

occur between the rival bucks is indicated by the
tufts of hair that cling in patches to the ling-tips
during the Love Moon, and the creatures are, of
course, polygamous.

FOOD.

The strong teeth of the blue hare enable it to
eat almost any vegetable matter that comes its
way. It is less of a dainty feeder than is the
brown. I have known it to eat, or at any rate
to tear asunder, the cones of coniferous trees,
probably to obtain the seed, leaving the earth lit-
tered with husks, as does the common squirrel.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.

The blue hare is nothing like so speedy, nor is
it so resolute in flight, as is the brown. A good
sheep-dog can run it down — often without any
great resistance on the part of the hare.

It is seldom indeed that a brown hare takes to
earth, whereas a blue hare will den up readily if
hard pressed — seeking safety in a cranny among
the rocks or in a disused rabbit-burrow. A Perth-
shire keeper showed me several short burrows or
seats scratched in the peat, so shallow that one
could in every case reach the end with a walking-
stick. The keeper himself was most emphatic in
his belief that these shafts were engineered by the
hares as emergency tunnels, chiefly for shelter from
birds of prey, and he assured me that the hares
regularly used them as breeding-nests ; but this I
very much doubt. There seemed to be a lack of
evidence to prove that the burrows were not the
work of rabbits, taken possession of by the hares,
though the keeper had probably more grounds for
his beliefs than there were tor my scepticism.

THE BLUE OR MOUNTAIN HARE. 217

Information bearing on this point would lead to
a more complete understanding of the blue hare's
habits.

WEIGHT.

The weight of the blue hare is generally between
5 and 6 Ib. Where food and conditions are favour-
able, it attains a weight not exceeding 8 Ib. Its
average length from the nose to the tip of the tail
is 21 inches, as compared with 23 inches in the
brown.

THE RABBIT.

AS a rule, young rabbits are born in a shallow
-i*. burrow known as the 'stop' or the 'stab,'
often not more than a yard in depth, and so small
that one would hardly think an adult rabbit could
squeeze into it. Generally this hole is out in the
centre of an open field, facing south for warmth.
It is the rabbit's first step towards hiding her
young, though her ideas in this direction are
still so undeveloped that she often digs her stop
within view of the whole colony, the fierce old
bucks of which are as great a source of danger to
her children as is the weasel or the stoat. The nest
consists largely of down the mother has stripped
from her own breast, intermingled with soft dry
grass or moss scratched from the rocks, so that
nothing warmer and softer could be imagined.
While the young are still blind and helpless,
the mother sometimes, but not always, covers the
mouth of the hole, on leaving it, with sand and
loose bedding, treading down the covering so that
it resembles the features of the surrounding earth.*
Nature devotes a good deal of energy, however,
to keeping the rabbit population within reasonable
limits, and it is just as well that it is so ; other-
wise Bunny would overrun the whole universe.
Often this thinning-out process begins before the
babes have seen the light of day. Perhaps
the mother is young and inexperienced in nest-
making, and instead of digging the burrow half-

* This occurs only in the case of a 'stop;' when the yonng are
born in a common burrow, the mother never attempts to close the
entrance. — H. M. B.

THE RABBIT. 219

way up the sloping bank, she digs it at the bottom,
and the day after her infants are born there occurs
a heavy thunder-storm. Water collects in the little
hollow, and begins to trickle into the burrow. It
may finally fill the chamber within, drowning the
whole family ; or it may merely damp the bedding.
In the latter case three of the young ones, perhaps,
contract paralysis, a fourth dies, while the remaining
two, being sturdier than the rest, take no harm.
When the mother comes again to feed them, she
rakes out the dead one, and evidently carries it
off so as not to advertise the whereabouts of her
home, for I have never seen the missing member of
the family lying near the nest. Yesterday there
were six in the hole ; to-day there are only five.
The weakly one is gone, but there is no sign to
indicate where.

In a few days all the young have their eyes open,
and are old enough to begin to think about a
vegetable diet. The first favourable night, there-
fore, the mother leads them out of the nursery-
burrow into the moonlight, shepherding them and
pushing them along, while, dazzled and bewildered,
they try to get beneath her. Slow is the progress
that they make; but presently, topping a ridge,
they see scores of other rabbits squatting about
on the moonlit plateau, some quietly feeding, and
others sit up with ears erect, doing sentry-go.

The mother-rabbit now becomes very goggle-
eyed and important, stamping her hind-legs as she
herds the sprawling little ones across the open.
Several rabbits sit up and look at her ; then,
seeming to take it as a matter of course, go on
with their feeding. One long-legged old gentleman
(more like a hare than a rabbit), through whose
ears there are many shot-holes, hops up with a

220 THE RABBIT.

look of inquiry, circles inquisitively round once or
twice, then scratches his neck with an air of in-
difference. His very manner seems to indicate that
this old fighting buck is the king of the colony,
and that one will hear more about him later on.

The mother-rabbit takes her family to the home-
warren, whither most young rabbits go as soon as
their nest-days are over, and here their worldly
training begins. By no means are they the only
young rabbits occupying the burrow, for on sunny
days scores of the same age are to be seen sitting
about the warren- entrances, enjoying the warmth,
or shivering in the wind, between intervals of
nibbling the closely cropped grass.

As the days pass they find more and more of
their own food, thus becoming less and less de-
pendent on their mother ; and she, sad to relate,
is very rapidly losing interest in them. Old Long-
Legs, the king of the colony, now begins to make
himself felt. When he has nothing else to do,
or the time seems favourable — whenever, indeed,
he happens to think of it — he amuses himself by
chasing the youngsters through the burrows, kick-
ing them and nipping them, and making himself
an unholy terror in their lives. At first their
mother sticks up for them in a half-hearted way,
for they are still quite small. But soon she seems
actually to forget which are her children among
the many that throng the burrows ; and so Long-
Legs bites their ears, kicks them head over heels,
chases them, and makes them squeal for mercy,
till finally they run and hide at the sight of him.

NIGHT FEEDING.

Each night the young rabbits venture a little
farther afield, becoming more and more interested

THE RABBIT. 221

in the movements of their elders. At dusk an
old doe sits up and begins to hop out along one
of the clearly defined runways that lead from the
burrows. Slowly and cautiously she goes, placing
her feet just where she placed them last night and
the night before, while behind her comes first one
rabbit, and then another. A second old doe (a
buck never leads) sets out along a second run-
way, leading in the opposite direction; then the
move becomes a general one, almost every adult
rabbit sallying forth on its nightly foray. For
a minute or two the whole earth is brown with
them, and one would never believe a single
warren could contain so many residents. Rapidly,
almost mysteriously, they melt away. In the
dimness you just see a leading doe, perched like
a silhouette on the break in the wall, as she
pauses for a final survey ere she leads her train
into the next field. She disappears, and a second
black speck takes her place; then a third and a
fourth are seen, like bobbing clockwork toys ; till
finally the gathering darkness blurs out the gap.

Not long do the rabbits stick to their runways,
one branching off here and another there, so that
by the time the moon is up they are scattered all
over the country-side — old Long-Legs being two
miles away, nibbling a cottager's cabbages at the
very threshold of the village. At the home-burrow,
squatting about the plateau, there remain only a
sprinkling of youngsters^and a few nursing mothers
keeping guard.

The youngsters join in at the tail-end of the
procession ere very long. The first night out,
the wall across the meadow appears to them as an
insurmountable obstacle, so they nibble the grass
on this side of it; the night following they try

222 THE RABBIT.

the leap, and succeed, browsing on the other side ;
ere a week is up they are nibbling the grass
nearly a mile away — keeping a weather-eye open
for Long-Legs, who is apt to pounce furiously
upon them at any time.

All along nature's weeding-out process, designed
to keep their numbers in check, is going on.
There comes a rainy spell, during which several
of the young rabbits contract liver complaints
through eating too much wet grass, and die. In
the wood near there lives a wild-cat of the tame
variety. She actually shares a room under a rock
with several adult rabbits, and each night she
steals forth along a rabbit-runway, as though
she were one of the colony; yet ten minutes
later she is crouching behind a wall, a sinister
vision of bristling fur and gleaming eyes, wait-
ing for the first unwary youngster that comes
her way !

Then one night a whole battalion that set off
northwards fails to return ; and at dawn, before
the respectable world is astir, a ramshackle motor-
car takes a sackload of netted rabbits to a neigh-
bouring station.

In spite of these drainages, however, the home-
warren becomes more and more thickly stocked,
every mother taking her young there as soon
as they are old enough. And now we see the
value of old Long-Legs, who in the past has been
a bully and a tyrant, apparently neither useful
nor ornamental. The family whose career we have
so far followed are now strong and independent ;
but Long-Legs is still the terror of their lives,
driving them out whenever he sees them, as if
intent on inflicting some bodily injury. Glad to
be rid of him, they turn at length to the great

THE RABBIT. 223

wood at the mountain-foot to the west, and here,
among the loose rocks, thickly overgrown with
bracken and briar, they make homes for them-
selves, free to do what they choose.

THE OVERFLOW FOREST.

This wood is really the overflow reservoir for
the home-burrow. Each year scores of young
rabbits have been taken to the burrow, remaining
there till old enough to take care of themselves ;
and then, bullied and harried by some old buck,
they have gladly moved to the shelter of the
wood, which, as the season proceeds, becomes
thronged with the surplus stock of young rabbits.
Were it not for this the home-burrow would
become overcrowded, and disease, nature's never-
failing remedy, would fall upon the colony.

COMMUNICATION.

Almost all animals of gregarious habits have ways
of signalling danger to one another. The beaver,
when alarmed, strikes the water with its tail as
it dives ; and this system of signalling is of value
in that it conveys the warning to the members
of the colony who are under water, preventing
them from rising hap-hazard, while at the same
time the loud report is heard by the beavers on
land, admonishing them to be on the qui vive. The
rabbit thumps the ground with his hind-legs when
danger threatens, and, just like the 'smack' system
employed by the beaver, this notice conveys the
tidings to those below in addition to those feeding
on the earth's surface.

One of the first things young rabbits learn to
do is to signal danger by thumping the ground
with their strong hind-legs, and it is to be feared

224 THK RABBIT.

that in their inexperience and ignorance they
misuse the alarm when they are small, thumping
away at the very slightest pretext, and apparently
carrying on a Morse system of telegraphy with
each other in this way. Little Bill, nibbling the
grass, sees a beetle fall off a twig, arid at once
thumps ; Janie, down below, thumps in answer ;
then everybody else thumps, because it is the
fashionable thing to do, and the very earth shakes.
Having thus scared themselves, they all keep
quiet for a second or two, then forget all about
it till another false alarm is given.

Old rabbits, however, never thump unless they
suspect serious danger, and the more suspicious
they are the more vigorously they thump, the system
being of endless value in their constant watchful-
ness for their foes. One night, for example, when
most of the rabbits are away at their distant feeding-
grounds, the few that remain at home at the
warren — namely, the very young and the nursing
mothers — hear the alarm afar off, and at once are
on their guard, drawing near the mouths of the
holes so that they can instantly pop underground.
The alarm was possibly given by a rabbit three
fields away, thumping as he ran, and on the still
night the sound carries far and wide, warning
the entire rabbit population of the district that
danger is abroad. Similarly, one rabbit above
ground sees danger approach the warren, and
giving the alarm -signal as he pops down, he
warns all the rest against emerging, which other-
wise they might easily do, to meet danger at
their very threshold.

Then rabbits have another and a far more
important way of signalling danger to each other,
which they do unintentionally and without sound.

WILD RABBITS— 'THE COLONY OF THE HUNTED.'

THE RABBIT. 225

There are times when the thump system would
merely attract the attention of their foes — when
it is better that every rabbit should steal swiftly
away, as silently as possible, as they often do.

Of what value is the rabbit's white tail ? One
would think it merely makes him conspicuous
when otherwise he might escape unseen ; and this,
indeed, is the case. His white tail is of no value
to him personally — in fact, he would be better
without it ; but it is endlessly valuable to his
friends, in the same way as their white tails are
endlessly valuable to him.

The whole colony is at its feeding-grounds, and
suddenly danger appears over the ridge. The
rabbits are as yet unseen, but the faintest sound
would betray their presence ; so the cony
nearest the danger rises and bolts swiftly and
silently, and every rabbit he passes sees a bobbing
white danger-signal, which means there is not a
moment to be lost. And each rabbit, as he beholds
it, rises and glides away, unintentionally giving
the alarm to those nearest to him, so that in a
few seconds it has spread north and south and
down the forest -side, and the man stealing
through the shadows with his gun wonders why
there is not a rabbit abroad to-night, for by the
time he reaches the foot of the wood the alarm
has flashed ahead of him over two or three fields !

Many a time, in the dusk of evening, I have
peered down into a ravine I knew to be literally
full of rabbits, but not one of them could I see
until, on my loosening a pebble, the whole green-
sward below has instantly become dotted with
bobbing white danger-signals, nothing else being
visible. For the rabbit does not exhibit his white
tail when feeding ordinarily ; it is only when he

W.A. o

226 THE RABBIT.

rises and runs that it shows up vastly visible, and
he can run at full speed through the densest of
undergrowth without displacing a leaf.

On their runways, rabbits always place their
feet in exactly the same places, so that the track,
instead of being evenly worn, like a human path-
way, consists of a string of worn patches, from
one to the other of which they hop. The rabbit-
catcher knows this, and places his snare in such
a way that it will catch the rabbit mid-leap ; but a
pathway of this kind is of value in that the patches
become trodden hard and free of crackling leaves
and twigs, so that the owners can run along it
without creating undue noise.

ENEMIES.

Rabbits appear to exist simply as a natural
food for other things — another reason, perhaps,
for the aforesaid white tail — and there is no end
to their foes. Guns, nets, snares, traps, dogs,
weasels, cats, and foxes are but a few of their
everyday enemies, for tens of thousands of rabbits
meet their fate annually by flood-water or by
disease. Those killed by man, the veritable cart-
loads which go to our cities each week during
autumn and winter — in fact, the whole year round
— are but a driblet compared with the gigantic drain
on their numbers effected by the ordinary course
of nature ; yet everywhere the rabbit thrives and
multiplies, often to so great an extent that the
most stringent measures have to be taken in order
to keep its numbers in check.

In the mountains of the north the rabbits, for
ages past, have made their burrows in the sandy
banks of the mountain-burns ; and the very fact
that these banks are of sandy formation, which

THE RABBIT. 227

so exactly suits the rabbit's burrowing habits,
proves that the streams are subject to sudden
torrent from the heights, the silting and sifting
process of endless floods having washed away
the earth and left only the insoluble sand.
Each year, when these burrows are full of young
rabbits, the flood -waters come down and ex-
terminate whole colonies — the victims merely
huddling in batches at the ends of their holes,
making no attempt to escape ere their retreat
is cut off. In fact, the abundance or scarcity of
rabbits in the autumn in these regions is governed
entirely by the number of spring and early summer
spates. If there have been no floods, then August
finds the glens and the woods alive with rabbits ;
but if, on the other hand, floods have been frequent,
there is hardly a rabbit to be found in the country
when August comes along. I have walked in
May down a glen, and seen more rabbits in five
minutes than one could count. Then have followed
days of thunder and heavy torrent on the heights,
the mountain-burn rising from a mere laughing
brooklet to a roaring cataract, bearing whole trees
on its troubled waters ; and when, a month later,
I have walked down that glen, scarcely a rabbit
have I seen. The receding waters draw hundreds
of the dead bodies from the burrows, bearing them
away to the sea.

It is just as well that nature should impose these
immense drainages. We have rid the land of many
of the rabbit's natural foes — the wolf, the eagle,
and so on — while foxes and weasels are everywhere
kept in check, so that, if nature did not inflict these
wholesale losses upon the rabbit's numbers, man
would be hard put to it to keep them down.

House-rats, indirectly, are among the rabbit's

228 THE RABBIT.

worst foes. When a rat becomes diseased he is
driven out by his fellows, and forced to make
his home far from them. Probably he resorts to
rabbit-burrows, and rabbits, being very subject
to disease of any kind, rapidly pick up the rat's
ailment, which spreads from one to another
throughout the whole colony — perhaps through-
out the whole country-side. Most of the rabbit's
fatal diseases are conveyed to him through the
loathsome house-rat, and ferreters regularly dis-
cover diseased rabbits and a diseased rat occupying
the same water-side burrow.

BLIND RABBITS.

Of all ways man employs of taking rabbits,
probably more fall by the snare than in any other
way, for its use is world-wide and universal. Every
village has its rabbit- catcher ; perhaps he is an
old man, who goes dothering round to look to
his snares long after he is too old for any active
form of hunting, and great is his fund of know-
ledge for the select few who come to know him.

Netting is the only humane way of catching
rabbits, as, in shooting, a certain percentage get
away, however deadly a shot one may be, to perish
miserably ; while in ferreting, numbers of rabbits
are injured by the ferret — if not by his teeth,
then by his claws — and have to be abandoned in
their burrows. I consider snaring more humane
than ferreting ; but the cruelty begins when old
and rotten snares are used, and the rabbit gets
away with the tightly drawn noose about his neck.

What fate is then in store for him ? Better far
that he had met the weasel on his own ground, or
perished by the flood-waters when he was small.
There is no getting rid of this hateful thing about

THE RABBIT. 229

his neck, and he does not know what ails him.
For days the wretched creature lingers between
some sheltering cranny and a patch of green-sward,
wearily dragging himself back and forth, unable
to eat or to take an active part in the world of
sunlight about ; and in the end blindness over-
comes him, if not death in some merciful form.

Sometimes, after days of torture, a rabbit gets
rid of the cruel noose, and finally recovers his
strength ; but he is now a blind rabbit. Every
colony of any size has its blind rabbits, just as long
ago every herd of buffaloes on the prairie had its
blind members. And just as the blind buffalo, his
other senses becoming quickened, was often the
first to give warning of danger to the rest of the
herd, so blind rabbits, feeding with the rest of
the colony, are frequently more alert and keen
than any of their brothers and sisters.

I have seen a rabbit, totally blinded by the
broken snare or by shot, get up and bolt like an
arrow on the first approach of danger, dipping
underground at the exact spot without hesitation
or fault. His foes are many, however, and, thus
greatly handicapped, it is merely a matter of time
ere he falls to one or other of them. Once off
his own runway, once turned aside from the path
he knows so well, and he stumbles, falls, and is
lost, finally crouching in the open without further
attempt to save himself.

The rabbit is swifter than the hare when on its
own ground and over a short distance, the superi-
ority of the hare lying in its staying-powers and in
its marvellous maintenance of a high average speed.

It is generally thought that the natural home of
the rabbit is its burrow, that this creature belongs
to the earth, and comes up only for food ; but this

230 THE RABBIT.

is not so. Like most wild creatures, rabbits love
the sunlight and the air as much as we do, and
seek the ground only as a place of sanctuary from
their foes or from storms. A far greater number
of rabbits live and have their homes above ground
than dwell in burrows, their open-air houses con-
sisting of little seats in the grass, wisely chosen to
suit the weather ; and here they crouch as you pass
by, never stirring unless you threaten actually to
tread on them.

In an alder-grove near to my house an old rabbit
had his home for a long time, seeking safety in the
midst of the village, and never associating with any
of his kind. He dined on the fat of the land —
namely, the produce of the village gardens ; and
though many a hairbreadth escape did he have,
for long he evaded his foes. I fancy he knew
every dog in the village, and how he could fool
each one of them. The big sheep-dogs he could
get rid of merely by running under a certain gate,
which was filled in with wire-netting, and the
pursuing dog, after ramming its face in the netting
and probably making its nose bleed, had lost so
much time that the cony was well able to get out
of sight and gain the shelter of a tiny bridge under
the burn, where no dog could reach him.

There was one dog, smaller and cleverer than the
rest, that many times all but brought about this
rabbit's destruction. This was a fox-terrier be-
longing to the rectory, and on seeing the cony
head for the gate he would at once dart through a
sheep-hole in the wall, and be ready to meet him
on the other side. But eventually the rabbit hit
upon the notion of diving under my summer-house,
where even the terrier could not follow, and that
world-wise little dog used to spend his Sundays,

THE RABBIT. 231

when the family was at church, undermining the
summer-house — quite oblivious of the fact that the
cony had long ago escaped from the other side,
and was now safely under the bridge.

There followed a very severe winter, and the
rabbit, hard pressed for food, took to gnawing
the bark from the garden trees, spoiling numbers
of them, so that a price was placed upon his head.
I could have shot him any day, but had not the
heart to do so, since he had thrown himself on my
charity, and regarded me entirely as a friend. So
I saw to it that all household refuse suitable for
rabbit consumption was placed near the door at
his disposal, and for weeks the cony fed at the
kitchen door, thriving and keeping fit during that
terrible spell of snow and frost.

This rabbit had no burrow, but in the alder-
grove he had many seats. It was a walled-off
patch of land, overgrown with coarse grass — a tiny
corner which belonged, I believe, to the church, but
in which no one seemed to be interested. Here
my little friend had fine-weather seats and wet-
weather seats, hot-weather seats and cold-weather
seats. Some were open and faced south, so as to
catch all the sun ; others were mere shady summer-
houses facing east ; while still others were deep
down in the grass, secure from wet and wind.

In the end this rabbit met a sad fate. Frightened
by village children one stormy April evening, he
sought his old sanctuary under the bridge, and a
few minutes later the burn began rapidly to rise.
The rabbit evidently stuck it till he was flooded
out ; then, forced to swim, he took to the water.
As bad luck would have it, the two sheep-dogs,
which he had fooled a hundred times, were just at
that moment crossing the bridge as they brought

232 THE RABBIT.

down the cows to be milked. One of them saw
the cony as he battled gamely with the current,
and his mate having been given the hint, the two
dogs took up their respective stations on opposite
sides of the burn.

Many times the rabbit tried to land, but always
a dog was waiting to snap him up. Well, he had
fooled them before, and he would fool them again !
This was the end, perhaps, but he would choose
his own closing chapter I

We saw him fighting gamely down the centre
of the stream, now disappearing bodily under the
surface, then struggling up again and sweeping on
with the current. The cow-boy and half-a-dozen
other youths had joined the dogs, pointing and
encouraging, throwing stones, sticks, anything they
could lay hands on, at the little fugitive, as though
he had not already difficulties enough to contend
with.

Did he try to land again ? Ah no ! — not to be
crumpled and crushed without a fight here on his
own land, where a hundred times he had beaten
them — singly or together — by his own fleetness
and quickness of wit. Fifty yards away the burn
joined the river, now bank-full with dark, racing
waters that crashed and roared among the rocks.

When last I saw my little friend he was drifting
rapidly — no longer struggling with a current far
too strong for him, but borne this way and that
like a straw in the rapids. I saw him reach the
point where the burn joins the river, and there,
with a mighty swish, he was gone !

A group of boys and two dripping dogs stood
like statues and stared across the troubled waters,
tinted now with the crimson and gold of evening
as they swept on their course through the quiet

THE RABBIT. 233

valley. Away off were the yapping of a sheep-dog
and the soft low of cattle, while overhead the jack-
daws and the rooks sailed clamorously home to
roost.

For nearly a year he had lived at my threshold,
but now I had seen him for the last time — leaving
his pursuers far behind, as so often before, but
heading at last into that wonderland of gold and
crimson whither our vision could not follow.

METHODS OF CATCHING.

Rabbits are valuable for food, and, moreover, it
is necessary for man to take a heavy toll of their
numbers owing to the damage they do to the land.
It is doubtful whether they can be raised profitably
on grazing-land at the customary market-price, as
not only do they keep the grass closely cropped,
but also they kill a good deal of it, while a sheep
will not eat where a rabbit has been. All these
things being so, it may be as well to describe one
or two of the methods employed by rabbit-catchers
in their necessary work of keeping the rabbit
population within reasonable limits.

One of the best rabbit-traps I know, and cer-
tainly the most humane, is the box-trap. This is
usually set in the surrounding wall of a wood
well peopled with rabbits. The rabbits leave the
wood every evening on their way to their feeding-
grounds, passing through holes in the wall wherever
there is a convenient runway for them. Let us
first describe the trap, when its manner of working
will become obvious.

Its first essential feature is a wooden tunnel or
runway which is built into the wall. This runway
is provided with a false floor, which can be locked,
but which, when unlocked, immediately swings

234 THE BABBIT.

downwards when a rabbit places its weight upon it,
returning to its natural position immediately the
weight is removed. Directly below this false floor
is the wooden box into which the deceived rabbit
falls, to remain a prisoner till the owner of the
trap comes along to empty the box. The whole
thing must be made to work freely and silently,
even though thoroughly saturated by rain.

This device is best set in position in the spring,
being placed in a locality which rabbits always
frequent. All spring the false floor is left locked,
so that the young rabbits become accustomed to
using the trap as a natural runway, care having
been taken to stop up the other gaps in the wall
above and below the box. By August, if all goes
well, numbers of rabbits will be passing nightly
over the false floor, regarding the tunnel as their
own property, and at any time the owner of the
trap likes he can release the false floor, and he is
pretty sure of a haul.

The advantage of this trap is that, when once
made, it lasts for years, providing good waterproofed
wood be used ; but it must be well made, any noise
or hitch in its working being likely to detract from
its value.

NETTING.

I have had many an exciting night netting
rabbits at the tail-end of the season, though for
this one must know one's ground pretty well, and
the runways of the rabbits that frequent it. Also
a clever dog, trained to the work, is more or less
necessary.

One waits till fall of darkness, by which time
the rabbits have left the wood and are well away
at their feeding-grounds ; then, very quietly, one

THE RABBIT. 235

steals into the wood, selecting as the position for
the nets a gap in the wall or an open gate which
the rabbits are known to use on returning from
their nightly wanderings. Silently then the nets
are fixed out in the open opposite the gap, two
of them being used, placed vertically, running
parallel about eight inches apart. The net which
the rabbits will first encounter is of fine mesh — too
fine for a rabbit to escape through ; but the other,
erected behind it, is of very large mesh — so large
that if used singly the rabbits could run straight
through it almost unhindered. The idea is that
the rabbits bolt into the first net, and, such is
the force of their rush, they pass through the
meshes of the second net also, carrying with them
the portion of the first net in which they are
enveloped. They thus become drawn up in a bag,
as it were, and are quite unable to escape, even
though left for some minutes. If a single net is
used, many of the rabbits, encountering it, at once
turn back and probably escape ; so that the man
in charge of the net must catch each rabbit as it
comes. In so doing he turns more than half
the rabbits aside, and thus spoils his chances of
a good catch. Hence the advantage of the double
net.

As soon as the nets are fixed, the men working
them hide behind the wall in readiness ; they
then give the word to the dog, who has been
waiting in shivering excitement for this part of
the performance. The dog, knowing his work
well, quietly circles round to the far side of the
rabbits, where he begins to show himself, slowly
quartering the ground towards the net.

The men crouching behind the wall hear the
' thump-thump-thump ! ' of an approaching outpost

236 THE KABBIT.

of the colony. Nearer and louder it sounds, till,
on the night stillness, it resembles the tread of
a galloping horse. Suddenly the net shakes, and
number one is fast in the meshes.

Thump-thump-thump ! Pitter-pat, pitter-pat,
pitter-pat ! Everywhere rabbits can be heard ; the
whole place seems alive with them ; yet, save for the
shaking of the net and the occasional flash of a
white tail, there is nothing to be seen. The noise
becomes louder — here and there the dark outline
of a cony is seen for an instant as it nips over the
wall. The net veritably creaks — one thinks that
the pegs must ere long be torn up by the solid
weight of rabbits flooding into it ; then there is a
sniffing and a snorting, and close behind the rear-
guard of the rabbit-colony the little spaniel heaves
in view, having done his work well. The net must
now be emptied without a moment's waste of time,
for the rabbits are already escaping, like herrings
from a salmon-net. In half-an-hour all is cleared
up, and we hasten silently to the other side of
the wood, or, perhaps, to the other side of the
valley, to repeat the performance.

Rabbit-netting is generally regarded as a poach-
ing, disreputable game, and so, alas ! it often is ;
but in many parts of the country it is resorted to
as one of the events of the year ! In the part of
Scotland where the writer lives, for example, no
one troubles to shoot rabbits, there being so much
nobler game to be had everywhere, with the result
that in some seasons rabbits exist in thousands, a
serious annoyance to farmers and foresters, eating
the grass, and stripping the young trees of their
bark. It is then that netting begins in earnest,
and to the accompaniment of dry humour and
an occasional wee dram a rollicking evening is

THE RABBIT. 237

spent — often more remarkable for the amount of
laughter it provokes than for the number of rabbits
finally sent to market.

SNARES.

Rabbit-snares are generally set with the bottom
of the loop the height of a man's clenched fist from
the ground, the fingers one above another, and the
thumb lying flat across the index-finger. (For a
hare, the bottom of the loop should be placed an
inch higher.)

The whole art of snaring lies injudicious selection
as regards the position of the snare. The actual
setting of it is merely mechanical, and can be learnt
by any one, but it requires a huntsman's sixth
sense to guide one in choosing the very best place
for that deadly noose. At one time I used to set
snares daily, and could almost state before starting
out to inspect them just where rabbits would be
found imprisoned ; but returning to the same
country after some years, I found, on trying my
hand, that I had forgotten the art, or, at any rate,
lost that guiding sixth sense that most hunters
acquire in the special lines they follow. The old
trapper knows by the general look of things where
to make his sets, but he certainly could not tell
you just why he knows or what it is that guides
him. Constant practice, close observation, and
what might be termed ' poachers' instinct ' are the
only guides to successful snaring of any kind, and
the best way to acquire these is to be dependent
on one's sets for one's next meal, as is so often the
case when travelling in a pioneer country.

It is a mistake to cover the whole ground with
snares ; use as few as possible, placing them only
on likely spots where they stand more or less

238 THE RABBIT.

shielded from view. If the runway is closely
examined, it will be found that it consists more
or less of a series of patches, the rabbits taking off
and landing at the same points while progressing
along it — that is, treading in each other's foot-
steps, as already described. Therefore place the
noose so that the rabbit will encounter it in
mid-leap.

Do not use old wires. When a wire has been
several times subjected to strain in all weathers
it becomes brittle, and it is then only a matter
of time before a rabbit gets away, to suffer tor-
ments from the tightly drawn noose about its neck.
There is no economy in employing old snares, and
their use is calculated to be abominably cruel, while
it takes but a few minutes to renew the wires at
regular intervals. Brass eyelets are made for the
purpose, and should always be used ; otherwise the
wire lasts a very short time, and the noose can
never be made to run so freely as is desirable.

The only hints I can give as regards choosing
the position for the snare is to select the most
likely-looking runway, and hide the snare in the
best way possible. It will sometimes be found
that rabbits are in the habit of running under a
gate, having trodden the grass away below the
bottom bar, and no better point could be chosen
for secreting the noose. Never set a snare at the
mouth of a hole or at a cranny in the wall ; place
it on one of the runways leading to and from the
burrow along the edge of the wood, or a few feet
from the cranny in the wall.

If the ground be of a consistency which does not
permit it to hold the peg very firmly, it is not a
bad plan to tie a branch across its centre to the top
of the peg, so that, should the peg be drawn, the

THE. RABBIT. 239

branch will be dragged along crosswise, or at right
angles to the path chosen by the rabbit. Thus if
he tries to hole-up he is detained at the mouth ;
while if he keeps to the open he is not likely to
travel far, the branch hitching up in the first fence
or wall he encounters. At all events, the plan
generally enables one to recover the snare, if not
to capture the rabbit.

Very good results are often obtained by placing
the snares in a wood where the runways are distinct,
and where there is ample natural cover for the wire
noose.

The Indian snare is by far the most humane,
being designed to hoist the captured animal high
into the air, out of the way of forest thieves such
as cats and foxes. The noose is arranged as in
an ordinary peg-snare, but instead of the cord
being attached to a peg driven into the ground,
it is fastened to one notched to engage with a
separate ground-peg. The notched peg is attached
at its other extremity to a cord holding down a
sapling (or a branch) so that when the snare is
sprung this sapling springs back into its natural
position, hoisting the captured animal off its feet,
and practically hanging it on the spot. There is
not much chance of an animal escaping from a
snare of this kind, as it is never able to obtain a
fair purchase on the ground, and the device is
used by the Indians not only for rabbits, but for
foxes, bears, lynxes, &c., which would very soon
gain their freedom by biting through the detaining
cord were they able to get hold of it. The same
plan is used for deer — even the gigantic moose and
caribou — though there is no need to express an
opinion on the matter of snaring such noble
game in any country save in one where they are

240 THE RABBIT.

urgently needed for food. This snare takes too
much setting to be popular among rabbiters,
and I have never known it to be used in the
British Isles.

The foregoing, though in no way intended as a
guide to the ' gentle art of snaring,' may prove of
interest as a side-path of woodcraft concerning
which so little is known by the respectable lovers
of outdoor life. Truly the man who knows best
the runways of wild nature is the man whose pocket
is to some extent dependent on them ; though such
an individual, having gained his knowledge by
years of toil and observation, is naturally some-
what reluctant to part with it.

MATING AND YOUNG.

Rabbits are polygamous — or, rather, they are
wholly licentious as regards their marriage cus-
toms. ' Faint heart never won fair lady ' is the
code of the rabbit metropolis, and he who, by
strength of hind-leg and readiness of tooth, is best
able to hold his own against his fellows is, to put
it bluntly, the father of the most children.

A doe wild rabbit probably begins to breed when
three months old. Some naturalists put the age
at six months ; but since a rabbit is full-grown at
three months, and it is no uncommon thing to
find does that are not full-grown already heavy
with young, three months would seem to be a
conservative estimate.

The number produced per litter varies with the
time of the year. An early spring or a late autumn
litter may number only three or four, late spring
and summer litters being from five to ten. The
young are born blind and deaf; they begin to
hear at the end of ten days, and their eyes to

THE RABBIT. 241

open about the eleventh day. These data are the
result of observation among the rabbits of the
Pennine heights. The young are independent of
their mother when about three weeks old during
a season of plenty, and almost as soon as they are
self-supporting she begins to bethink herself of yet
another family. Indeed, it would seem that the
female pairs again within twenty-four hours of
producing her young ; and having these facts to
work upon, it does not require much imagination
for one to arrive at an understanding as to how the
rabbit survives.

Sometimes a buck and a doe will live together far
removed from their kind. In this case some under-
standing of the marriage laws seems to exist between
them. They are said to have been known to unite,
for instance, to face a common foe in defence of
their young, though it is true that here again
deduction may be in error. Who can say that it
was not a case of two does occupying the same
burrow, and that, both having young, they united
because each was moved by purely personal
interests ? I cannot imagine a buck-rabbit parti-
cipating in any form of engagement involving per-
sonal risk unless he himself was directly concerned
in the issue ; and the idea of this beast defending its
young, which, at the best, it never visits unless to
destroy them during their mother's absence, hardly
seems a likely proposition.

TEMPERAMENT.

Though closely allied in many ways, the rabbit
and the hare are totally different from one another
in character and temperament. ' Rabbit-hearted '
is an expression commonly used not only by white
races, but also by red and brown people, and except

W.A. P

242 THE RABBIT.

in the case of a mother defending her young, this
creature has no heart whatever. When pursued,
it trusts to a short burst of speed taking it to
the sanctuary of its burrow, and if foiled in any
way and unable to find immediate shelter, it at
once loses heart. I have known a rabbit, on find-
ing its burrow closed, to begin immediately to run
in foolish circles, screaming piteously, though its
pursuer was nothing more fleet and formidable
than a small boy, into whose hands the creature
ultimately fell !

A rabbit's first dash for cover is exceedingly
swift ; but a hare, on the other hand, nurses and
reserves its strength. It has no place of shelter to
which to flee, and can look for escape only in the
length of the chase. A hare starts off easily to
test the speed of its pursuers ; if they begin to close,
it accelerates slightly ; if they prove really fast, it
resorts to dodging ; and in this way it will foil, for
minutes on end, a pair of dogs considerably swifter
than itself. The twists and turns tire the dogs, rob
their speed of its keenest edge, and when the hare
runs straight again it is found that the pursuers
can no longer gain. A hare will run till it dies ;
a rabbit often dies because it has not the heart to
run. A rabbit is beaten as soon as it is foiled ; a
hare is never beaten. I have seen an exhausted
hare, simply encompassed by men and dogs, settle
down to dodging and manoeuvring though its fate
seemed inevitably sealed, till finally it triumphed
over the seemingly hopeless odds, and by its own
pluck and tenacity gained its freedom. On the
other hand, a rabbit, losing sight of immediate
shelter, becomes undecided which way to run, and
either gives up all attempt at escape, or creeps into
a hiding so absurdly insecure that the result is

THE RABBIT. 243

the same. One has every respect for the hare, but
neither the character nor the mentality of the brown
rabbit is calculated to excite our admiration. It
will return and nest time and again in the hollows
of a swamp that is periodically flooded, and where
death by drowning inevitably awaits its young ; it
has no morals to speak of, and no pluck whatever.
True that it figures as an important item on the
nation's bill of fare ; but even here the rabbit does
not pay its way, and only because it is to the poor
man what the pheasant is to his employer is the
existence of the creature justified.

HARDINESS.

Rabbits are not supposed to be particularly
hardy animals, as they are said to be susceptible
to damp, yet they seem capable of surviving under
any conditions whatever. In the heights of the
Scottish hills, where they live for seven months
of the year amidst the driving wet of the cloud-
wraiths, they flourish exceedingly. On every
wind-swept island bordering the coast, though
some are so bleak and rugged that practically
nothing grows in the shallow soil, the rabbits
fatten and multiply till periodical disease wipes
them out. Among coast cliffs they are entirely
at home. Here, on a dizzy shelf, the young are
born ; they grow up to share their burrows with
the puffin and the shearwater ; they become a
crag-fast race of their own, thriving and multi-
plying till some, perforce, wander inland.

Amidst such surroundings the rabbit is, at any
rate, secure from man. The peregrine, the buzzard,
the weasel, and in some cases the eagle are its
only foes ; but so fleet and sure-footed does the
cragland cony become in negotiating the perilous

244 THE RABBIT.

shelves, so numerous are its hidings, that its
feathered foes must be fleet indeed in order
to catch it. The peregrine, hurtling from the
blue, may meet with moderate success, but the
carrion -eating buzzard and the eagle are easily
circumvented, except by the very young. Thus
the overflow population from a mile or two of
rabbit-infested crags will keep the country inland
well supplied with rabbits over a considerable
area.

This animal's partiality for allotment gardens
often tempts it into the suburbs of our great
cities, where, for some reason unknown to any
but itself, the rabbit takes up its residence, living
in hourly peril, and with only the most doubtful
burrow as shelter. At night-time Bunny creeps
furtively forth into the cat-infested gardens, and
eats an uneasy meal to the accompaniment of
the clanging street - cars in the roadway just
beyond. He dodges through the wooden fence
at the heels of a tipsy reveller returning late to
roost, and at dawn creeps for shelter under the
floor of a laundry, where gray rats swarm, and
human feet tramp all day perilously near his
head. He is denied everything which for a rabbit
makes life worth living ; yet he is devoid either
of the decision of purpose or of the sense of direc-
tion necessary to guide him back to happier and
healthier regions ! One can only echo the senti-
ments of the Christian nigger-boy who spent
his time skinning rabbits : ' Thank God I ain't
one of them 1 '

DESTRUCTIVENESS.

Rabbits do considerable damage on the grazing-
lands which they frequent — not only by what

THE RABBIT. 245

they eat and by so defiling the land that sheep will
not graze after them, but by bringing about an
entire change in the flora of their habitat. Where
rabbits flourish the grass soon dies, and its place is
taken by thistles, nettles, and other weeds which
are very difficult to displace. The areas of useless
sand-grass found in some localities are probably
due to rabbits, the more useful growths that once
clothed these areas having been killed off, so that
the coarser, hardier growths finally took possession.
On sandy hillsides the rabbits do considerable
damage by casting up vast mounds of unfertile
earth, and thus burying the fertile surface. The
steep hillsides of the Tweed valley furnish examples
of this on an extensive scale. Passing along this
valley, particularly in the vicinity of Peebles, one
is struck by the patched and mottled appear-
ances of the hillsides, every second pasture on the
steep slopes being dotted with yellow patches
which catch the sunlight and stand out conspicu-
ously against the background of green.

Farmers do not generally realise the full extent
of the damage done by rabbits on their property.
It is customary to let the shooting, if in the
farmer's own hands, and the rent received for
it is supposed to compensate for the damage
done. On the many rabbit-shoots I myself have
rented, however, it would, on almost every occasion,
have been possible, had one cared to work, to
pay the rent by selling the rabbits killed at
sevenpence per head. Those rabbits cost the
farmer more than sevenpence each to rear, and
by letting the shooting he was by no means
assured that the work of extermination would
be thoroughly done. I do not mean to infer that
farmers would be well advised to increase the

246 THE RABBIT.

rent of their rabbit-shooting ; on the contrary,
from the tenant's point of view, it is seldom worth
what is paid for it, and the best arrangement is
for the farmer to come to an agreement with
the tenant that, after a certain date, measures will
be taken systematically to reduce the rabbit popu-
lation— preferably by the employment of a pro-
fessional rabbit-catcher. The man who is simply
out for sport does not kill down the rabbits as
they should be killed, and by February at the
latest traps and snares should have been brought
to bear, and should be kept in operation till
they no longer yield results. The doe -rabbit
killed in February could profitably be bought at
ten times her market-price by the farmer on
whose land she was killed, and this is a point he
should bear in mind ere he decides to dispense
with the rabbit-catcher's services.

LENGTH OF LIFE.

So few wild rabbits die by the kindly hand of
Time that it is difficult to arrive at their natural
length of life. In an enclosed park in the West
Riding a rabbit, distinguishable from his fellows
by a white ruff about his neck, was seen by the
family at breakfast almost every morning for nine
consecutive years. He was born about the same
time as the eldest son of the house, and, curiously
enough, he died, judging from his disappearance,
on the same night as the child's grandpa died !
His name went down with the family traditions.

This rabbit lived a hedged-in and protected
life in the precincts of a city, and under such
conditions he might, indeed, have lived to see
his fifteenth year. How long a wild rabbit lives
depends upon the speed at which it lives. Safe

THE RABBIT. 247

from its foes, passing its days in peaceful security,
it would probably live many years longer than if
it were eternally but unsuccessfully chivied by
stoats and lurchers. Since normally wild rabbits
live less strenuous lives than hares, they live
proportionately longer. I should set down the
average life of the normal wild rabbit at eight
years ; senile decay generally sets in rapidly at
the end of the ninth year, and few of them live
to reach eleven.

WEIGHT.

The weight of flourishing adults is generally
between 3 and 3^ Ib. The first figure may be
taken as the average; 3^ Ib. is a good market
rabbit, though during favourable seasons 4 Ib. is
not an uncommon weight in some localities.
Contrary to what obtains among hares, the bucks
are generally the heavier.

THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN.

WHAT boy who has ever camped out is
unfamiliar with Milord the Hedgehog ?
Who has never heard his nocturnal rustling in
the leaves, his loud sniffs of inquiry ; and, above
all, who has never experienced his unwavering par-
tiality for the frying-pan ? Have we not always
to hang this universal piece of culinary equipment
high in the trees, or bring it into the tent ?
Otherwise he will spend half the night climbing
in and out of it, and skilfully contriving to mix
a maximum amount of the soot of the exterior
with the thin grease of the interior.

But, believe me, the hedgehog is a jewel to have
about the camping - ground compared with his
counterpart, the Canada porcupine. The hedgehog
may possess a strong partiality for anything that
suggests the least flavour of salt, but with the
porcupine this partiality amounts to a mania. I
have known a porcupine to eat a whole packing-
case because there was a tradition attached to it to
the effect that it once contained salt kippers ; and
later, remembering the packing-case, the same por-
cupine calmly settled down to eat a hole through
a canoe, thinking that, if it wasn't salty, it ought to
be ! Having visited the camp twice, a porcupine
thinks he owns the place, and you have to clout
him out of the same old mischief with the same
old frying-pan a dozen times a night.

The hedgehog is truly an ancient creature, and
dates at least from the upper and middle Miocene
of European strata. It was well known to the
ancient Egyptians, and figured in their art.

THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN. 249

Though seemingly nearly related, the similarity
between the hedgehog and the Canada porcupine
is not a lasting impression. The hedgehog is a
stoic ; the porcupine is impulsive and spasmodic.
Both depend on their quills for protection, and so
naturally have contracted certain habits that are
in common — such as the habit of moving noisily
about, and the utterance of fretful sounds when
disturbed. The porcupine is almost exclusively a
vegetarian, and will remain in one tree till he
has stripped it of every leaf and bud, never de-
scending unless a golden opportunity of making
a nuisance of himself is seen ; but the hedgehog
feeds almost entirely on the earth. A porcupine
seldom diverts from a strictly vegetarian diet, and
I have never heard of a hedgehog eating green
vegetables of any kind. This creature is, indeed,
a purely carnivorous feeder.

FOOD.

A hedgehog will eat almost anything of animal
origin. Slugs of all varieties, many of which
birds will not touch, are perhaps its staple diet,
accompanied by every species of beetle and insect
that flies or runs.

In Upper Wharfedale, near Burnsall village,
I possessed a unique opportunity of studying
the feeding habits of the urchin. A picturesque
wood, particularly rich in animal life, extends
from the moorland heights to the river-level, and
is bordered on its lower boundary by a wide belt
of sand, deposited by the main stream, which
every creature passing between the wood and the
lowland meadow must cross, thereby leaving the
record of its passing.

The belt of sand is dotted over with pebbles

250 THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN.

large and small, and here black beetles of several
varieties are particularly abundant, hiding during
the heat of day under the shelter of the stones,
so that, crossing the sand-bed, one is certain to
send dozens of them scuttling in different direc-
tions. In running across the sand they leave the
familiar race-like tracks of their passage, and by
carefully following out one of these tracks one
can without much difficulty trace a beetle to its
hiding, though in most places the beetle-tracks are
so interlaced that tracking becomes impossible.

From the signs left by hedgehogs it was clearly
evident that they hunted these beetles by scent,
running the trail of an individual beetle just as
a hound runs the trail of a fox. When fishing
at night-time I have seen as many as three hedge-
hogs hunting the sand-bed together, while others
could be heard not far distant in the darkness.
If, however, one trod out on to the gravel-stretch,
where a silent approach was impossible, every hedge-
hog would scuttle into the wood almost with the
alacrity of a rabbit. The hedgehog is, indeed,
more fleet of foot than is generally thought. If
one be surprised it merely twitches into a ball,
making no attempt at escape, but trusting to
its quills for defence; but if, on the other hand,
it hears the approach of danger in the distance,
and knows that there is time to flee, it will
make off quite speedily to some familiar cover.
Once in the dusk of evening I shot a hedgehog
in mistake for a rabbit ; it was working a hedge-
bottom, possibly in pursuit of mice, and was so
quick in its movements that much surprise was
occasioned by the discovery of the error.

Allusion has been made in the chapter on
Badgers to the draining -gutters that border the

THE HEDGEHOG OE URCHIN. 251

ridings of the New Forest. It is no uncommon
thing to find hedgehogs making use of these
gutters, just as the badgers do, doubtless attracted
by the insects that fall from the herbage above
and become imprisoned there. It is quite possible
that the hedgehog might find itself unable to
escape from a cutting for some considerable time,
though the creature would fare quite well during
its imprisonment.

From the sand-bed previously alluded to an
overflow arm of the river ran out across the
pastures. One of its banks was so undermined
by flood-waters that it formed, as it were, a wall,
and beneath its overhanging edge was a shelf of
which free use was made by the rabbits. The
hedgehogs also used this shelf, for in the sandy
wall all manner of sand-burrowing flies had their
homes, while slugs and worms were apt to fall
from the fibrous roots of the grass-covered brow.
Emerging from the wood, the hedgehogs seemed
to have a fixed routine. First they would explore
the sand-bank ; then, following the overflow arm
by the sandy shelf, they would ultimately gain the
river half a mile distant; finally returning to the
wood by a slight detour under cover of the walls
and the nettles.

As a rule, however, the hedgehog is not a crea-
ture of fixed runways. It has a strictly defined
home-range, which extends, probably, not more than
a hundred yards in any direction from its recog-
nised sleeping-quarters. It is entirely a creature
of the night. In the day-time it ventures abroad
only when warm showers disturb vast numbers
of insects, causing them to creep forth into the
foliage. A hedgehog will then sally out to take
advantage of the feast. The only other times

252 THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN.

when it is to be seen abroad by day are either
during frosty weather, when food is scarce and
the animal is hard put to it to pick up a living,
or while it is suffering from the effects of an injury.
The hedgehog's method of hunting is most re-
markable for its entire lack of systematic quarter-
ing. Hither and thither the creature goes, as
regardless of direction as a clockwork mouse.
Now he heads north at quite a sprint, then turns
west for no apparent reason at all ; veering south,
he noses under a dock, then continues east till his
progress is barred by a wall. All the time he
is munching steadily and noisily, consuming an
enormous number of insects ; and in this way he
rids the land of many troublesome pests. Bats
and swallows hawking for insects are, of course,
equally erratic in their movements, so the ap-
parent want of system of the hedgehog is quite
excusable on the same grounds. If one keeps
quite still, the animal will, when hunting thus,
come right up to one's feet, which he seems to
regard as a natural feature of the landscape.

As RABBIT-KILLER.

A hedgehog will eat anything it can catch and
hold ; nor is it particular as to its method of
killing. It is regularly guilty of robbing the
rabbit-catcher's snares, and thereby often brings
destruction upon its own head. The rabbit fast
in a snare that is discovered by a hedgehog must,
indeed, experience a bad time of it, for, like all
animals that are not among the true killers, the
hedgehog has no idea of inflicting a merciful end.

Hedgehogs destroy quite a considerable number
of young rabbits ; but I think the animal's love of
warmth, and its habit of creeping into any snug

THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN. 253

and cosy nook that presents itself, is in the first
place the cause of the mischief. Finding a rabbit-
stop during the absence of the mother, the hedge-
hog creeps in to enjoy the warmth of the nest at
the end of the shallow hole. Whether or not he
eats the young makes little difference. Their
chances of a healthy survival are small with a
hedgehog as temporary bed-mate. His first in-
tention is not, probably, to destroy. He may
already have fed, and is merely in search of
warmth and sleep. The idea of eating the
youngsters presumably occurs to him as an after-
thought ; and having gorged, he sleeps again, in
all probability occupying the stop for three days
or so. He may even finally make his home there.

The sentiments of the mother-rabbit on return-
ing, to find the narrow hole filled from top to
bottom and from side to side by a stubborn ball of
prickles, can well be imagined. Her helplessness is
complete, and realising this, she promptly forsakes
the nest.

Having once profited in this manner by the
discovery of a rabbit-nest, a hedgehog quickly
acquires the habit of hunting for such places.
Thus a single urchin may make enormous inroads
into the rabbit population of a given area during
the spring and summer. In Upper Wharfedale
hedgehogs are particularly numerous, and times
without number I have thrust my hand into
a stop presumably containing young rabbits to
find a hedgehog occupying it. Indeed, it was
the exception rather than otherwise for a rabbit
nesting on a certain sandy hillside to bring off
her brood successfully ; usually she was victimised
by the hedgehogs a day or two after her young
were born, and on numerous occasions we have

254 THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN.

caught the murderer walking about with a litter
of rabbit -down and other nesting materials en-
tangled in his quills.

To sum up, then, the hedgehog is among the
most potent of the rabbit's foes. True that it
takes only the very young, before the merciless
weeding-out process has had time to operate, and
that many of the rabbits the hedgehog destroys
would be destroyed in other ways ere they became
adult ; yet the hedgehog takes not merely one or
two, but the whole family. Many may consider,
however, that the keeping down of the rabbit
population, combined with the hedgehog's un-
doubted effectiveness as a devourer of noxious
insects, is an argument which pleads for the
animal's preservation.

ON THE GAME-RESERVE.

From the point of view of the farmer the hedge-
hog is of unquestionable service to man ; but,
unhappily, the activities of this creature are not
limited to the destruction of mice, insects, and
rabbits. On the game-reserve the hedgehog does
little good, while it is capable of doing a great
deal of harm.

So far as my own experience goes, I have never
found striking evidence of the hedgehog's destruc-
tiveness to game-birds, but weightier opinions than
mine amply warrant the condemnation. It is
conceivable that a hedgehog, finding a pheasant's
nest, would be attracted to it in just the same way
as it is attracted to a rabbit's nest. The idea of
devouring the clutch would not necessarily be the
initial impulse ; the hedgehog would first be
drawn by the warmth and comfort suggested by
the nest, and from this it is but a short step to

THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN. 255

the discovery of the waiting feast. And, having
once feasted, the animal would undoubtedly profit
by the experience, and thereafter search diligently
for similar banquets.

Many naturalists are of the opinion that hedge-
hogs feed largely on the eggs of ground-breeding
birds during the spring of the year, but this is
evidently a case of individual acquirement. Where
many ground-birds nest, the hedgehogs soon dis-
cover that nest-hunting is a profitable business,
but where such nests are comparatively rare the
animals do not seem to learn their value. I have,
for example, known tree and meadow pipits to
rear their young successfully in a bank which a
whole family of hedgehogs were in the habit of
parading nightly for food. I have also seen a
conspicuous pied wagtail triumphantly bring off
its family affairs in a kitchen-garden within the
confined limits of which a hedgehog was imprisoned.
These facts would seem to indicate that egg-
hunting is an acquired art in the case of the
hedgehog, just as it is in the case of the squirrel.

I believe, on the other hand, that hedgehogs
destroy quite a number of fledglings of all kinds
that have just left the nest to sally forth on their
first perilous voyage of discovery ; but it is futile to
condemn the creature on these grounds when the
' tame ' cats of our own households accomplish more
destruction in this direction within three days than
a wild hedgehog does in a year ! Indeed, we are
only too apt energetically to persecute some
creature of the wild for sins which we somehow
overlook in our own domestic felines ; and practi-
cally every crime for which wild creatures are
destroyed, resulting in the total extermination of
not a few, is perpetrated by the cat which hunts

256 THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN.

abroad, and probably on a far more extensive
scale. I have known a whole family of badgers
to be wiped out for alleged misdeeds which con-
tinued after the poor creatures had ceased to exist,
and which were doubtless attributable to a wild
cat of the 'tarne' variety. I have even found
a landowner to urge the destruction of hedgehogs
on the ground that they destroyed game-birds'
nests, while on a single one of his farms there
were sufficient half-wild cats to exterminate every
pheasant-chick within a radius of miles ! For the
half-wild cat, like the hedgehog, attacks at the
very root ; she takes not one or two, but the whole
brood.

ASSOCIATIONS WITH THE GRAY RAT.

But one thing may be said in favour of hedge-
hogs on game-reserves — that where they exist in
any numbers ' summer ' rats do not readily take
up their quarters. This is not on account of any
particular dread on the part of rats of meeting a
hedgehog, for of all creatures the gray rat is best
able to look after itself, but simply because rats
and hedgehogs do not make good neighbours.
The rats know that it is of no use arguing with a
hedgehog; when the latter wants a thing he goes
right in, and either he gets it straight away or it
means a fight, and from a rat's point of view a
fight with a hedgehog is not worth while. I have
known a certain little valley in the midst of a
pheasant-covert to become literally alive with rats
during the summer months, and doubtless the
damage they did at night-time was enormous.
Had there been a family of hedgehogs resident in
that valley the rat plague would never have oc-
curred ; for, knowing that at all events the hedge-

THE HEDGEHOG— 'SMALL GAME.'

W.A. Q

THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN. 257

hogs will not move elsewhere, the rats simply
avoid the place.

Certainly it is not probable that the hedgehog
has sufficient sense to avoid an encounter with
the gray rat, fierce and terrible fighter though the
latter may be ; in fact, I am quite convinced that
a hedgehog would devour either young or old
rats when the chance occurred just as readily as
it would devour any other small creature that fell
within its power, and quite heedless of all con-
sequences. Truly does the saying, ' Fools step in
where angels fear to tread,' apply to this creature,
for a hedgehog will deliberately trespass within the
stronghold of a veritable army of rats, and there
commit a crime sufficient to bring immediate and
dreadful disaster upon itself when it is in the power
of the rodents to inflict it.

The incident on which this statement is based
occurred when I was a boy in the West Riding.
At the back of the house were a number of ancient
outhouses, which at that time were occupied by
one of the periodical rat-swarms. One evening
when passing near I heard a squealing and scuffling
issuing from some nettles behind the outhouses,
and, peering cautiously over the wall, was sur-
prised to see two or three large rats circling round
a hedgehog, endeavouring apparently to find a
vulnerable point in the creature's armour. The
hedgehog appeared quite undisturbed, and, though
not rolled up, its coat of prickles seemed to be
drawn so far forward as to defend its head. While
I watched, the animal sauntered calmly off, quite
undismayed by the attack of the rats. Going to
the place where it had crouched, I discovered the
skin of a young rat, perhaps half-grown, eaten
completely empty. Evidently the hedgehog had

W.A. q

258 THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN.

caught the rat and killed it, calmly settling down
to the meal while the outraged adult rats spent
themselves in impotent fury !

This incident seems to cast some light on the
hedgehog's abilities as a rat-killer, but at the same
time I have known a hedgehog to be very severely
mauled by rats. This happened at the same place
some years later, when we discovered a hedgehog,
apparently in a drowning condition, floating down
a brook which flowed near the house. On exam-
ination we found it to be covered all over with rat-
bites, and in a mortally wounded state — so mangled,
indeed, as to be unable to swim. The rats of the
outbuildings claimed the banks of this stream a
little higher up as part of their territory, and
seemingly the hedgehog, trespassing within their
domain, had been chastised in consequence.

Owing to its armament, a hedgehog could
probably kill any normal gray rat in single combat,
and it is easily conceivable that so prudent a creature
as the last named would readily avoid all likelihood
of argument with such a gentleman. Even though
a massed attack might result in the defeat of the
hedgehog, the experience would not be pleasant
for the rats participating in it.

SNAKE-KILLING.

Hedgehog* are supposed to kill snakes, but here
again we have another example of the creature's
tendency to try to eat anything it finds. The
hedgehog does not begin with the idea of killing ;
it sets out merely with the idea of eating, and
whether it happens to come across a worm, a
snared rabbit, a snake, or a dead kitten, the result
is the same. If the creature proves troublesome,
the hedgehog advances its bayonets and quietly

THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN. 259

persists ; and no matter what the encounter in
which the animal finds itself involved, there is no
ferocity or malice on the hedgehog's part. Its
intention is to eat, and the creature that objects
to being eaten must either defend itself adequately
or get out of the way.

Thus the hedgehog is just as likely to prove
snake-killer as it is to prove frog-killer. Seeing a
snake, it would undoubtedly attack the reptile, and
the supposition seems to be well founded that the
victim thereafter beats itself to death in fruitless
attacks upon the hedgehog's armament. This
effectively accomplished, the hedgehog calmly
settles down and eats the snake.

A common belief also exists that the hedgehog is
sometimes guilty of sucking cows ; but the hedge-
hog's sharp teeth and inadequately shaped mouth are
features which would exclude all possibility of wel-
come relief on the part of the cow thus imposed on.

THE QUILLS.

It has been said that the hedgehog is a far more
active creature than is generally supposed. One
kept imprisoned in a garden was fond of climbing
up the trellis-work that supported a dense creeper
on the sunny side of the boundary wall. Several
times it was found there, seven or eight feet from
the ground, and there in a bower of leaves it had
its day-time nest. Unfortunately it died ere winter
came, or in all probability it would have hibernated
in the creeper.

Again, hedgehogs are prone to climb into
honeysuckle or some other flowering creeper in
pursuit of the bees that are attracted by the honey
and the sweet perfume of the flowers. In the de-
struction of bees, however, they are less active than

260 THE HEDGEHOG OR UECHIN.

mice, and probably pay their way from the bee-
keeper's point of view by scaring off the mice.
I remember once examining a clover-patch near
to some hives in a Northamptonshire garden, and
finding the ground liberally littered with the wings
of bees killed by mice.

The hedgehog's coat of spines is designed not
only to protect the creature from bird and animal
foes, but also as a safeguard against the effects
of falls. A hedgehog has no fear of falling. A
twelve-foot drop on to a bed of decaying leaves
causes the animal no discomfort whatever, and
may be undertaken in the ordinary course of
travel. Just as a black-bear, feeding in a tree,
will loose its hold and drop fifteen or twenty
feet, striking the earth as a closed-up ball and
rebounding into safety ere its disturber has time
to realise anything, so a hedgehog, finding in its
route a twelve -foot drop into a quarry or over
a boundary wall, will unhesitatingly topple over,
striking the earth like a ball, and remaining rolled
up till it comes to rest, when it coolly uncurls and
trots off in search of insects. Hedgehogs are,
indeed, fond of rolling and tumbling, and their
spines are so designed that even a heavy blow
delivered on the business extremity does not cause
them to penetrate at the roots.

A friend of mine in Northamptonshire kept a
tame hedgehog in his garden, and one day, when
the creature was prospecting among the wall-
newel's that grew in the mud-coping of the ancient
garden wall, it caused great distress to my friend's
children by losing its balance and falling. Con-
vinced that their pet must be badly injured, the
children were rather surprised when the hedgehog
promptly mounted to the top of the wall by the

THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN. 261

rockery, and again fell off— as though for no other
reason than that of making itself conspicuous !

I have, when rabbit-shooting, seen a hedgehog
roll down from the top of the hedge-bank to the
bottom — presumably as the quickest and easiest
way of getting there ; and doubtless, by rolling,
running, and dodging through the densest thickets,
a hedgehog can cover a considerable amount of
ground during its evening rambles.

The quills of the urchin are subject to the perfect
control of the muscles of the skin. The skin can
be moved forward so that the quills, pointing in
a forward direction, protect the animal's face and
head from assault while it is eating. In this way
it is able calmly to devour the young of a desperate
woodland mother, while the bereft parent merely
brings injury upon herself by her attacks. The
case quoted of the hedgehog devouring the young
rat, while other rats vainly attempted a belated
rescue, is an example very much to the point.

When a hedgehog is rolled up, the quills are so
placed in the skin that they point in every con-
ceivable direction. It is impossible to touch the
creature without meeting a bayonet-point, though
ordinarily, when the hedgehog is running about,
the quills lie flat on the skin, so that it can be
stroked without discomfort to the stroker.

As to whether or not this animal should be
destroyed is purely a question of locality. In
gardens it is beneficial, and worth cultivating as a
pet. On game-reserves only is it detrimental to
man's interests, and so much of the fauna of the
country is sacrificed at the shrine of the sacred
pheasant that the destruction of hedgehogs can
safely be left entirely to the game-keeping fra-
ternity. Gipsies kill hundreds ; and now and then

262 THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN.

a dog of good mettle, that has been badly pricked
by a hedgehog, develops a spite against the breed,
and thereafter kills every one it finds. I possessed
one dog that must have killed hundreds during its
life, for whenever it was taken into the woods it
would seek out one or more of these creatures, and
never rest till its purpose was achieved. Nor could
the dog be broken off this bad habit.

Apparently the hedgehog has no fixed moulting
season ; new quills are always growing and old
ones being shed. As the animal ages, the quills
become very stiff and strong, and turn grayish in
colour. A young hedgehog is generally brown,
an old one yellowish-gray, the quills being more
distinctly barred than in youth.

ENEMIES.

Other than man and his dogs, the hedgehog's
enemies are few. Among the birds of the air it
has none, which appears to be amply proved by
the fact that it seems quite incapable of looking
up. Foxes destroy a few hedgehogs, but not
many. During a hard winter a fox will scratch
out a hibernating hedgehog and devour it, leaving
only the skin ; but such is the discomfort of the
proceeding that Reynard leaves the urchin alone
unless the stern alternatives be urchin or starvation.
On one occasion a river-keeper reported to me the
finding of the empty skin of a hedgehog among
some rocks near an otter's den. In all probability
the otter killed it. The pine-marten, though rare,
is, with the polecat, the most deadly of the hedge-
hog's animal foes ; and it is said that the polecat
not only goes out of its way to destroy these
creatures, but having destroyed them, eats bones
and even quills without ill effects. If this be so,

THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN. 263

the case is analogous to that of the fisher and the
porcupine. The fisher, which is a larger member of
the polecat family, is particularly partial to porcu-
pine, and the deadly quills of this creature, each
quill armed with numerous minute barbs which
prevent it from being withdrawn should it penetrate
an animal's flesh, curiously enough cause the fisher
no discomfort Entering its flesh, they work in-
ward to lie under the skin, finally collecting along
the back to work out at the roots of the tail. Any
normal creature that attacks a porcupine is almost
inevitably doomed to a fate of the most terrible and
lingering kind ; but in this respect the fisher is an
exception, just as the polecat may be an exception
in its methods of dealing with the far less formidable
hedgehog.

As to stoats habitually killing hedgehogs, it
would seem unlikely, for I have known hedgehogs
to amble about in the dusk of evening in apparent
immunity where stoats were most abundant. The
keeper with a club and with a penchant for killing
every four-footed creature he sees, the gipsy-boy,
and the terrier are the hedgehog's only foes that
count for anything.

HIBERNATION.

By early autumn the hedgehog has become fat
and lubbardly, and as the weather turns colder,
and the russet leaves come drifting to earth, the
animal grows more and more torpid each day.
Its quills are not very adequate for keeping out
the wind ; but its skin is strong and thick and
not very sensitive to cold, and under the skin is
the hedgehog's real overcoat — a thick layer of fat
which resists the cold, and on which the animal
subsists during its winter sleep.

264 THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN.

I have repeatedly noticed a curious and interesting
habit of this creature during the days of autumn.
As soon as the wind becomes cold, the hedgehog
begins to acquire an overcoat of leaves. It may
be said that this is purely accidental, that it would
be quite impossible for such a ball of prickles to
move about when the woods are thick with leaves
without acquiring such an overcoat ; but at all
events, accidental or not on the hedgehog's part,
it would appear to be one of nature's provisions.
As the cold weather comes, the hedgehog is to be
seen running hither and thither in its coat of leaves,
making as much noise as a team of foresters.
Then, as the days pass, and the weather becomes
still colder, the hedgehog collects a second coating,
and yet a third, each new covering ramming the
previous one farther home, till the leaves are
impaled to the very base of the quills. The work
is done so thoroughly that it could not very well
be due entirely to chance ; and it needs to be borne
in mind that such an overcoat resists not only the
cold wind, but also the rain. Moreover, during the
autumn, a hedgehog has been watched purposely
rolling down a leaf-strewn bank, ascending, and
rolling again, apparently with no other object than
that of collecting leaves.

It would seem that the habit plays an important
part in the history of the hedgehog's hibernation.
It is the first step in the direction of denning up.
Equipped with an efficient, though artificial, over-
coat, the animal very soon becomes sluggish in its
habits. Its den is probably lined with leaves, and
the covering of leaves on its body lessens the con-
trast in temperature when at intervals the animal
quits its nest.

By late October the hedgehog is seldom seen

THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN. 265

abroad and is difficult to find. It remains noc-
turnal in its habits, but is abroad only for a short
time during the night. The drowsiness of winter
is taking a firmer and firmer hold ; but if the earth
be frost-bound, and the days bright and sunny, it
may steal out for a little during the warmth of
midday, though more probably it does not venture
out at all.

Thereafter, till the middle of March, the life
of the urchin is more or less of a closed book.
Whether or not its sleep is generally unbroken
throughout the long winter is difficult to say. If
so, the hedgehog is rather an exception. Bats,
mice, squirrels, &c., which are supposed to hiber-
nate, take their hibernation less seriously than
is generally thought. If the conditions are in
any way favourable, they are up and abroad for
a brief spell of activity ; but certainly it would
seem that the hedgehog is the most truly hiber-
nating of all our mammals, and I am inclined
to think that if a hedgehog is abroad during the
winter, it was in such poor condition when it
denned up that it has found itself unable to stand
the long drainage on its strength. A healthy
hedgehog, in perfect condition when it denned,
probably does not emerge till the joyous spring
calls it back to the world of activity.

THE DEN.

A rabbit-stop generally serves as the hedgehog's
winter den. Into the den an immense quantity
of leaves is dragged, not only forming the nest,
but effectively excluding all draught by filling
up the passage. On one occasion we unearthed
a hibernating hedgehog. The mouth of the
small hole was so filled with decaying leaves

266 THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN.

that one could never have told a hole existed
there. Out of the passage we dragged at
least a sackful of leaves, and when the hedge-
hog himself was removed he lay perfectly still,
partly uncurled, making no effort at self-defence,
and apparently still sleeping a deep, untroubled
sleep.

A decayed tree- root may be used, and grass
may function as bedding material instead of leaves.
Even sheep's wool may be dragged into the nest —
anything, in fact, that suggests the desirable warmth
of covering. A hedgehog will hibernate in thick
ivy, perhaps a few feet from the ground ; and one
took possession of some sacks in a corner of my
motor-house, and there settled quite contentedly,
though the house was in frequent use. Its habits,
however, were so unclean that ultimately we
were compelled to eject it. Curiously enough, it
appeared in midwinter, so evidently it had been
compelled to abandon its previous den. I have
known one to try to den up in a potting-shed till
it was forcibly ejected by the gardener ; in fact, it
is impossible to lay down fixed rules as regards
the location of this creature's winter abode, as it
will den up anywhere that suggests the desirable
degree of warmth and comfort. Nor does it appear
to be opposed to changing its den in midwinter, as
it may try half-a-dozen different retreats, from each
of which it is ejected, ere finally it disappears.

No doubt the first call of spring finds the hedge-
hog community sadly reduced in numbers. Some
have chosen their nesting -sites unwisely, and
simply do not waken ; while others, with the
torpor of winter still upon them, have fallen
victims to their foes.

Those that successfully sally forth with the

THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN. 267

spring, however, do so in a feeble and half-comatose
condition. Nature's wakening, like nature's falling
asleep, comes by degrees. The first journey forth
is slow and short, for the creature is sorely handi-
capped by the softness of its paws. This is nature's
safeguard against the overloading of the stomach,
the muscles of which have become weak by long
inaction. A few mouthfuls of food gathered near
the den, and the tenderness of the feet sends it
back to cover, where its stomach has ample time
to recover ere again it sallies forth — this time a
little farther ; and so on till its normal condition
is regained.

The hedgehog does not lay up a winter store,
as do mice and squirrels. Its store is on its back,
and serves not only as sustenance during the
foodless days of sleep, but also to exclude cold.
The storage habit does not seem to exist in the
case of this creature. There is no reason to think
that it ever resorts to stowing food in its den or
elsewhere ; its method of going through life is to
gorge to repletion, sleep, then gorge again. Its
food is generally abundant ; it will feast on carrion,
apart from the varieties of fresh food which are
generally at hand ; and, if astir during the lean
nights of winter, it will visit village garbage-heaps,
eat its fill, and den behind the open kitchen door if
such shelter be undisputed. Normally it has little
fear of man ; in midwinter it has none ; but, as
previously stated, hedgehogs that are astir at this
time are probably sick, or they denned up in poor
condition.

INDIVIDUALITY.

There is a good deal of individuality among
these creatures; that is, an individual specimen

268 THE HEDGEHOG OK URCHIN.

may develop habits peculiar to itself. One hedge-
hog we had under observation spent a good deal
of its time rooting among the old dry cow-dung
dropped in a pasture, evidently for the grubs and
the beetles found within it. Evidences of the
creature's work were on every hand, though this
curious habit on the part of an individual seems
to stand out as exceptional. Others, as already
stated, doubtless take up egg-hunting as a pro-
fession, though not all are guilty of depredations
of this kind. One was known to enjoy for a
considerable time the warmth of a hen-roost
without misconducting itself in any way.

FIGHTING AND VOCAL POWERS.

Hedgehogs fight furiously with one another —
sometimes, it is said, to the death. I have
watched them squabbling for the possession of a
frying-pan, but have never seen a couple in close
combat.

They possess a fairly wide range of vocal powers.
When searching for food a hedgehog sniffs and
grunts in a most fearless manner as it walks
about ; and if in distress, it utters a wailing
sound not unlike the cry of a hare. It can
sometimes be made to utter this sound, when
rolled up, by turning it over and tickling its
hind-feet with a twig. Also, when several are
abroad together at night, they occasionally utter
a bleating call of peculiar cadence ; it appears to
be done partly as a challenge and partly as an
expostulation.

Like all animals that are lovers of warmth, the
hedgehog entertains many guests, and I well
remember the horror that prevailed when this
discovery was made on a hedgehog being placed

THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN. 269

in the centre of the drawing-room floor to enter-
tain a number of lady callers !

BREEDING.

According to the best authorities gestation
occupies seven weeks. The young number from
four to eight, and the first litter may be born as
early as the end of March. The first mating
season, then, must be early in February, as soon
as the creatures begin to move from their winter
quarters. A second litter is produced between
the middle of August and the middle of Sep-
tember.

According to Gilbert White, the young are born
blind, and the quills, though present, are flexible
and white. At the age of eight days or so the
young begin to sally forth with their mother.
They are then more or less at the mercy of their
foes, for their quills are still so soft as to afford
little protection. So far as one can ascertain,
they remain with their mother till full-grown ;
and even after that they probably do not
wander far from the locality of their birth, as
the whole family, now composed solely of
adults, may be seen together throughout the
season.

WEIGHT.

The weight does not appear to vary so much
with the seasons as might be expected, though I
have never had the opportunity of weighing one
early in the spring. The male that denned up in
my garage weighed only 1 Ib. 5 oz. in midwinter.
Another specimen, taken in midsummer, tipped
the beam at 2 Ib. 7 oz. This seemed rather a

270 THE HEDGEHOG OR UBCHIN.

big hedgehog, and the average weight in mid-
summer is probably about 2 Ib.

LENGTH OF LIFE.

Considering the sedentary and sheltered life it
leads, the hedgehog is not a long-living creature.
One that had spent the major portion of its time
in captivity seemed to be showing signs of old
age in its fifth year; unluckily its fondness for
water ended its well-meaning, ill -doing career
ere the hand of Time struck the inevitable hour.
Five or six years would appear to be the hedgehog's
allotted span. A hardy specimen may still be
flourishing at seven, and may live to see eight.
Unfortunately, hedgehogs kept in captivity usually
contrive to come to an untimely end ere old age
steps in, with the result that it is difficult to arrive
at a definite conclusion.

THE SQUIRREL.

WHERE squirrels exist, the woods always
seem the richer for their presence ; but, alas !
this is generally the opinion of the passer-by rather
than of the owner of the woods. In the hardwood-
forests of the south of England timber-growers do
not seem to be very much troubled by the activities
of squirrels, but in the fir-forests of the north this
beautiful little creature is often guilty of severely
damaging young trees, stripping the saplings of
their bark and their tender shoots so ruthlessly
that it may kill every tree in a planting if left
undisturbed to its work. The result is that in
some localities the destruction of the squirrel has
been so energetically pursued as considerably to
reduce its numbers, if not entirely to exterminate
it ; while in other districts, where the forest-owners
have suffered to a less extent, squirrels have been
left to multiply. The variation in treatment to
which it is subjected chiefly accounts for the
uneven distribution of this rodent.

Though never idle save during exceptionally
cold snaps, squirrels are seen at their best when
the leaves begin to fall. At this season the animal
spends much of its time on the ground, with the
result that our attention is drawn to it by the
rustling in the leaves ; and as the squirrel climbs
into the branches he is more visible than in summer,
when the trees afford his little russet form the
shelter of their foliage.

Though naturally highly inquisitive, squirrels
can be very coy when so disposed. Recently I
saw three of them seek the shelter of a solitary

272 THE SQUIRREL.

white-thorn bush on our approach. There was
no other cover near, the bush standing alone in
a field ; yet as we passed within a few feet of
it nothing could be seen of the squirrels, so
cleverly had they made the best of what little
cover the leafless twigs afforded. In the woods,
the squirrels desirous of avoiding detection manage
always to place the trunk of a tree or a good stout
branch between themselves and the passer-by,
clinging to the bark and edging in jerky move-
ments this way and that ; and so still do they keep
on thinking themselves unobserved that it takes a
keen eye to pick them out. The result is that,
travelling through woods where they abound, one
may catch only an occasional glimpse of a fleeing
red coat, the squirrel generally disappearing as
soon as he has gained the branches. If not
molested, however, they become very tame, and
the gray squirrels in the park at Exeter can be
seen any day taking food from the hands of
children.

STORAGE.

The squirrel is notoriously a food-hoarder, and
quite early in the autumn the storage fever seems
to take possession of him. At this season each
squirrel has his individual range, seldom travelling
much more than a hundred yards from some
central point. This point is possibly a hollow tree,
deep down in which the little tree-dweller has his
home, consisting of bed and larder — chiefly larder.
Here, quite early in the season, the squirrel begins
to lay up his winter store, but it is to be feared he
is not very methodical about it, busily storing one
day, and eating a good deal of what he has stored
the next. He opens nuts by gnawing the small

THE SQUIKREL— 'THE FOOD-HOARDER.'

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THE SQUIRREL. 273

ends, then splitting the shells vertically, just as one
would do with a penknife. The squirrel never
wastes time and energy over cracking bad nuts,
evidently being able to tell by their weight whether
the kernel is sound ; and the apparently sound nuts
often found in a squirrel's abandoned larder will,
if opened, invariably prove to be empty. Among
rocks, these abandoned larders are often seen to
be half-full of empty nuts.

Autumn being a time of plenty for the squirrel,
there is no particular haste as regards the winter
store, and having laid aside a goodly stock in a
hollow tree or a cranny among the rocks, the little
animal now resorts to a curious practice, which for
a long time puzzled me. It is October, and he is
to be seen climbing nimbly into the branches of
nut-bearing trees, from which, at regular intervals,
he descends to earth, runs off to the forest-edge,
and scratches a hole in some soft piece of ground,
where he buries his find. This done, he ascends
the tree again ; then duly buries another nut in
another place ; and so on time after time for so
long as the sunshine lasts. In the Bolton Abbey
woods I have watched squirrels thus employed
during the greater part of the day, generally using
for their burial-ground the exposed earth of a
land-slide or some other treeless patch, but I have
never been able to find the nuts thus buried.

This is all part of the storage system. The
squirrel cannot, of course, remember the exact
whereabouts of all his hastily made caches, num-
bering, as they do, many hundreds, but he retains
a hazy notion that in such and such a bank nuts
are buried, to be found by the diligent searcher.
Meantime the food is safe, as nuts are best pre-
served in damp ground, and should keen frosts

W.A. r

274 THE SQUIRREL.

come it is as secure there as it could be any-
where. But the wisdom of Nature's whole scheme
is this — that should the squirrel not find or not
require the nuts he has buried thus, they duly grow
into trees, enriching and extending the forests with
the food-bearing growths on which the squirrel is
dependent. The squirrel is, then, a natural planter
of forests, selecting for his planting a patch of soft,
open ground where forgotten nuts would be most
likely to spring into trees, obtaining ample sun-
shine, and unhampered by the growth of other
timber. Thus it may be said that just as the
squirrel is largely dependent upon oak, beech, and
hazel, so these trees, in the virgin state of nature,
are largely dependent upon the squirrel.

During the autumn harvest one squirrel very
much objects to a rival red-coated harvester tres-
passing upon his home-range, chasing any visitor
from tree to tree should the interloper venture
within the prescribed boundary of his territory
(see MATING). The nut season, however, is all too
brief, and having laid in his store, the squirrel,
providing the weather remains mild, divides his
time between the berry-bearing bushes and the
moist leaves which carpet the earth, scratching
about among the latter for covered nuts, ' mush-
rooms,' and the bulbs of woodland plants. There
is nothing like wet leaves for protecting the earth
from frost, the first keen night freezing the top-
most layer, and forming, as it were, a roof which
the frosts that follow do not easily penetrate ;
so that, protected by the natural warmth of the
earth under a coating of frozen leaves, the food
of so many wild-folk is preserved throughout the
keenest weather.

In dealing with the red squirrel of Canada, Seton

THE SQUIRHEL. 275

makes an interesting observation with regard to
the storage of fungi. Our own red squirrel feeds
to a considerable extent on the poisonous-looking
mushrooms that grow in sheltered woods, and it
is probable that Seton's observations are applicable
to the squirrels of this country also. He says : *
' The second food-supply in winter is mushrooms,
chiefly of the genus Russula. If these were to be
stored in the same way as the other provisions, they
would doubtless rot long before they could be of
service. The squirrel stores them in the only
available way — that is, in the forked branches
of the trees. Here they are safe from the snow
that would bury them, from the deer and field-
mouse that would steal them, and instead of rot-
ting, they dry up and remain in good order until
needed.'

It would certainly seem that squirrels exercise a
good deal of judgment in the selection of suitable
storage-quarters ; and just as rooks are known to
store walnuts in manure in order that they may
not be frozen in, so the autumn campaign of the
squirrel is conducted with intelligent regard for
the changed conditions which come with winter.

HIBERNATION.

If a cold snap comes early, the squirrel each day
travels a less distance from its den, rising a little
later each morning, and retiring a little earlier.
Finally, if the cold snap holds, he emerges for
only an hour or so at midday, and one morning
he does not emerge at all. There he is, in his cosy
bed, dry and warm, with a goodly supply of food
at hand, sleeping his winter sleep, of which we
hear so much and see so little.

* Life Histories of Northern Animals.

276 THE SQUIRREL.

His winter sleep ? It is to be feared he does
not take it very seriously ! Even in midwinter,
should the morning bring bright sunshine, he is
pursuing his way in his oddly jerky manner, look-
ing very drowsy when first he emerges, but soon
wakening up to take a proper interest in things. It
is now that, to save depleting his larder, the con-
tents of which he may need when keener weather
prevents his travelling far, he turns his attention
to the nuts buried in the leafy banks, dodging
hither and thither between the patches of pale
winter sunshine in search of his hidden treasures.
Snow falls during the night, and when to-morrow
brings a biting wind, he is not to be seen. Winter
and hunger settle upon the land, but the squirrel
sees nothing of these things. He is a creature
of the sunshine, and Nature in her harsher moods
knows him not. One day an old lank fox puts his
nose into a chink at the root of the hollow tree
and smells squirrel. He sniffs and blows loudly,
thinking of the feast so near at hand, and trying,
by sheer wind-pressure, it would seem, to blow the
squirrel out of the hole in the trunk high above ;
but Reynard knows he will have to content him-
self with the smell. Perhaps the squirrel pops his
nose from the nook above, lets fly a volley of
scornful abuse, and retires to his nest within,
leaving the world without to the twittering of the
blue-tits and the restless wanderings of Reynard.

In the south of England squirrels do not hiber-
nate unless the winter be of exceptional severity,
and it is only in Scotland and the northern
counties of England that storage is carried out in
the systematic manner described. The hibernating
abode is usually a hollow tree, though in Scotland
I have known squirrels to den up among rocks

THE SQUIIIREL. 277

overshadowed by trees, or in a ruined wall. When
the nest is so placed, there is always a branch
handy on to which the animal can spring should
it be disturbed.

DISPOSITION.

In disposition the squirrel is erratic, impulsive,
and prettily impudent. In most of the forests of
Canada squirrels team in countless thousands, and
from sunrise till sunset their scolding chatter greets
the woodsman. On Nighthawk Lake, Northern
Ontario, I caught one in the act of swimming a
bay at least a hundred yards from the nearest land.
Probably he had been chased by a fisher or a
pine-marten, and had taken to the water as a last
resort, for no squirrel in its senses would voluntarily
have essayed such a crossing. When I held out a
paddle, the little creature at once took hold, and
allowed me to deposit him inside the canoe, where
he leapt from thwart to thwart, finally flattening
himself against the gunwale, imagining himself
entirely invisible. There he remained till we
bumped the shore, where he leapt for the timber,
and sat just out of reach, hurling abuse.

On another occasion I witnessed an amusing
incident in which a red squirrel figured prominently.
A number of boys surprised the little fellow in the
centre of an open road, whereupon the squirrel
scrambled for the nearest tree. But the tree, alas !
turned out to be a telegraph-post, not more than
twelve feet in height, and there he clung, too
frightened to descend, unable to climb higher,
while the party of juvenile warriors gathered round
with shouts of triumph. The squirrel, quite panic-
stricken, and probably not knowing what he did,
leapt straight and true for the ringleader of the

278 THE SQUIRREL.

gang, fixing his teeth in the extreme tip of the
boy's nose, and there he hung for a second before
another leap took him to the safety of the woods.
If ever there existed a band of demoralised and
entirely routed warriors, it was that little band of
backwoods urchins ; and as they escorted their
blubbering and wounded leader homewards, one
of them summed up the general verdict in the
sentence, ' Squirrels and such-like varmints ain't
worth meddlin' with I '

NESTING.

Squirrels usually nest in trees, very often select-
ing a high holly-bush, and placing their abode in
a fork of the main stem twelve or sixteen feet from
the ground. The nest is globular, having a side-
entrance, like the nest of a dipper. The entrance
is often difficult to find, owing to the fact that it is
overhung with a brow of fabric, which prevents rain
and wind from driving in. The nest is called the
' dray ' when built thus, and many country dwellers
have doubtless wondered why it is that not one
in fifty of these nests is occupied. There are
several reasons, the chief being that a dray made
and used one season remains in the tree for several
years ere finally it drops to bits. Another reason
is that squirrels, like wrens, make several nests
ere finally one is constructed that meets their
requirements ; so, what with old nests and dummy
nests, one may search far ere one ultimately finds
the builder at home. Nevertheless, these structures
are used for nursery purposes, the young occupying
them till the space proves insufficient. At other
times the squirrel builds its home inside a hollow
tree, or even among rocks, where, of course, it is
quite invisible and difficult to locate.

THE SQUIRREL. 279

The materials chosen for nest construction are
decided by the materials at hand. One pair of
squirrels I had under observation in Bolton Abbey
woods spent much of their time rooting about at
the foot of the undermined river-bank, which was
draped with a trailing tapestry of roots. These two
built their nest of closely woven fibrous roots, and
a very neat nest they made. Another pair in the
same woods built near the boundary wall, just over
which were two hay -ricks, and hay was the material
chosen. It made a very conspicuous and straggling
structure, which soon went to bits, so I conclude
they were an inexperienced and newly married
couple.

As a rule the nest is composed of leaves, moss,
and twigs, and I have known green pine-needles
and other unsuitable rubbish to be interwoven
with it.

MATING.

It seems to be generally agreed that the squirrel
has one wife only, and sticks to her for life.
My own observations incline me to the view that,
though the squirrel may have one wife only,
he is not dead to the attractions of his next-door
neighbour's wife, especially if his next-door neigh-
bour chances to be a smaller squirrel than he is.
Nor am I by any means convinced that the mating
alliance always holds good through the winter.
For every pair of squirrels one sees together in
winter, one sees a dozen living solitary lives, each
having its own little group of trees, in which
it permits no other squirrel to trespass. One
squirrel, thus observed, did to my knowledge
rear a family the previous summer, but was
never seen either with his mate or with his

280 THE SQUIRREL.

young after August ; he was distinguished by
the possession of an almost white tail. Another
solitary squirrel which we knew well finally fell
to a keeper's vermin-trap, and proved to be an
old male.

Still, the fact that some pairs are seen together
the year round would seem to argue that those
that respect the laws of squirrel decency conform
to the practice of true monogamy ; but the indi-
viduality of squirrels is very noticeable. I do not
believe that all young couples starting life together
consider themselves in any way bound by the
bonds of lifelong matrimony. If the male happens
to be a ' gay dog,' his affections may last no longer
than the mating season. As his wife becomes
busy with affairs of her own his interest in her
is apt to flag, and he may, indeed, become the
possessor of a second wife ere the Love Moon
wanes. Possibly in later life destiny moulds his
ways along a single groove, but a good deal would
seem to depend on the squirrel population of the
immediate vicinity. Where squirrels are numer-
ous, and the attractions of society are many,
scandals of all kinds occur ; but isolated ' country '
squirrels, living remote from the giddy whirl, are
generally faithful to one another. In New Gal-
loway, in Scotland, I repeatedly observed these
isolated pairs wintering together. Never was one
seen without the other ; never were they more
than a few paces apart ; often they were to be
seen on cold days cuddling each other for warmth.
I noticed also that the young remained with the
parents till far into winter, a state of affairs
which seldom occurs where squirrels are more
numerous. Indeed, it would seem that the
Scottish squirrels are more circumspect than

THE SQUIRREL. 281

are those of English forests, and it is conceiv-
able that the question of mutual warmth in the
more rigorous climate has something to do
with it ! *

THE YOUNG.

Only one litter is produced per year, the young
numbering from three to six ; they appear in
May and June, and are not able to fend for them-
selves till at least five weeks old. They remain
with their parents for fully eight weeks, or, as
already described, the family may remain united
till winter. Certainly the father has nothing to
do with the offspring till they are old enough to
fend for themselves. He may then, in company
with his wife, be seen piloting the brood from tree
to tree, for squirrels have their runways in the
branches, just as the beasts of the earth have
their beaten tracks. In passing from tree to tree
a squirrel recognises certain bridges, by which it
invariably travels in going from one frequented
feeding-place to another. In New Galloway, a
squirrel used each morning to come from a beech-
wood to feed in a fir-tree in one corner of my
garden, and I noticed particularly that it came
each day by the same beaten track. Dropping
from a silver birch at the edge of the wood, it
alighted on the moss-covered wall-top, lightly
leapt a gap, pranced across the road, bounded
on to a certain moss-covered rock, and thence
into the tree. The young squirrels are taught
by their parents all these leaps and crossings,
and so by a thorough familiarity of their home-

* I am inclined to think that very often one of the young, perhaps the
weakling of the family, remains with the mother through the winter ;
hence it is very difficult to arrive at a definite decision regarding mating.
— H. M. B.

282 THE SQUIRREL.

range they are often able to circumvent their
foes.

ENEMIES.

Most of the squirrel's foremost enemies, the
pine-marten and the larger birds of prey, are gone.
One nest which I knew to contain young was
laid waste by a stoat or a weasel ; it was in a
low holly-bush, and the mother haunted the scene
of the tragedy for some days. Rats rank among
the enemies of all rodents in this country, though
to a less extent in the case of the squirrel than
in most others. Owls hold no important place
among the squirrel's foes, one being strictly
nocturnal, and the other strictly diurnal. In the
Kells Hills I one day saw a merlin dragging
something almost too heavy for it to carry. The
little falcon was only just able to raise its load
from the ground, flying low for a matter of fifty

Saces, then again alighting, as merlins commonly
o. I pursued with such haste that after several
short flights the hawk was compelled to abandon
its quarry, which proved to be a full-grown
squirrel.

Among the animal's enemies may also be in-
cluded the pike.

Motoring between Peebles and Edinburgh on
2nd February 1920, I was approaching a fir-
plantation, when I noticed something carried by
the gale at an oblique angle across the roadway.
It struck the edge of the road with considerable
force and rebounded, for a half hurricane was
blowing at the time. The article was about two
hundred yards ahead of me, and I took it to be
a portion of a pine-limb. On coming up, how-
ever, I found it to be a squirrel !

THE SQUIRREL. 283

The poor creature had evidently been killed
instantly by its impact with the road, as it must
have been blown from branches at least thirty
feet above.

Whether many squirrels meet their fate in
this way during high winds I am unable to
say, but it is possible that the dead specimens
one so often finds in the woods very early in
the spring are victims to the heavy winds which
generally prevail at that season.

CLIMBING.

A gentleman with whom I was acquainted in
Yorkshire did all that he could to induce the
squirrels to take up their abode in the grounds
of his home. Cosy nesting-boxes were put up
for them ; there were abundant nut-groves and
fruit -bearing trees; yet the squirrels, though
plentiful in the surrounding country, for some
reason would not attach themselves to this par-
ticular estate. One comes across a similar state
of affairs in the bush localities of Canada, where
one valley is teeming with squirrel life, while
in the next valley across the watershed, where
the conditions appear to be exactly the same,
one will not see a single squirrel in a long day's
trek.

Though seeming so much at home in the
branches, the squirrel is not an expert climber as
the tree-dwellers go. Compared with the death-
darting pine-marten it is a sluggard. It does
not habitually descend the trunk head downwards
at full speed, and this is the test of the pukka
climbing animals. Yet the squirrel is truly a
creature of the trees in so far that, if caught away
from their friendly shelter, it becomes utterly

284 THE SQUIRREL.

demoralised and dazed with fear, turning and
showing fight before even making a proper attempt
to escape. Quite recently I found a squirrel out
on an open moor, several hundred yards from
the nearest pine-fringe, though goodness knows
what he was doing there ! The heather was deep
enough for him to escape unseen, yet he persisted
in running round in circles, uttering the most
unspeakable abuse, and making himself entirely
absurd. His behaviour was reminiscent of that
of a foolish little musk-rat who, caught far
from his beloved pond, turned and held up a
team of horses with its lusty band of lumbermen
till some one ended the performance by throwing
a coat over him !

USE OF TAIL.

Squirrels are particularly partial to forest-glades
through which a stream winds its course, for
here the unimpeded sunlight falls with its full
warmth to the ripening of the water-side harvest.
It is no uncommon thing for one of them to
fall into the water ; in fact, the observer is tempted
to think that they sometimes do this purposely in
hot weather, for, as already shown, the squirrel
is a moderately good swimmer. He thinks
nothing of crossing a burn by leaping from stone
to stone, plunging in should there be no stone
conveniently placed. When in the water the
squirrel has an odd habit of jerking its tail at
intervals, and this motion is apt to attract the
attention of large fish lurking in the depths. Pike
or large trout will snap at anything, and, as Seton
points out, many a squirrel has lost its tail while
swimming owing to the attack of these fresh-water
sharks. The skin strips away from the bone at

THE SQUIRREL. 285

the slightest pressure, as does that of many rodents,
and though the accident seems to occasion the
creature little discomfort at the time, its fate is
most assuredly sealed.

A squirrel that has lost its tail will not live ;
in fact, no greater calamity could befall this little
denizen of the branches. It will be noticed that
when a squirrel runs along the top of a wall it
carries its tail straight out behind, as it does when
on the ground ; and should it desire to leap a
gap in the wall its tail is given a downward sweep
as it takes off, thereby giving an additional impulse
to the leap. When climbing upwards a squirrel
carries its tail vertically over its back, so that
the impulse can now be given in an upward
direction. And so, in every attitude Mr Squirrel
assumes, his tail is so carried that it can be utilised
to assist in the direction in which assistance is
needed ; and similarly, in alighting, he breaks
the force of his landing by a sweep of this
ornamental extremity. It is his rudder and his
parachute ; and what happens should he lose this
important member, and be left only with the
naked stump ? All through his life he has allowed
for that little extra impulse his tail gave, and
for the steadying effect it had when leaping
through space ; but now he is hopelessly at sea.
Here he falls short, failing to catch the branch
at which he aimed, and tumbles heavily to earth ;
there he makes a leap for the vertical trunk,
and, unable to jerk his body upwards at the last
moment, he crashes head-foremost into the tree,
falling dazed and bewildered to earth. It is not
the first fall nor the second that kills him, but
the many falls that come each day, till in the
end, unable to realise what misfortune is his, he

286 THE SQUIRREL.

creeps away to some sacred cranny among the
kindly shadows.

CRIMINAL SQUIRRELS.

It is to be feared that squirrels do not all
live exclusively on nuts and fruits, for there are
individual squirrels that acquire a criminal liking
for flesh, and when one squirrel in a certain district
takes to destroying the eggs and the young of wood-
pigeons and song-birds, the rest of the squirrel
community of that locality very soon follow the
lead. I do not think that all squirrels are given
to the ruthless massacre of defenceless fledglings,
but the squirrel that has done it once very soon
does it again, and teaches his mate to do it.
So the bad habit becomes an epidemic, and soon
it is a matter either of exterminating the squirrels
or of the squirrels exterminating the song-birds.

When last I was in Toronto there was a great
outcry against the squirrels in the city parks, it
being said on all sides that unless the little
murderers were killed off, Toronto would lose
its song-birds. In Britain one hears few com-
plaints of this kind against the little tree-dweller,
and only once in this country have I come across
an example of depredations of this kind. In a
gentleman's garden in Kirkcudbrightshire it was
found one spring that the song-birds' nests in
the shrubbery were being robbed, and naturally
suspicion fell upon the cat. The feline was,
therefore, kept caged ; but still the robbing of
nests continued. Then one day a squirrel was
caught red-handed, calmly chewing away at an
unfortunate fledgling that it had not even troubled
to kill. The squirrel was shot on the spot, and
from that day the destruction ceased, though many

THE SQUIRREL. 287

other squirrels occupied the grounds. This proved
conclusively, then, that one little criminal was
responsible for all the damage, and that the bad
habit he had acquired was not shared by the
squirrel community in general. One squirrel with
which I became well acquainted took up the
uncommon pursuit of fishing. This animal lived
alone in the Knocknarling valley, near the town
of New Galloway, one of those quiet spots Nature
provides for her peace-loving kindred. It was
a favourite haunt of the roe-deer, and whenever
I went that way, keeping a weather -eye open,
and moving silently through the trees, I invariably
saw their graceful forms floating ahead through
the undergrowth.

The squirrel was invariably to be seen near
the same bend in the burn, and several times I
noticed him paddling about in the shallow water
as though searching for pebbles. This struck me
as curious, and, watching closely, one day I saw
him take what looked like a nut from the
water, crack it in his jaws, and proceed to con-
sume its contents. This done, he continued to
paddle, keeping his tail high and dry ; but, find-
ing nothing further, he ran down-stream, and there
repeated the performance.

Going quietly up, I discovered that the objects
of the squirrel's quest were a species of small
water-snail or fresh-water winkle ! Here is an
example of a squirrel developing very unusual
individual tastes, turning from the trees to the
widely different pastime of ' angling ' !

In America I have known the squirrels to be-
come as multifarious in their tastes as the bears,
visiting the lake-shores in search of dead fish or
other carrion washed up on the margin, or gorging

288 THE SQUIRREL.

upon the scum of dead May-flies, which hatch
out in such countless millions on many of these
waters.

But whatever the squirrel may be abroad, what-
ever isolated examples we may find of individual
criminals at home, this creature is a joy to behold,
an ornament to our suburban parks, where old
city clerks, pausing on their way home for a
wistful glimpse of the country, are reminded of
the quiet woods by a vision of his russet coat
among the branches.

SIZE, AND LENGTH OF LIFE.

Taking the average of ten dead specimens I
have measured, I arrive at the following dimen-
sions : From tip of nose to root of tail, 8-3 inches ;
length of tail, 6'8 inches. This appears to be about
the average.

I have no data bearing on the length of life
of the squirrel, but such information as exists
on the subject indicates that a squirrel has passed
the zenith of its powers at eight years, and that
it seldom lives to see ten.

COAT.

The coat seems to fade considerably as summer
advances, particularly the tail. The winter coat
comes in November — earlier in the Highlands.
By the end of November the ear-tassels are fully
formed. The spring coat is assumed not earlier
than May in the north of England and in Scotland,
to which area my close observations are limited.

THE GRAY OK BROWN RAT— * THE SPOILER.'

W.A. S

THE GRAY RAT.

Known also as the Brown Rat, the House -Rat,
the Sewer- Rat, the Norway Rat, the Common
Rat, &c.

IN the following it is proposed to deal only with
the less commonly known habits and character-
istics of this odious and universally detested creature,
for the gray rat is, unhappily, so well known to
every one that a detailed account of its life's history
would prove dull reading.

Unto whom the world is indebted for the original
stock of gray rats, and whence this animal came
when first it made its debut on our shores,
are subjects which hitherto have proved fruitful
grounds for exploration among authors of the
more serious type of natural history works ; but,
to sum up the evidence, it would seem that the
gray rat hailed originally from Persia, and that it
first came to England from the Baltic early in
the seventeenth century. Since then there has
been a free exchange of gray rats all the world
over. From every port where ships touch they
have spread, steadily increasing in numbers from
east to west till in many parts they have exter-
minated not a few of the native animals, just as,
with their introduction to Great Britain, they
speedily exterminated the original black rat, which
was a far less repulsive creature. In parts of
America the rat population has become too great
for the cities, with the result that the usual rat
colonists, launching forth, have taken possession
of vast areas of swamp, where they thrive and
multiply remote from human habitation.

W.A. S

290 THE GRAY RAT.

The extraordinary power of survival of these
animals is largely due to their ability to colonise,
the rat millions of the thickly peopled centres being
ever ready to send their pioneers into new country
in quest of fortune. So systematic and intelligent
are their movements in this way that many
picturesque accounts have been written in which
something in the way of a central exchange,
or distribution department, organised by the rat
leaders for the benefit of the rat masses, has been
feigned to exist ; but there is no special reason
why we should imagine that these creatures
possess any uncanny powers in the organisation
of their numbers. Their intelligent distribution
follows in the wake of their numbers as a
natural course of events, and their seemingly un-
canny ability to locate new quarters is probably
owing to the fact that the pioneers and fore-
runners leave a scent-trail behind them, which
their fellow-citizens, uninvited, and probably un-
wished for, readily follow.

DISTRIBUTION.

Here is an example illustrating to what ex-
tent rats follow in the footsteps of their leaders.
When the writer was a boy we had in the grounds
of our home a small wooden outhouse where bulbs
were stored, and where, incidentally, a brace of
ferrets were kept. There was always sufficient
food lying about this place to keep one or two rats
in plenty ; yet, owing to its isolation from other
buildings, no rats discovered it for a matter of four
years after it was erected. Then one morning
it was found that a rat was about. The creature
was at once trapped, but it made no difference.
Never again was that outhouse without its rat

THE GRAY RAT. 291

tenant. One at least was caught weekly, where-
upon another would immediately take the place of
the deceased, and the nuisance continued.

Thus, when once rats have begun to come to a
place, they will continue to do so for so long as
food exists there for them — a state of affairs which
would seem to prove definitely that they follow in
each other's steps, distributing themselves in such
numbers as the quantity of available food alone
determines.

Hence, if an outhouse furnishes food enough for
three rats, the pioneer is quickly followed by two
others, which settle with him. Other rats come,
and still others ; but though a sifting and changing
may take place, the forerunners being ousted by
stronger rivals, three rats remain in that outhouse.
Those that are turned aside wander on in search of
fresh quarters ; one settles here, another there, but
each settler is tracked to his lair, which, if capable
of sustaining more than one, he is compelled to
share. Should the food-supply be adequate for
the maintenance of a hundred rats, then more new-
comers, and still more, arrive till the limitation of
the food-supply is reached, and once again the over-
flow goes drifting by to penetrate new territory.

Were it not that rats are so extremely gregarious
in their habits, it would, by this system, take
them longer to occupy fruitful territory than
to distribute themselves over a region where
food was scanty, as the absorbing reservoirs would
take longer to fill, and so the flowing tide of
rats would move less speedily on its way. This
proposition is supported by the known facts. It
may take years for rats to penetrate into a region
where food is scarce, whereas they occupy a fruit-
ful territory in a veritable invading army, sweeping

292 THE GRAY RAT.

over the country in a wave of settlement. This
is because any move of individual rats quickly
becomes a general move ; and the greater the
number that settle in one locality, the greater is the
number of the scent-trails leading to that locality,
and the stronger do these scent-trails become, till
finally the drift may assume the form of a migra-
tion, the rodents moving in shoals from their
original feeding-ground to one of greater promise.

It is highly improbable that one rat, finding a
paradise of plenty, dutifully returns to inform his
neighbours of the fact. Such a feat is not in
accordance with the gray rat's disposition, and
were he able to retain undivided possession of the
new territory, he would readily do so. Reference
has been made to the extraordinary hearing-powers
of the weasel, and to how this power is exercised
in its hunting. There is no doubt whatever that a
weasel can tell from a very great distance whether
or not the barn on the skyline is infested by rats,
and in all probability the rats themselves possess
the same power. In most country districts the
barns where food-stuffs for horses or cattle are
stored are often a considerable distance apart, and
in the part of Scotland where the writer lives it is
no uncommon thing for a barn to be located at the
edge of moorland country a mile or more from any
other building, and in the midst of a region where
buildings of any kind are so remotely scattered that
one can view vast tracts of country without a human
structure in sight. Yet the rats find their way to
each and every one of these barns where there is
food to draw them, and, during the warm months
at any rate, every barn has its full complement
of rats. It is particularly noticeable, however, that
the buildings near water, even though it be the

THE GRAY RAT. 293

smallest mountain-burn, are the first to be occupied,
as migrating rats are fond of following water — first,
because they are habitually thirsty animals ; and,
second, because its proximity affords them additional
shelter. In winter most, if not all, of the rat popu-
lations of these outposts drift back to civilisation ;
nor do they return each year in the same numbers.
All this would seem to indicate that the rats
remember from year to year their various feeding-
grounds, and since they have by now penetrated
to the utmost corners of the country-side, only
new buildings are immune from them during the
summer months. Old buildings are most favoured,
not only because their construction suits the rats'
mode of living, but also because old buildings
have their established records among the rat
populace.

MIGRATION.

Some light has already been thrown upon the
why and the wherefore of the rat migrations that
take place during certain seasons. Rats are said
to move occasionally en masse from one point to
another, and many such migrations have been
witnessed. The failing of food-supplies, or the
superabundance of foes in one locality, quickly
decides the rats to move elsewhere, but the rate
of their going is governed by necessity. If the
food-supply gradually gives out, the rats gradually
dwindle away ; but should the famine be sudden,
should the assault of their enemies be fierce and
effective, should water or fire invade their terri-
tory, then they seek strength in their unity of
purpose and migrate in a body. One can be quite
sure, however, that they know where they are
going, and the horde will very soon split up into

294 THE GRAY RAT.

communities distributed with due regard for the
necessities of life, just as one can be quite sure that
they will drift back into the evacuated territory
immediately the conditions which led to their
sudden abandonment of it ameliorate.

Such an invasion of rats must, indeed, be a
fearsome proposition for the fauna of the territory
they invade. A single rat is plucky enough and
fierce enough to attack any creature it imagines it
can pull down, and rats possess a power of combina-
tion which is unparalleled in the animal world. A
rat has only to utter a certain squeal in order to
bring to the vicinity every one of his fellows within
hearing, prepared to unite in a common attack,
so that an army of rats sweeping the country leaves
behind it an area of death and destruction. In
Northamptonshire some years ago an old mill was
burnt down, and the homeless rats sought temporary
shelter in a long strip of coppice adjoining. It was,
unhappily, in the spring of the year, and every nest
the wood contained was harried and laid waste,
in many cases the brooding birds being killed on
their nests. The keeper who watched the property
stated that it was some months ere pheasants
returned to the coppice in their normal numbers of
occupation, while the mice and the voles, with which
the dense undergrowth swarmed, must have been
entirely wiped out. Even the remains of devoured
rooks were found lying on the ground, though it is
not reasonable to suppose that the rats ascended
the tall pine-trees in which the rook colonies roosted.

Such rat armies, however, do not remain long
united. They may travel together for the distance
of a mile or more, but after that every hundred
yards sees a considerable reduction in their
numbers. The spreading and the redistribution

THE GEAY RAT. 295

commence immediately, but for several months
thereafter — as in the instance just recorded —
every stream and ditch within the vicinity of
the migration may harbour more rats than usual.

POWERS OF PRECONCEPTION.

Many curious stories have been told about the
gray rat's powers of preconception or prescience,
and it is, of course, commonly believed that rats
will leave a doomed ship, just as it is gruesomely
said that a shark will follow a ship carrying a
corpse. It is a matter of history that when, in 1887,
a great fire broke out among some warehouses on
the Thames Embankment, the rats were seen to
leave the buildings in a closely packed army some
hours before the fateful spark began its dread work,
and, swimming together, were observed to put the
river between themselves and the scene of the
coming conflagration.

During the early Zeppelin raids an old country-
house in Norfolk was struck by a bomb and
demolished by fire, and I remember reading in the
local press a letter from the lady of the house, who,
on the evening of the disaster, was alone in one
of the downstairs rooms. At about 9.30 she was
very much disturbed by the activities of the rats in
the walls, stating that ' it sounded as though they
were hurriedly leaving the building.' After twenty
minutes or so, silence fell, and close upon eleven
the air-ship was heard overhead.

Unconvincing though such reports may seem,
there is no doubt whatever that rats will leave the
banks of a stream subject to sudden spate some
time before the water rises to flood them out —
even though the storm which causes the water
to rise may have occurred some miles away, so

296 THE GRAY RAT.

that they can have had no apparent warning. A
house in which I lived in Yorkshire was close to a
small stream which came down from the moors,
and along the banks of which many gray rats made
their summer home. Invariably, an hour or so
before this stream rose in flood, the rats could be
heard under the floor of the house, having forsaken
the banks of the burn for this more secure residence.
The phenomenon was of such regular occurrence
that it ceased to create any wonder, it merely
being observed, on the rats being heard, that the
brook was about to rise again.

SUMMER HABITS.

I spent the spring and summer of 1919 at an
angling-resort by Loch Ken, in Galloway, and here
many interesting observations were made on the
summer habits of the gray rat. The house stands
at the loch-margin, considerably over a mile from
any other human habitation. It is surrounded by
picturesque woods in which wild life of every kind
abounds, and considering the stern nature of this
country one would hardly suspect the gray rat, so
intimately associated in our minds with the hives
of human industry, to be very abundant there.
Early in May, however, the rodents began to leave
the first signs of their passing, and thereafter, though
they were seldom seen, indications showed that they
were as numerous as the rabbits that thronged the
upper cliffs.

We may digress for a moment in order to contem-
plate this fact as indicating the strength of numbers
the gray rat has attained. We know that every
town and city harbours its hundreds and thousands,
yet so wide is their range that here, in the heart of
the Galloway highlands, their unwelcome presence

THE GRAY RAT. 297

in the ever- unwelcome numbers is forcibly brought
home to us. They penetrate to the most remote
shooting-cabins in the heart of the hills ; they are
to be found comfortably established by mountain-
lochs and moorland-tarns far distant from agri-
cultural activities ; in fact, it would be difficult
to find any spot within the British Isles upon
which the gray rat has not as yet obtruded
its presence. Yet these millions, spread all over
the country to the loneliest and wildest corners,
are merely the overflow from our cities. Were
it not that the great centres of population already
harbour all the rats they can feed, there would
be no country rats. Were all the urban rats
destroyed by plague or by some other means, the
country rats would throng back into the cities to
take their place. The thought is rather a startling
one — Great Britain is to-day so overwhelmed with
rats that their teeming millions are crowded into
the most distant corners of the island in order that
all may find the wherewithal to live ! This para-
graph should be borne in mind in reading later
the estimates by authorities of the rat population
of Great Britain, for, whereas it may be a compara-
tively simple matter to arrive at a roughly approxi-
mate estimate of the rat population of our cities,
he would be a bold man, rather than a wise one,
who attempted even to guess at the rat population
of country areas. Everywhere where the plough
has turned the earth rats may be seen in scores
about every storage building at the fall of dusk,
and the scene is repeated even in the lonely glens
and corries where the buzzard and the peregrine
still hold their own. Can it be doubted for one
moment that the gray rat, an alien to our shores,
and two centuries ago unknown, is to-day over-

298 THE GRAY RAT.

whelmingly the most abundant of all our larger
mammals ? These facts, together with such data
as are forthcoming, serve to show that the rat peril
is by no means a journalistic dream — serve further
to suggest that the era of nature's unfailing remedy,
disease, with all its ghastly possibilities, must be
drawing near at hand, unless man steps in and by
systematic and widespread destruction diverts the
ordinary course which nature would adopt in re-
ducing the gray rat's numbers.

To return to the rat population on the borders
of Loch Ken. Early in May a distinct runway
began to appear, winding up from the water's edge
to some outbuildings at the back of the house.
At first it was only just definable as it passed in
and out among the bracken-beds ; but in two or
three days it became deeply trodden, and as clearly
defined as a human footpath, the earth being
stained by the passage of numerous muddy paws.
It could now be traced along the water's edge for
fully a hundred yards away from the house ; Avhile
from the outbuildings other runways could be
discerned, the one which was most distinct, and
evidently the recognised highway, passing straight
from the outbuildings along the side of the house,
crossing the kitchen-garden, and then on to the
loch again. It thereby cut off the headland on
which the house stood, the rats evidently con-
sidering it unnecessary to make the detour along
the water's edge.

At other points by the loch -margin similar
pathways could be found every here and there,
being as a rule most distinct at the points at which
the rats could save a needless circuit by making
use of them.

There is no doubt whatever that a constant

THE GRAY RAT. 299

stream of rats was coming and going by these
runways ; and that their numbers were great was
clearly indicated by the much-worn condition of
the tracks. That new-comers were forever passing
was proved by the fact that a trap set on one of
the tracks would yield regular results throughout
the season, whereas resident rats soon become
acquainted with any such peril located on their
immediate range, and when one or two have been
caught, the whole rat community eschews the spot.

But though many were coming and going the
whole of the time, two huge rats, a buck and a
doe, settled upon the property. Probably they
were mated, but they did not live together. To
me they were an endless nuisance, as I was at the
time conducting various experiments with electric
photography, and every night, if the release-plate
were baited, one or both of these beasts would
spring the release, flare the flash-lamp, and leave
their sinister impressions on the plate. They seemed
not to mind in the least the blinding flash, for they
would return night after night in the face of it.

The passage of this constant stream of rats,
together with the fact that only two remained
resident, bears out what has been said with regard
to the distribution of these beasts and their habit
of following in one another's tracks.

Late in the summer it was decided to remove
a chicken-coop that stood on the grass plot near
the house. Immediately the coop was lifted a
huge rat bounded from beneath it — the buck
of the two residents. Fortunately a small Skye
terrier was present, and at once closed with the
monster, the two keeping up a running fight till
some alders were gained, into which the rat climbed
with the agility of a squirrel.

300 THE GHAY RAT.

The dog was unused to dealing with such for-
midable quarry, and when the rat was poked out of
the tree it made its teeth meet in the terrier's nose,
and there followed a rough-and-tumble encounter
which at first promised the defeat of the terrier.
Human interference, however, decided the fate of
Mus decumanus.

The rat's stronghold was then examined, and
proved a source of great interest. The floor of the
chicken-coop was insulated from the ground in
the usual way by intermediate struts, and within
the space thus provided between the floor and the
ground the rat had made its summer home. Into
the cranny it had dragged a vast quantity of leaves
and dry grass, but the most interesting point was
that the brute had cunningly closed all spaces that
might admit draught (save for the one hole it used)
with small sticks and bits of rushes. Near to the
hole by which it came and went was an accumu-
lation of loose leaves, which probably formed a
virtually self-closing and draught-excluding door.

The nest was located in the most sheltered
corner, and near to it was the beast's larder. A
more disgusting sight than the latter I never saw.
It consisted of the entrails of a rabbit, the skin of a
pike, and other oddments of filth and house-refuse
in an advanced state of decomposition, and a
swarming mass of burying beetles. The stink was
positively unbearable ; yet there was every possi-
bility that this loathsome beast, sleeping within
touch of this foul mass of carrion, had on occasions
entered the dairy of the house where our own food
was stored ! This is what is happening daily all
over the country, and still we find the majority of
people quite indifferent as to whether rats thrive
or are exterminated !

THE GRAY EAT. 301

Unfortunately the female rat escaped us, though
the gardener discovered her nest, all ready for
young, when one day repairing a breach in the
garden wall. She too had her larder, containing
two adult sandpipers and their three pretty little
newly hatched chicks. These birds had built their
nest quite near the house, and, owing to their tame-
ness and their pretty habits, had much endeared
themselves to the household. We had, indeed,
watched them closely since their nesting activities
began, and it was with a sense of keen regret that
we learnt thus of the falling of the whole family to
so odious a trespasser.

One big gray rat spent the summer two years in
succession in the bank-burrow of a water-vole on
the river Wharfe. Invariably this beast could be
seen within fifty feet of the burrow. It was often
astir during broad daylight, and on being disturbed
would take to the water and swim below the sur-
face till its burrow was gained, in exactly the same
manner as a water-vole. One evening, when fish-
ing, I caught the brute in my landing-net, but it
contrived to escape ; though the fright it received
evidently induced it to change its quarters, as it
was seen no more in that locality. Invariably the
summer quarters of gray rats that take to the
country are at the edge of water.

DESTRUCTIVENESS.

The destructiveness of the gray rat is too big a
subject to attempt to deal with in any exhaustive
way, and accordingly a few facts must suffice
to illustrate the point. A good deal has been
written of late setting forth actual figures of the
damage done by rats, and of the peril they present
in our midst by spreading disease through the

302 THE GRAY RAT.

medium of their parasites, or even by the con-
tamination and filth of their own persons.

In this connection it may be as well to reiterate
the fact that research has resulted in the discovery
that the terrible bubonic plague, which at times
reaches such horrifying dimensions in India and
China, is communicated by rats to human beings
by the medium of the rat flea, and it must be
borne in mind that so long as rats remain with us
in their present numbers we ourselves are assured
no immunity. The plague is nature's plan of
keeping the rat multitudes in check — otherwise
they would overrun the whole earth — and the flea
is nature's means of spreading the disease from rat
to rat. Incidentally, it is also the instrument by
which the infection is spread from rat to man.

Deaths from this plague in India alone reach
many millions periodically, and occasional outbreaks
of it occur in Britain, generally in our big seaport
towns, where rat-infested ships come to harbour.
Rats suffering from plague have been caught in
England, and if once the epidemic got moving in
earnest it would be virtually impossible to check
it. Since 1914 rats have increased enormously in
numbers, and here and there the rat population
must already be so dense that the animals can
be regarded as living ' under unclean conditions,'
which in the case of the rat means disease.

As regards the material damage actually done
by rats — the destruction of valuable materials that
is taking place in every village and town of the
British Isles — one needs only to picture the loath-
some hordes to be seen swarming forth at the fall
of dusk from every suitable harbourage where food
for them exists. Rick-yards, knackeries, slaughter-
houses, warehouses, docks, stores, sewers, shops —

THE GBAY RAT. 303

everywhere and anywhere that food-stuffs or filth
exist — gray rats are to be found in numbers decided
only by the shelter obtainable for them and the
food-supply at hand.

' In a knackery in the north of England,' writes
S. L. Bensusan, 'food was placed in a room to
entice the entrance of rats, and at midnight the
door of the room was closed. Next day men and
terriers entered to destroy the spoilers, and over a
quarter of a ton of rats were killed ! '

' Kylratt ' estimates that in six months a hundred
rats will consume two thousand quartern loaves
and twenty -seven bushels of sharps. Another
authority estimates that each rat costs the country
7s. 6d.* annually.

A farmer in the west of England who, in 1919,
was prosecuted for allowing two of his stacks to
crumble to bits owing to the activities of rats,
admitted that the damage done to one stack alone
approximated to a hundred pounds. To quote again
from Bensusan : ' In 1917 two large wheat-stacks
were not thrashed owing to the difficulty of obtain-
ing a thrasher ; and when eventually a machine was
procured, one stack yielded only four sacks of wheat
and many hundreds of rats, while the other was
considered unworth the expense of thrashing. The
stacks had been estimated to be of considerable
value when made, the wheat on neighbouring fields
being well up to four quarters to the acre.'

NUMBERS.

In the first three months of 1919 Leicestershire
made a return of sixty-five thousand rats killed, yet
there was no appreciable lessening of their numbers
in that county. Dr A. E. Shipley estimates the

* Pre-war estimate.

304 THE GRAY RAT.

rat population of Great Britain and Ireland to be
equivalent to one rat for every human being ; but
this would seem to me a very conservative estimate.
A large number of dwelling-houses harbour many
more rats than they do human beings ; farms,
especially those having rick-yards attached, retain
a rat retinue which outnumbers its human in-
habitants by at least ten, and possibly fifty, to one.
In our cities the walls of many human dwellings,
and of every factory, storehouse, and warehouse,
harbour rats, while the animals congregate in
thousands about slaughter-houses, refuse-dumps,
and the like, to say nothing of the hordes that
dwell in the underground sewers and culverts. It
would seem, then, that the rat population of our
urban areas far outnumbers the human population,
and I have no doubt whatever that the balance in
favour of the rat is even more marked in country
areas, agricultural or otherwise. In many cases the
rat population of a single barn would exceed the
human inhabitants of the whole village ; then we
have the numerous rats living remote from man's
habitations, in stream and hedge banks, together
with those that take up their quarters in isolated
barns. Two hundred millions would probably be
a more accurate estimate of the rat population of
Great Britain and Ireland ; but taking it at Dr
Shipley's conservative estimate of forty millions, and
accepting the previous authority's calculation that
each rat costs the country 7s. 6d. per annum, we
are annually paying this creature the handsome
sum of £15,000,000 for living in our midst ! Dr
Shipley himself reckons the damage done by rats
as amounting to £10,000,000 annually, while Sir
James Crichton- Brown's calculations agree with
the sum of £15,000,000. In all probability only

THE GRAY EAT. 305

those rats living in granaries, wheat-stacks, and
such places do damage averaging out at 7s. 6d.
per rat ; rats living in book-shops, hotels, furni-
ture-stores, &c. probably do a great deal more,
but this is liberally offset by the swarms of
country rats that in summer do very little damage
at all.

IN AMERICA.

It is estimated that fires in America due
to defective insulation of electric cables cost the
country £3,000,000 per annum, and it is defi-
nitely proved that the majority of these fires are
caused by the gnawing propensities of the gray
rat. Fires are also produced by rats gnawing lead
gas-pipes, and many disasters have occurred through
their activities in this line. One American authority
estimates that it costs large towns, such as Balti-
more and Washington, four millions annually to
maintain their rat battalions ; and it must be borne
in mind that, owing to the construction of American
buildings, fires are a far more potent peril there
than in this country.

In addition to gnawing cables, gas-pipes, books,
and valuable ivories, rats have been known to
gnaw the teats of pigs and goats, the feet of small
children, and to destroy sucking-pigs and even
calves. Nothing, indeed, not even man himself,
is secure from them. In the main sewers of
London it is customary for men to work in pairs,
as owing to the size and numbers of the rats it is
deemed unsafe for the workmen to venture singly
into these dim corridors. Shelves and runways
are provided for the rats, as at one time it was
considered that they were of value as scavengers,
though now it is generally realised that even amidst

W.A. T

306 THE GRAY RAT.

the filth of their choice these obnoxious creatures
are of little or no service to man.

In ancient villages and old dwelling-houses
generally the rats' subterranean tunnels tap the
drains and the sewers, and passing thence into the
walls of the buildings, allow foul gases to enter the
living-rooms — in fact, to permeate the whole of
the dwellings — a state of affairs which is doubtless
the cause of sickness and disease. I remember a
case of this sort occurring in the north of England.
The atmosphere of the front-room of a small house
was on several occasions noticed to be tainted,
and in the end it became so bad that investigations
were made. It was then discovered that the rats,
by removing the mortar from the foundations
directly under the room in question, had thrown
the chamber into atmospheric communication with
an old sewer, not previously known to exist, which
ran alongside the house. The room had been in
daily use by the family occupying the house —
they were accustomed to congregate there in
the evenings. It goes without saying that this
state of things exists in scores of old houses and
cottages in our cities and in the country. No
wonder the pressure of public opinion has at last
induced one or two of our lethargical health autho-
rities to take steps for the systematic destruction
of this enemy in our midst, and the movement
is one in which each individual should consider him-
self or herself bound to be personally active. On no
occasion should a gray rat be allowed to live if it
is within our power to bring about its destruction.

METHODS OF EXTERMINATION.

It is of no use ridding a building of its rats
unless, when this is done, steps are taken to prevent,

THE GRAY RAT. 307

or at least impede, the return of others. Ferrets
and terriers probably afford the best method of
getting rid of the rats in the first place, though
in some cases they can be dislodged by pouring
water into their holes. This method is obviously
of no use where the rats are able to escape the
water by climbing inside the walls. When it is
practised, a piece of wire-netting should be placed
over the hole into which the water is poured, to
prevent the rats from escaping by that way, the
terriers being kept in readiness at the adjoining
holes. Immediately the work is completed, all
holes in the masonry should be mortared up, slats
of tin nailed over gnawed doors and other damaged
woodwork, and holes in the ground thoroughly
made up ; otherwise new rats will immediately take
the place of those that have been killed.*

Steel traps are not sufficiently wholesale in their
effects to warrant general recommendation ; though
it is a good plan to keep three or four always set
in obscure corners, as their presence tends to make
the place unpopular among the rats. They are
also useful about chicken-runs, &c., and when set
should not be baited. Rabbit-traps are far prefer-
able to the small steel rat-traps, as they generally
kill the rat outright ; and the trap should not be
handled before being set. A clean steel trap has
practically no scent, but an old one should be
smoked or smeared with oil — bacon fat is excellent
— before it is set. When it is being set it is best
to erect a pen by placing two boards on edge,
the trap being laid between them.

A most efficacious plan for wholesale extermina-
tion is to select a chamber which can be rendered

* Holes filled with broken glass and tar are permanently abandoned. —
H. M. B.

308 THE GRAY RAT.

rat-proof by cementing up all the holes in the walls.
Leave the door open two or three nights, and
feed the rats in the chamber with some food
they cannot carry away and store. When it is
evident that the rat population has become accus-
tomed to gathering there after nightfall, secure a
string to the door in such a way that it can be
slammed -to from a suitable distance. The rats
having thus been trapped, they can be left im-
prisoned till daylight, when terriers are introduced
to do their work.

Another excellent plan is one which was recently
practised in a Liverpool warehouse, and with such
effect that the refuse-collectors finally refused to
handle any more dead rats from this particular
warehouse. An iron tank, containing about eight
inches of water and of suitable size, was covered
over with a sheet of strong, glazed paper. Imme-
diately above the tank, and about eight inches from
it, a dead hen was suspended from a beam along
which the rats were in the habit of running.
Everything being thus prepared, several long slits
were cut in the paper covering of the tank, so that,
while appearing solid, it was in reality a pitfall.
The rats that attempted to mount to the fowl by
the tank inevitably met their fate, while those
that climbed down from above naturally dropped
rather than attempt the difficult climb back.
Hundreds of huge rats were killed in this way,
and it would appear to be a thoroughly practical
method.

BREEDING.

Figures bearing upon the gray rat's powers of
reproduction create a sense of dazed paralysis in
the mind, and it need only be said that their rate

THE GRAY BAT. 309

of multiplication is such that, if none were killed,
a pair of rats might at the end of two years have
descendants to the tune of ninety thousand !

But, although figures illustrating this point may
appeal to some as vaguely amusing, the actual
results attained should provoke tears rather than
laughter. Though not fully developed till six
months old, a gray rat under suitable conditions
may begin to breed at the end of five weeks. The
first litter, however, is a small one, numbering,
probably, not more than three. Thereafter the
number of litters per year, and the number of
young per litter, are decided entirely by the cir-
cumstances in which the rat lives. If the season
is normal, neither too hot nor too cold, and food
is plentiful, the gray rat will produce six litters
annually, the young numbering from eight to
twenty at a birth. Working on a basis of a wide
range of statistics, we arrive at the fact that a
normal gray rat living under normal rat conditions
— in other words, the average rat— successfully
brings into the world forty-eight children per year.
Accepting the predominance of bucks which seems
always to exist, this would give us twenty female
children to the year, each of which may begin to
produce its equally fertile offspring at the end of
five weeks, and thus ad infinitum.

The young are blind for fourteen days, and if
the male rat plays any part in their existence, it
is by bringing that existence to a sudden end, to
his own epicurean satisfaction. The young leave
the nest at the end of about eighteen days,
and at this age are to be seen abroad at all
hours, little larger than mice, and readily falling
victims to any kind of trap that may be set for
them.

310 THE GRAY RAT.

If hunger happens to come upon the rat popula-
tion, the feebler members of the community fall
to the stronger — which means that the very young
are killed by the old, and that the very old are
killed by the middle-aged. In short, only the
fittest, which probably are the middle-aged, escape
death at the hands of their own kind.

It would seem that gray rats habitually kill off
the old male members of their communities ; and
it may be observed that when a rat is found living
alone, as, for example, the summer rat described
as living in a bank-burrow by the river Wharfe,
it is invariably an old buck which, having had one
attempt made upon his life by his clansmen, has
sense enough to avoid further encounters by living
a life of isolation and solitude.

LENGTH OF LIFE.

Sixty-eight years may be taken as the average
length of man's life, which is approximately four
times the period required for him to arrive at full
organic, if not muscular, development. This rule,
however, can seldom be applied successfully to
animals of the lower order. By their rate of living
man is a short-lived creature. Few of them have
reached the zenith of their powers by the period
at which, correspondingly, senile decline begins to
show in human beings. This, together with such
data as are given elsewhere in this book, seems to
indicate that it is the mind, rather than the body,
which decides a creature's length of life. Man
wears badly in the carnal order of things, because
his mind is more active than his body ; while as
a general rule creatures that hibernate, and whose
minds, therefore, are inactive for a portion of their
existence, outlive those that are astir the year

THE GRAY RAT. 311

round. Slow thinkers are slow livers, and there-
fore they live long.

The gray rat has probably not reached le premier
Octobre, as the French call it, by the end of the
second year of its existence, and the solitary males,
driven out from their colonies, are in all likeli-
hood living in their fourth or fifth summer. At
six years a gray rat would have far outlived the
majority of its kind, and I doubt whether the
females breed after their third year. These state-
ments, however, are based on such scanty observa-
tions that they border upon guess-work, and no
doubt the whole question is decided by the con-
ditions under which the rat lives, which means the
rate at which it lives. A female that begins
breeding at five weeks old, and thereafter produces
five or six litters annually, naturally does not con-
tinue to breed so long as one living at a more
moderate rate ; and it is probable that the bucks
outlive the does, as most of the very old rats
caught or observed are bucks.

DIMENSIONS.

An adult male rat usually scales about 13 oz.,
the females from 14 to 16 oz. ; 20 oz. is not a rare
weight. The average tip-to-tip measurement of
males can be taken as 16 inches, of which the tail
accounts for 7 inches.

THE WATER=RAT OR WATER-VOLE.

FOR the benefit of the uninitiated, let us first
be quite clear on one point — that the water-
rat or water-vole is quite a different creature from
the house-rat, for whose sins this pretty and
interesting little animal is often made to suffer.
The water-vole belongs exclusively to the river
pastures and the bank-burrows. It is often
plentiful in towns where the gardens border a
river, but it never under any circumstances tres-
passes upon the odorous runways of the odious
house-rats. Living in earth burrows around which
vegetation is green, it seldom, if ever, penetrates
the drains, but is a clean-living animal whose
habits resemble those of the beaver. It is essen-
tially a beast of the water's edge.

The water-vole is very much smaller than the
house-rat. Its fur is denser and deeper ; its head
is short and blunt, somewhat like that of a guinea-
pig. In fact, the animal is as blunt at one end
as the other, and viewed at a distance, as it sits
up nibbling a husk held in its delicate forepaws,
it looks a strangely oblong little beast.

The fur of the water-vole varies in shade from
mole-blue to hare-brown. Occasional specimens
are quite russet. The undercoat consists of fine,
blue fur, so close and silken that water does
not penetrate it, and the brown shades belong
to the outer coat of hair, which is tipped with
this pigment. I am inclined to think that as
the animal grows older the outer coat — the hair,
that is, as distinct from the under-fur — increases
in length, so that the colour with which it is

THE WATER-EAT OR WATER-VOLE. 313

tipped predominates more and more as the seasons
pass. Thus an old water-vole may be quite brown,
simply because its blue under-fur does not show
through its outer coating of brown hair ; but
a young vole may be quite blue, the shade of
its under-fur being the predominating hue. At
all ages the fur is so dense as to give the oblong
appearance already referred to, there being a
distinct ruff round the neck, while the small,
blunt ears are completely buried in their surround-
ing covering. Black varieties are known in parts
of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Scotland.

The fact that in summer-time the gray or house
rats often turn the water-voles out of the bank-
burrows and take possession of them may be the
cause of confusion between the two. Thus, in
addition to suffering the first injury from the rats,
the voles, as a direct result of the said injury,
are subjected on their return to man's persecution
in mistake for the unwelcome invaders.

CLANNISHNESS.

Water-voles are clannish little creatures. They
live in families, and appear to be much devoted
to each other. The families do not intermingle.
Each little clan has its own strictly observed
range, and does not trespass on the preserves of
its neighbours. A boulder of rock in mid-stream
may be the common property of all ; but even
here the clans do not associate, though all may
use the boulder in passing. If a member of one
clan is already on the rock, and a member of
another clan swims up to rest there, the first
tenant immediately makes off, as though anxious
to avoid a tete-a-tete. This I have noticed many
times. Similarly, if one vole is compelled to

314 THE WATER-EAT OR WATER-VOLE.

cross the water-front of another, it does so, as
far as is possible, by keeping to the water. Should
it, while crossing, see the owner of the property,
it at once quickens its pace almost to a stampede.
It would seem that they at all times expect attack
from members of their own race, except from those
with whom they are associated, and to whom they
are probably related.

Very often the clans are distinct from each
other not only as regards their recognised beats,
but also as regards their appearance. Thus it may
be observed that the voles occupying one corner
of a river are quite a different shade from those
across the way. This, however, is purely a matter
of family characteristics.

Let us follow the establishment of a clan. A
male and a female water-vole who have survived
the merciless weeding -out of winter establish
themselves in a bank-burrow in the very early
spring, and forthwith produce children. As these
grow up a second family appears, and the first
family now disperses from the nursery-burrow,
each to make a home for itself quite near. The
various members of the family do not live to-
gether, but their respective homes are all on the
same patch of property. When they meet, it is
as friendly acquaintances, to nibble each other's
faces, or perhaps to share in the same feast. They
are members of the same clan.

In due course more families, and still more, make
their appearance, till the congestion is relieved by
the older children developing ambitions of their
own, which lead them forth in fortune's quest. If,
however, the property be sufficiently productive
of food, the children and their children may settle
near, till gradually, with the growth of the colony,

THE WATER-BAT OR WATER-VOLE. 315

the family splits up automatically into different
clans, each within hailing distance of the next, yet
each respecting the other's rights.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.

The water-voles are creatures of daylight habits,
lovers of the sunshine and of the bright scenes of
life. They are fond of crossing and recrossing the
water by which they live, and many times, from
high up in the hills, I have looked down into the
valley, where the river wound like a silver ribbon
across the green landscape, to see one of these little
creatures, visible from an immense distance, gamely
swimming across, the arrow-head of ripples clearly
marking its course. The buzzard, hanging in the
wind, evidently knows that it is of no use tilting
his planes and gliding down in hot pursuit, just as
the wolf knows that it is of no use trying to catch
a prairie-dog at the mouth of its funnel-shaped
burrow.

Owing to its water habits, this species has
managed to survive many of its near kindred
which, though sharing its habitat and being more
productive, were exclusively creatures of the land.
The water-vole is essentially a beast of the water,
and though it does not possess fully developed
webbed feet, it is, at any rate, like the beaver,
clothed for a watery habitat. The young take
naturally to the water almost as soon as they are
born — before, indeed, their eyes are open to the
light. This is evidently nature's safeguard against
the effect of floods, which are the chief among
the water-vole's foes. In hilly country the rivers
and burns are apt to rise with surprising sudden-
ness at any season of the year, flooding out the
bank-burrows ; and though, as a rule, the nursery-

316 THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE.

dens are placed above normal flood-level, a spate
of exceptional violence may reach the young ere
their mother has time to carry them away. Were
they totally unable to help themselves, such a flood
might lead to terrible havoc among the water-vole
population all up and down the river, and would,
in all probability, sweep away that narrow margin
which lies between extermination and the com-
parative prosperity of the species — a margin which,
in wild life of every kind, is so narrow as to leave
little room for new foes.

But, though apparently more advanced in at
least one respect as a creature of the water than is
the otter, the water-vole is by no means a complete
master of that element. How long can a water-
vole live under water ? Probably no longer than a
trained human swimmer. If flustered and hurried,
it is unable to remain totally submerged for more
than forty seconds, and, unlike the chicks of
moor-hens and other water-fowl, it never hides
completely beneath the surface. Its diving abilities
are developed just so far as to enable it to achieve
concealment by diving till it has reached some
point of safe harbourage, such as a bank-burrow,
the roots of willows, or dense rushes. Like the
otter, it will lie submerged when hunted, only
its nose above the surface, taking advantage of
any drifting cover, and almost invisible as its body
swings with the current.

During heavy spates, when the rivers are bank-
full and the burrows flooded, the water-voles are
dependent for their lives upon ' playing 'possum '
in this way. I have many times observed them at
it, swimming hurriedly from point to point, and
lying concealed at every patch of cover to watch
and listen. When one flood has succeeded another

THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE. 317

in quick succession, I have known them to forsake
the river entirely, and to make temporary homes
along the banks of the tiny brooks trickling down
from the hills, or even in the heart of the upland
woods, comparatively remote from their beloved
element.

But though the river may at times prove
treacherous, it is nevertheless the water-voles' best
friend. Accustomed to seeking the water when
distressed, they have no idea of defending them-
selves, or of making the best of what chances exist,
when water is not at hand. A water-vole caught
out in the open on dry land will even turn and
face man, so great is the panic of its despair. If
beset by stoat or weasel, it makes no attempt to
get away, and, as described in the chapter dealing
with the weasel, that animal will speedily exter-
minate a whole family of water-voles if there is
no water at hand for them to go to.

The water-vole appears to be much prized as a
food item by all predatory birds and animals, and
for this reason it cannot be doubted that in its
natural environment lies the secret of its survival.
If the voles had been purely dry-land animals, they
would not exist to-day ; but as things stand, the
weasel or the stoat, entering a water-vole's burrow,
is apt to find it empty, the occupants having escaped
in the ace of time by the back exit, and so into
the water, which retains no lasting scent. Similarly,
the hawk, striking from above, is foiled by the
vole's lightning plunge, and its eyes not being
trained to look below the surface, the bird is
unable to follow the course of its intended victim.
Indeed, it is to be noticed that few animals seem
to be capable of looking into water with an in-
telligence that takes count of anything moving

318 THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE.

below the surface. I remember on one occasion
a ratting expedition entirely failed owing to the
fact that the terriers could not be made to see the
bolting rats as they swam below the surface, albeit
the water was dead-clear and not a foot in depth,
while the rats were as visible to us as they dived
across the gravel as they would have been on dry
land.

NATURAL FOES.

The water-vole's natural foes are many, though
it may suffer little by their activities except in
winter. Since it is nocturnal in its habits as well
as diurnal, owls probably stand foremost among
its wild enemies. An owl will spend much of its
time patrolling a river or a stream where these
voles exist, or in waiting silently for their appear-
ance, perched with alert watchfulness on a boulder
or in the branches. The heron also is supposed to
take water-voles, and there is no doubt that this
bird would very readily snap up a young vole
that it could easily swallow. The adult voles,
however, appear to possess no fear of the gray-
coated ' angler,' swimming boldly within reach of
his bayonet bill ; and as regards any extensive
damage, the heron can be written off as a winter
foe only. The same applies to the otter, for,
though living on apparently friendly terms with
the voles during the summer, an otter will make
terrible inroads into their numbers in winter, when
trout are so poorly conditioned as to afford little
nourishment. The gray rats probably do not
destroy water-voles in any great numbers, as the
more timid creatures simply clear out as soon as
the rats come, having more sense than to dispute
their right of entry.

THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE. 319

Next to the owl, large trout and pike probably
rank as chief among this little creature's blood
enemies. A seventeen-pound pike caught in the
river Ken, in Kirkcudbrightshire, within a mile of
Loch Ken, contained a whole family of half-grown
water-voles, together with a full-grown wild duck !
It almost reminds one of Harry Tate's pike, which
enclosed a motor-cycle, a sewing-machine, and part
of a tree, and I would put it down as belonging
to the same category of pike story if I had not been
personally active in the downfall of this particular
fresh-water shark. Large trout, similarly, will take
anything moving that they consider there is the
least chance of their swallowing ; but since they
are less numerous than pike, and are probably
less given to hunting along the margins, they
figure less prominently among the water-vole's
foes.

Salmon, on their up-stream journey, do not
interfere very much with the regular residents of
the stream ; but in winter, when on the redds,
they become ugly in character as well as in looks,
and doubtless many a vole, crossing the sheet of
water which he considers his, and which the salmon
consider theirs, is savagely dragged down by them
to be torn to ribbons in the gloomy depths.

Otters, herons, and salmon, then, are added in
winter to the list of the water-vole's standing foes.
During that season frost and flood-waters, hunger
and privation, beset the little creatures' lives, so
that wise and cautious is the vole that lives to
breed its kind. In summer the water-voles flourish
and multiply ; in winter their numbers are reduced
to the minimum which suffices to produce next
year's normal stock. Thus, while autumn may
see the water-vole population of a given stretch

320 THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE.

numbering five hundred, next spring may find only
twenty mated pairs spared to maintain thereon
the footing of the species ; and so on season after
season. In flat country they probably fare no
worse than in our northern hills, for, though the
floods spread over a wider area, the flood-waters
are less turbulent, food is more plentiful, and,
generally speaking, the cold snaps are of shorter
duration.

The water-vole is seldom found at an altitude
exceeding eight hundred feet. It belongs to the
lush lowland valleys, where the growth along the
water's edge is rich in seed-producing herbs and
many varieties of green-stuff. Sometimes, but not
often, specimens are found by mountain lochs and
tarns ; but, so far as I know, the animal is never
resident there, and the occasional specimens seen
are probably ambitious wanderers that have loved
and lost, and finally lost their way.

The water-vole does not exist in Ireland.

BREEDING AND NESTING.

The water-vole's powers of multiplication during
spring, summer, and autumn are not nearly so great
as those of the gray rat, and naturally the rate
of mortality is very much higher. The voles are
strictly monogamous, and both parents are to be
found with the young. The male, indeed, would
appear to be an ideal parent, since he certainly
helps his mate in her nesting activities, and seems
to possess a sense of kindly solicitude for his
offspring. Probably not more than two litters,
numbering from seven to nine per litter, are
produced during the spring and summer.

Whether water-voles remain mated during the
winter would appear to depend on circumstances.

THE WATER-VOLE.
U

THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE. 321

If their home be well sheltered and secure, it is
probable that the union holds good; but during
winter the water-voles of our rapidly flowing brooks
and rivers in the north generally live solitary
lives. It would seem that when the mating bond
no longer exists they very easily drift apart, and
the flooding- out of their burrow may cause each to
seek new quarters quite independently of the other.
In winter the struggle to keep alive is so unrelent-
ing that, whatever their intentions may be, the
mated couples are apt to be mercilessly separated ;
though it is probable that, where circumstances
favour it, a once mated couple remain mated for
life.

According to some authorities the young are
sometimes born in the bank -burrow ; but more
frequently, so far as I have observed, the nest is
situated twelve or twenty yards from the water's
edge, out in an open pasture or in a wood. Gener-
ally it is underground, but so near the surface that
cattle are apt to tread through the roof, bringing
destruction upon the family. When the young are
growing, they appear to obtain a good deal of their
exercise by extending the burrow in every direc-
tion, till eventually it becomes a warren, resembling
a maze of mole-runs.

Not infrequently the nest is above ground, con-
cealed by the shelter of overhanging grasses. It is
a large nest, consisting of reeds cut into suitable
lengths, or of any other material that comes handy.
In this case the young are conveyed to the bank-
burrow, soon after they are born, by their mother,
who carries them in her mouth by the loose skin
between their forelegs, and the young forthwith
amuse themselves by extending the bank-burrow
in the way previously described.

W.A. U

322 THE WATER-RAT OE WATER-VOLE.

It has been said that the young are sometimes
born in the bank-burrow, but this statement is
based on reference rather than on personal obser-
vation. The bank-burrow often contains a cosy
nest of which the newly born are found to be
making use, but so far there is no definite proof
that they are actually born there. I should say
it occurs seldom, if ever. More probably they are
born quite near at hand, possibly in the hollow
trunk of a willow, possibly in an open nest, and
are conveyed to the bank-burrow as soon as they
are old enough to be carried. The dread of flood -
waters is probably at the back of this guarding
instinct.

THE BANK-BURROW.

The water-vole observes no rules or customs in
its manner of architecture. It loves to construct
its tunnels among the roots of river-side trees, so
that its home is braced not only against the assaults
of flood-waters, but against burrowing animals
larger than itself. Generally there are one or
more bolt-holes below the surface of the water, so
that the occupants of the burrow can escape from
it unseen, to take cover in the reeds or the bushes
near. Well above the water-line the burrow
is enlarged here and there, forming chambers
sufficiently spacious for dining-rooms and bed-
rooms. The burrows very often become consider-
ably enlarged by the action of water, and may
finally be taken possession of by otters.

In addition to its water entrances and exits, the
bank-burrow invariably has at least one exit on
the land side, perhaps seven or eight feet from the
water's edge. This, however, may be very little
used, as it exists chiefly as a ventilator. Old

THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE. 323

burrows are often very extensive, representing,
as they do, the activities of family after family
of youngsters who have worked off superfluous
energy by enlarging their quarters, while at the
same time procuring a good deal of food by pros-
pecting among the roots.

DIGGING-POWERS.

Like the mole and the badger, water-voles are
expert diggers. They will even construct under-
ground subways rather than risk exposing them-
selves in the open. One of these tunnels may run
for a considerable distance from the water's edge up
into a wood, for example, or even to a river-side
garden ; and, like the mouse-creeps in the grass, it
is tapped by intercommunicating subways till a
veritable maze is formed. What the beaver canals
are to the beavers, these subways are to the water-
voles. They exist purely for the transportation of
food, and their chief value is that, the animals being
of daylight habits, they can venture far afield
without exposing themselves to the attacks of
birds of prey, foxes, &c.

As a rule, the subways are not connected
up with the bank-burrows, for if this were so
they would prove a source of danger by bringing
weasels and the like to the very threshold of the
little engineers. Generally the subway entrance
is several yards from the home burrow, though
sufficient cover lies between the two to enable
the rodents to pass from one to the other without
being seen.

The tunnels are very similar to those constructed
by moles, even to the casting up of mounds of earth
which mark their course. In fact, I have known
an experienced mole-catcher to make the error of

324 THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE.

setting his traps in water-vole subways which he
mistook for mole-runs, finding out his mistake
when he came to look at his sets.

The digging propensities of the water-vole do
not seem to be very well known, and the subways
may exist only in localities where the earth is
sufficiently soft to render their construction easy.
Many examples were under my observation in the
valley of the river Wharfe, near Burnsall village,
to which locality these observations are almost
entirely limited.

PERIODICAL INCREASE.

The water-vole population of any given locality
varies considerably with the seasons, as seems to
be the case with all wild creatures of the water-side.
In some localities they may for a season or two
become a veritable plague, infesting the water's
edge in thousands, and drawing all manner of
predatory birds to the vicinity. Such plagues,
however, are of short duration, and are usually
followed by a corresponding period of scarcity.
What is the cause of this it is difficult to con-
jecture. Disease does not appear to be among
the water-vole's foes, flood -waters taking the
place of it, and therefore their sudden disappear-
ance after a term of abundance is probably due
to migration.

SOLITARY INDIVIDUALS.

The case of the bank-beaver, which neither toils
nor spins, but which lives its life remote from its
fellows in a bank-burrow of its own, has its exact
counterpart in the world of the water-vole. One
regularly comes across old and solitary individuals

THE WATER-HAT OR WATER-VOLE. 325

living their lives in sunny bachelorhood or spinster-
hood, unfettered by family cares, and existing only
for their own pleasure. Whether, like the bank-
beaver, they are outcasts, expelled from the social
intercourse of their kind, or whether they are
solitary merely from choice, it is impossible to
tell.

Such a solitary specimen inhabited the banks of
a small pond, fed by an overflow arm from the
river, all one spring and summer under the writer's
observation. He was an exceptionally large vole,
and seemed totally devoid of ambition. The roof
of his bank-burrow had crumbled in, but he made
no attempt to improve things. One of the main
outlets contained in course of time a hornet's nest,
but he did not seem to mind. A dead toad was
never removed from another exit till the burying
beetles removed it.

This vole was seen regularly by the anglers who
visited the pool, and many commented upon his
tameness. It is quite probable that ' he ' was an
old female vole, whose age forbade her taking a
further active part in the multiplication of her
species, and whose declining interests no longer
embraced the various errant-knights that came her
way. Other voles lived quite near at hand, but
this romantic old recluse apparently never associated
with them.

Another solitary specimen lived by the banks of
a whirlpool at no great distance from the first, and
was seen on several occasions chasing other voles
from the locality. So far as one could judge, this
individual had entirely dispensed with the use of a
burrow, evidently considering himself above such
things, and made his home among the chaos of
loose rocks piled at the water's edge. Here he

326 THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE.

had many runways and landing -platforms, and
from the general aspect of things he did himself
very well. Certainly he had annexed the most
sunny and sheltered corner obtainable along the
whole river-stretch.

SIGNALLING.

So far as is apparently known, water-voles have
not advanced to the level of the beavers in the
employment of any recognised system of inter-
communication. A beaver in search of a wife
forthwith advertises the fact by planting notice-
boards (otherwise castor signs) all up and down
the landscape, particularly at the river-forks, where
the advertisement is likely to catch the eye of
passing pedestrians of his own species, though not
of his own sex. If the water-voles possess any
such system, they have managed to keep it secret,
and in all probability their sense of smell is their
only aid to matrimony.

These animals, however, adopt the same system
as the beavers of spreading the alarm by diving
noisily when danger threatens. They do not, appa-
rently, strike the water with their tails as the beavers
do, but dive with such suddenness that the water
closes behind them with an abrupt 'plop,' which
can be heard at a considerable distance. This
action is instantly copied by other voles, startled
by the noise, and so the alarm is spread up and
down the river-bank ahead of the approaching
danger. When diving ordinarily, water-voles do
so in perfect silence ; it is only when they are
alarmed that the suddenness of their immersion
automatically creates the alarm-signal. So far as
can be ascertained, this marks the limit of the
water-vole's attainments in the way of intercom-

THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE. 327

munication which has for its end a purely social
object.

SWIMMING.

It is a curious fact that though swimming comes
naturally to the water-vole, while with the otter
it amounts purely to an accomplishment, yet the
water-vole never attains the complete mastery of
the water attained by the otter. At the best it
is but a poor swimmer, and compared with the
otter it is a weakling and a land-lubber. When an
otter is under water it swims with its whole body,
like a leech, propelling itself belly upwards or in
any other position convenience dictates ; but the
water-vole, on the other hand, swims like any other
rodent. When diving, it propels itself entirely by
its hind-paws, using its forepaws for groping its
way, grasping here a pebble, there a twig, and so
turning and steering its course with its forepaws,
while its hind-paws are used solely as paddles.
Some authorities state that the animal propels
itself with all four paws when diving in alarm,
but though I have repeatedly watched water-voles
most closely I have never seen the forepaws to
be used as paddles. Their function appears to be
limited exclusively to influencing the direction of
travel.

Of course, there are obvious reasons why the
otter has attained a higher standard of perfection
in the water than has the water-vole ; for, quite
apart from the fact that the otter is a creature of
unusual gifts, it is dependent on its swimming-
powers for capturing its natural food ; that is, it
has to swim for its living, whereas the vole swims
merely for convenience and safety. The smaller
animal is in no way dependent upon its diving

328 THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE.

abilities for its food ; in fact, its needs in the
under- water line extend just so far as, and no
farther than, is necessary for evading its foes. An
under-water passage of a few feet generally suffices
to take the vole to a place of safety, and its
abilities do not exceed these simple requirements.
It is, if anything, a weaker swimmer than is the
house-rat, for if its initial dash for cover fails, it
quickly loses heart, and falls an easy victim to its
persecutor.

MENTALITY.

It will be seen from all that has been said that
the water-vole stands well up in the scale of intelli-
gence— higher, indeed, than many of the larger
mammals with which this book deals. It possesses
the gift of profiting by previous experience, which
is the true measure of wisdom in the wild. It has
learnt by sad experience that flood-water is the
most potent of its foes, and accordingly it guards
against this inevitable peril in the best way it
knows. It places its nest and its winter store,
if such it should happen to possess, well above
high-water mark. It constructs its bank-burrow
in such a way that it cannot be drowned, or
be frozen in during winter frosts. Realising the
peril that lurks in the skies, it digs subways to
its distant feeding-grounds so that it can come
and go unseen. When its young are very small,
surprise floods are their greatest danger, and so
they are nursed above flood -line. Immediately
they are old enough to move about a little the
danger of surprise attacks from weasels or gray
rats outweighs the danger of the flood, and so they
are taken to the bank-burrow, where the water that
might have drowned them is at hand to save them.

THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE. 329

Should a flood now occur, the young are old
enough to contend with it, and unless it be one
of exceptional violence, the peril it presents is less
than that which exists from the murderous beasts
without.

All these things the water-voles of to-day do
not, probably, reason out for themselves ; the know-
ledge of them has been inherited from countless
generations of forefathers who, atom by atom,
grain by grain, have profited by their experience,
and, acting accordingly, have handed their lessons
on to their children, thus establishing such life
habits and customs of the species that we have
to-day a water-vole that can hold its own. Many
have perished where the water-vole has survived,
and no doubt it was the same gift of profiting by
sad experience that, in the dim long ago, taught
this little creature that water was its friend, and
that at the water's edge it was better able to evade
its many foes than on dry land.

To-day the water-vole is aquatic simply for pro-
tective purposes. Naturally it has acquired a taste
for many water-loving plants ; but the requirements
of its ordinary life, not taking into account its foes,
do not necessitate the close proximity of water.
It is capable of flourishing on dry land, as its foods
are not limited to the water's edge, and it affords
one of the few examples in wild life of a creature
that has chosen its habitat solely with a view to
holding out against its enemies.

To this choice only does the water-vole owe its
survival. Slow -footed, short-sighted, an excep-
tionally slow breeder, prized as a food item by all
carnivorous birds and beasts, and withal sufficiently
large to provide a tempting meal, the water-vole
could not have lived on had it not sought the

330 THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE.

water as a place of sanctuary ; and it is solely
because it possessed this advantage of environment
not shared by many other rodents which were
infinitely more productive than itself that it lives
to-day, while they are gone. The fact of its sur-
vival alone, then, in the face of so many foes,
and with its limited powers of multiplication, is
sufficient proof of its intelligence.

In a way that is more likely to come within the
notice of the casual observer, the intelligence of
this little animal is shown by its quickness in
recognising certain individuals. The solitary water-
vole already alluded to as living by the pond had
no fear whatever of anglers. It evidently recog-
nised them as peaceful individuals who did no harm
to any one but themselves, and it was no uncommon
thing for the animal to swim within a yard or so
of an angler fishing the pool. One Sunday, how-
ever, my brother and I went that way garbed in
the garments of respectability, and the water-vole,
with one fearful look at us, made a headlong plunge
for shelter, and thereafter remained concealed !

A man in charge of some trout-hatcheries told
me that the voles by his fish-ponds had become so
tame that they almost permitted him to handle
them, but if by any chance a stranger accompanied
him to the ponds, there was never a water-vole to
be seen !

FOOD.

The water-vole is almost entirely a vegetarian,
and one can study its habits closely for some con-
siderable time without finding a single exception
to its vegetarian tastes. It lives chiefly on the
shoots of willows during the spring, sitting upright
and stripping off the bitter bark with its forepaws,

THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE. 331

then nibbling the soft pith within. It eats also a
variety of water-plants, and tender shoots of almost
any kind. In autumn it eats practically any variety
of seeds that come handy, and in winter may gnaw
the bark of any species of hardwood, as rabbits do
—gnawing generally at the roots just where they
enter the ground. Grass, daisy-roots, clover, bulbs
of all kinds, and beech-mast lying on the ground
appear to be appreciated items of diet ; while pota-
toes and sweet chestnuts are regarded as most
desirable dainties.

I have never known this creature to eat carrion.
On one occasion we threw a dead hedgehog among
some driftwood about which water-voles were daily
seen, but there it remained, untouched by them,
till the next spate bore it away. On another
occasion a dead sheep, carried by the current, lodged
near a water-vole burrow, and a day or two later a
portion of the sheep protruding above the surface
was seen to be gnawed. Here, we felt sure, was
the expected evidence, but subsequent observations
proved beyond a shadow of doubt that the gnawing
was the work of a gray rat. The water-vole,
therefore, is of no value as a scavenger, and will
even ignore the water-logged stem of a cabbage
washed up near its home.

Nor is this animal guilty of raiding the redds
of trout and salmon, as is so often thought. Such
depredations are limited to its interesting little
congener, the water-shrew. A river-keeper in the
north of England made a rule for many years of
trapping and destroying in every way possible the
water-voles that visited his trout-hatcheries ; but
subsequently he learnt that, though the voles did a
certain amount of damage by burrowing in the
banks of the ponds, and further by forcing creeps

332 THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE.

under the wire-netting so that water-shrews and
rats could follow them, their presence was in no
way detrimental to the welfare of the young trout
in the ponds or of the spawn in the hatcheries. In
the end he allowed the voles to remain, as he
discovered — according to his own evidence, which
quite satisfied him — that they were effective in
destroying a particularly noxious dragon-fly larva,
which fed exclusively on the small and weakly fish.
One of these destructive creepers would sit on a
stone slab just where the water trickled into one
of the ponds, and immediately a young trout
drifted near it would propel itself forward by a
downward flip of the upturned, fin-like tail, catch
the fish in its powerful forceps, and drain its life in
a few seconds. After the coming of the voles the
remains of these hideous larvae were regularly found
on a stone slab above ; but it is still a very open
question whether they were destroyed by the water-
voles, or by water-shrews entering the wire-netting
by the creeps of the voles. If by the shrews, it
is at any rate refreshing to find that they did
something to pay their way.

One or two naturalists refer to the water-vole's
partiality for fresh-water mussels, which it is said
to eat by gnawing a hole through the shell at one
side near the hinge ; but there seems insufficient
evidence to prove that this is the work of voles
and not of shrews, which, while very carnivorous in
their habits, are, moreover, very secretive. Water-
voles are regularly seen close to a place where
the empty mussel-shells lie about ; and since the
shrews are never seen there, their activities being
nocturnal, the natural conclusion is that the voles
are responsible. Further information bearing on
the water-vole's alleged carnivorous habits would

THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE. 333

be greatly valued. Up to the present we are
probably fully justified in regarding it as no more
carnivorous than is the beaver.

WINTER HABITS.

So far as one can judge, the storage habit is
less strongly developed in the water-vole than in
most of its congeners — certainly less strongly than
in the gray rat. The musk-rat and the beaver
both have their stores, and it is probable that in
a country of long, severe winters the water-vole
would fall into line with the rest.

Sometimes, but not always, the water-vole lays
up a plenteous winter store. ' Starprint,' whose
life-history I have written elsewhere, certainly laid
aside a small store for the first winter of his exist-
ence. It was situated in a short burrow in an
upturned root at least a dozen paces from the little
fellow's bank-burrow, and contained chiefly bulbous
roots retrieved from the perilous wood high above
his home. The store-room was at the end of a
short passage among the twisted roots of the fallen
tree, and when Starprint was flooded out of his
bank-burrow he made his home there. It seemed
a precarious winter home, since there was no back-
way of escape ; but ultimately it proved to be
an impregnable stronghold, the tough and twisted
roots that bound the earth defying the efforts of
Mr Reynard, who tried to dig Starprint out.

His store, however, was entirely inadequate for
the rigorous winter that followed, and could, at
the best, have served only to tide him over a short
term of frost and snow.

When winter comes, many of the water-voles
leave the river-banks for more sheltered quarters.
They are particularly fond of small ponds nestling

THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE.

in woods, and overgrown with a dense entangle-
ment of briar and berry, and here, having their
creeps deep in the undergrowth, they may spend
the winter unseen and unsuspected. During ex-
ceptionally cold snaps they often remain under-
ground for days on end, and this fact would seem
to suggest some kind of a store within the dwell-
ing. In all probability water-voles, like many
other creatures, hoard their stores unsystematic-
ally in various places, a little here and a little
there, instead of placing all their eggs in one
basket ; and though we have on sundry occasions
found caches at the water's edge, among the under-
mined roots of river-trees, or in the hollow trunks
of the trees themselves, and though the work
looked like that of water-voles, no decisive proof
was forthcoming. It is, however, very difficult to
understand how this little animal could survive a
winter of exceptional severity if it had no store of
some kind on which to fall back. Its diving-powers,
as already stated, are not great, and it is almost in-
conceivable that it could keep itself alive for any
length of time by procuring its food from the bed
of the pond or the stream beside which it lived. In
some cases this might be done, but the gravel-beds of
most of our northern streams must be particularly
unfruitful, though many water-voles manage to
winter by them. Assuredly these individuals do
not keep themselves alive by diving for their food.
Similarly, I have known several voles to winter by a
little woodland pond, the bed of which consisted of
unfertile clay thickly covered with decaying leaves.
In such cases the vole that had no store would,
when the earth was frost-bound, be compelled to
obtain all its food from above the ground, thereby
exposing itself to such perils that it would un-

THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE. 335

doubtedly fall ere the coming of spring. It is
only reasonable to suppose, then, that this creature,
so highly intelligent in other ways, counts among
its gifts the ability to lay aside for a frosty day
with a forethought more liberal than is generally
imagined.

ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE.

In no directly obvious way is the water-vole of
any special value to man except in that sense
whereby a wild creature of any sort adds something
to the joy of life. On the other hand, it is to be
feared that the tunnelling activities of this other-
wise lovable little beast often lead to the partial
inundation of meadow-lands dependent for their
immunity from flood on artificial walls, and that
these same activities bring the miller's curses
upon the heads of the water-vole population for
damage of various kinds. No doubt they cost the
country a good deal in this way, for a bank once
perforated is difficult to repair with any degree of
permanency. Yet to encourage the general de-
struction of this little creature would be to show
a spirit of the utmost vandalism.

DIMENSIONS.

The weight of adult specimens is usually about
6 oz., and may occasionally attain 8 oz. The
length of head and body seldom exceeds 8 inches.
The tail varies considerably in length, but rarely
reaches 4^ inches ; from 3^ inches to 4 inches is
probably about the average.

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES.

The forefeet have only four complete toes, the
thumb being marked merely by a claw. The hind-

336 THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE.

feet have five complete slender toes, between which
there exists the first indication of a webbing. The
tail is thickly haired. The ears are very short,
and almost hidden in the deep, soft fur surround-
ing them. The water-vole's eyes are small and
black, and regard one with a pathetic expression.
Its sight is not good.

THE WILD CAT.
V

•

' , '

THE WILD CAT.

RELATIONSHIP WITH THE TAME SPECIES.

THE true wild cat is now an exceedingly rare
animal, existing only occasionally in the
most remote Highlands, such as Lochaber and the
wilds of Sutherland. Periodically reports appear
in the daily press of wild cats having been killed
in various parts of Scotland, or even Cumberland ;
but one needs to accept such statements with
caution. The most observant and experienced
gamekeeper is apt to be misled into the making of
a false report ; indeed, it is no uncommon thing to
find stuffed specimens alleged to be wild cats set
up for exhibition in public collections — specimens of
cats which, though truly wild in one sense of the
word, have nevertheless sprung direct from fireside
ancestors.

If interbreeding has occurred, the task of identi-
fying the animal is indeed a difficult one. For years
past the true wild cat has been very rare, while the
wild domestic cat has been proportionately common,
with the result that it would not be impossible to
obtain a graduated collection beginning with the
domestic cat, and ranging over the various stages
of the wild domestic cat to the half-breed wild
cat, and so on to the full-blooded Felis catus. It
would require some skill in the case of such a
collection to draw a distinct line separating the
two species ; in fact, I would go so far as to say
that probably no such thing exists to-day as a
wild cat in whose ancestry no trace of the domestic
species has entered.

W.A. V

338 THE AVILD CAT.

It is a curious fact that a domestic cat running
wild very soon begins to lose the distinguishing
features of its class, and to assume in their place
the characteristics and appearances of Felis catus.
Some years ago a half-starved and wretched little
kitten came to my door in search of food. It was
given milk, and thereafter came daily for two or
three weeks, calling till it was fed, and it was
noticed particularly that the animal was growing
in strength and developing into a remarkably fine
cat. It never attached itself to the house, and
having been fed, it immediately assumed an atti-
tude of distrust towards those upon whom, a
minute or two previously, it had fawned for food.

Spring came, and the kitten had disappeared for
some weeks, when one morning I happened to
look out of my window just at daybreak, and
beheld an immense 'wild cat' prowling about on
the top of a pergola — green-eyed, heavy-coated,
its tail bushed out like a bottle-brush ! It was
almost twice the size of an ordinary domestic torn,
yet there was no doubt whatever that it was the
kitten I had fed — thus, all unwittingly, having
inflicted a veritable demon of destruction on the
surrounding wood and moors ! When I opened
the window the brute was off in an instant, nor
did I ever see it again.

This kitten was probably the offspring of a wild
tabby parent of the tame variety, and its offspring,
in turn, would acquire still other features in com-
mon with the truly wild species, at a sacrifice of
what remained in the way of domestic traits.

Thus the longer domestic cats are wild in
habits the more do they become wild in appear-
ances. Given a lonely Highland country, we are
apt to come across specimens which have sprung

THE WILD CAT. 339

from a long line of ancestors unacquainted with
man's threshold, which have bred for generations
past with renegades and cut-throats of the same
stamp, till they have formed a race of their own —
a race as much distinct from the tame cat as they
themselves are distinct from Felis catus. Those
who would deny all strain of the wild cat in the
domestic species should bear these points in mind,
for it would certainly seem that the tame cat
has more points in common with Felis catus than
it has with Felis caff'ra, from which sprang the
domestic cats of Egypt. It may be taken that the
offspring of domestic animals which run wild ulti-
mately return to the strain from which they sprang,
and there is no doubt whatever that domestic cats
left undisturbed to breed in the mountains would
finally produce a strain so closely resembling the
wild cat of our own island that, except in
point of size, it would be hard to distinguish one
from the other. Climatic conditions may, of
course, account for the acquired similarity, for
the conditions in our own mountains are widely
different from those of Africa, Arabia, and Syria,
the lands responsible for Felis cqff'ra ; so that
a cat which has become wild by living among
wild conditions is as likely to be influenced by
those conditions as it is by a far-off ancestry which
was probably mixed to begin with — if, indeed, one
can begin with a mixture !

There is, also, another possible explanation for
the acquired similarities referred to. At one time
Felis catus was far more plentiful than to-day,
existing not only in the mountains, but everywhere
that woodland shelter made its existence possible ;
indeed, it existed in England long before it existed
in Scotland. Thus our original stock of tame

340 THE WILD CAT.

cats, which may have sprung from Felts caffra.
were wont to wander off into the woods, where
undoubtedly many a tabby became amicably
acquainted with Felis catus. Her kits were born
under the shelter of man's roof and grew up as
domestic cats, which, in turn, were impregnated
by wild toms, till the blood of Felis catus became
firmly infused in the make-up of their descendants
— possibly predominating over that of the original
FeUs caffra. Had the interbreeding gone on long
enough, an untamable strain would have resulted.
Such strains probably did result, and remained in
the wild, which brings us back to our starting-
point, where it was stated that probably no such
thing exists to-day as a wild cat in whose genera-
tion the domestic species has not at some stage
participated. Similarly, there is probably no
domestic cat that has no strain of the wild cat
in its blood.

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES.

The distinguishing features of the wild cat are,
first, its great size. As a rule this alone settles
the question, for an adult wild cat may measure
as much as 3 feet 8 or 9 inches from tip to tip ;
a wild strain of the domestic species never attains
this size. Second, its tail, which is relatively
shorter, more bushy, and more distinctly ringed
than that of the other species. Pulled forward
over the back, the tail does not extend farther
than the tips of the shoulder-blades, while the fur
covering the appendage is almost as dense as that
of a prime red fox.

The head of the wild cat is proportionately
wider and less elongated than that of the tame
variety, its ears being enormously far apart ; while

THE WILD CAT. 341

the centre-lines of the ears, if extended, con-
verge at a much wider angle — that is, the ears
point outwards more. Thus : tame cat, (v-vj ;
wild cat, \*~~^ . The eyes are very much larger
and rounder, and, as a rule, the body-colouring
is strikingly yellowish. The limbs are longer and
much more powerfully developed ; indeed, the wild
cat is a creature of enormous strength, far sur-
passing that of any domestic offshoot. I have
seen half-grown wild cats in captivity larger and
more powerful than any domestic tabby that ever
imposed its diabolical presence on a game-covert.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.

The habits of Felis catus differ from those of
the domestic torn only in so far as its inbred fear
of man, its relatively greater strength, and the fact
that it is a truly wild animal exert their influence.
It is essentially a creature of the timber, and
prefers the pine-slopes to the bleak mountain-tops
which to-day often afford it sanctuary. It may
make its home among the rocks, but always there
is woodland near wherein it hunts — even though
such woodland consists only of pine-forest strips
encircling the glens and corries.

In circumventing their prey, few of the cats
depend to any great extent upon their speed —
excepting, of course, the cheetah and the leopard,
the former of which is reputed to be swifter than
the greyhound or even the antelope. The lynx
depends upon two or three final bounds for over-
taking an intended victim it has previously stalked,
and thus it possesses abnormally developed hind-
quarters with which to perform these bounds —
just as the rabbit is similarly developed in order to
evade them. All the cats are exceedingly strong

342 THE WILD CAT.

in the hind-quarters, but in the case of the domestic
cat and of the wild cat it is for a different reason.
In a dog-fight it is the top dog that comes off
best ; the dog at the bottom is at the mercy of the
whole of the community, and at once becomes the
common sport of all. In a cat-fight, however, it
is the bottom cat that holds the ' upper hand,' and
woe betide the one on top when those awful hind-
claws get to work with their rending, tread-mill
action ! A cat's main idea in a close fight is to
roll on to its back, and, holding tightly to its victim
with foreclaws and tusks, set its deadly hind-legs
to work with terrible effect. It is a devilish,
cattish way of fighting, but one which is, never-
theless, truly efficacious, for in this way a cat, wild
or tame, will completely disembowel an opponent
larger than itself.

FOOD.

It has been said that the wild cat is of arboreal
habits ; and, undoubtedly, a great deal of its prey
is caught in the timber. It catches and kills
squirrels by cautiously stalking them ; then, waiting
with the unrelenting patience of the cat tribe till
the squirrel has no easy way of retreat, the wild
cat bounds out — a paralysing vision of thrashing
claws and barred and bristling fur ! That it feeds
largely on squirrels, where they are plentiful, is
known ; but probably its methods of hunting them
are quite different from those of the marten. I have
known a tame(?) cat to catch squirrels by waiting
till they descended to the ground, then surprising
them either from above or by a tremendous leap
across the open. A cat leaps so lightly and easily
that the observer obtains no impression as to the
speed at which it travels, but its great quickness

THE WILD CAT. 343

is indicated by the fact that very few creatures are
sufficiently rapid in movement to evade it.

It is probable that in forest country, where birds
are plentiful and easily caught, and where mice
abound in the leaves, the wild cat subsists chiefly
on such small prey ; but as a rule it haunts country
where larger game is abundant, and where its
activities are not necessarily limited to woodland
fare. It may surprise the whitethroat in the
bushes, or the ringdove on her nest in the fir-
thicket ; or, again, it may feast upon ptarmigan,
grouse, black-game, or pheasant caught napping in
the open moor or on the bracken-slope. Mountain
hares and rabbits it kills in large numbers, but all
the wild cats prefer feathers to fur. Generally
they kill what they can catch most easily, and in
the spring of the year young rabbits and the
young of all kinds of birds, whether sacred to
man's possession or not, form their prey. The wild
cat has also been known to destroy roe-deer fawns,
and it is even more destructive than Reynard
where young lambs are concerned. Thus not
only the hand of every keeper, but that of every
Highland shepherd, is raised against it, which
accounts for its present rarity. The wild cat
could probably stand the drainage imposed by
keepers alone, but when the shepherd joins hands
with the keepers it is all up with the creature
whose fate their forces are united to seal. The
shepherds generally know the wild fauna of the
hills as well as, if not better than, the keepers,
and their method is stealthily to discover the lair
of the wild cat, then to destroy her kits either by
digging them out, or by poking a long stick with a
knife attached into the nest. A tragic incident as
to how a shepherd met his fate while engaged in

344 THE WILD CAT.

this wise is told by Colquhoun in his absorbing
book, The Moor and the Loch.

The food of the wild cat, then, may be summed
up as follows. Like all the cats, it prefers an
abundance of small game to worthier quarry, but
where small game is insufficiently plentiful, or too
difficult to catch, it will kill anything it can hold.
Its destructiveness on game-reserves is, therefore,
determined by the proportion of game-birds to
other kinds of food. If rabbits and small birds
are everywhere, it probably does little to bring
about the unrelenting persecution to which it is
subjected ; if, on the other hand, small game is
scarce, and the creatures man wishes to preserve
possess the country-side in excelsis, then naturally
the wild cat makes a business of catching and
killing those creatures which were its birthright
ages before man took to controlling for his own
ends the populace of the woods.

The case of the wild cat to-day is exactly
analogous to that of the pine-marten, in dealing
with which I have endeavoured to set forth a
common-sense view as regards ultra-rare animals.
At this juncture it is interesting to call to mind
that, in tracing back the history of the domestic
cat, we find that it superseded the pine-marten
as a domestic exterminator of mice and rats, the
pine-marten having an earlier standing as a beast
associated with man's hearth than has the tame
cat of to-day.

METHODS OF FEEDING.

The wild cat's method of feeding is to seize its
prey and depart with it into the timber — leopard
fashion. If there is no timber into which to
go, it proceeds, snarling and spluttering as its

THE WILD CAT. 345

jaws close in the death-grip, into some corridor of
the rocks where it can feast in security. It is not
the way of the cat tribe to slay their game in the
open and to feast under the rays of the sun or the
moon, as the case may be. They prefer always
the shadowy alley-ways where, by back-handed
methods, they can avoid such inconveniences as
are apt to arise as the result of dishonesty. If
its prey is too large to carry, then the wild cat
crouches upon it, trusting to its own terribleness
of aspect to repel the would-be avenger of the
murdered innocent ; and of one thing we can be
sure, that never, within the normal order of things,
does a wild cat face in mortal combat a creature
which it knows to be half so well equipped a
fighting-machine as itself.

MATING.

So far as I can ascertain, the wild cat is mono-
gamous. Where a member of one sex exists there
is usually a member of the other. The father,
however, has nothing whatever to do with the up-
bringing of his children. Probably he does not see
them till they are three parts grown, when he may
cuff them out of his way if he happens to meet
them. It is merely that he dallies in the locality
favoured by his wife in case he may be needed.
Cats do not hunt together except in countries of
extreme cold where the alternatives are unity and
starvation or disunity and death. The days of the
packing of the wild cats are long since past.

BREEDING.

Only one litter is produced per year under normal
conditions ; sometimes, but seldom, a second litter
appears in August. The number of kits per litter

346 THE WILD CAT.

is usually two or three ; four is not uncommon, and
as many as seven have been reported, but this sug-
gests interbreeding. It all depends upon the food-
conditions and the age of the mother. Since few
wild cats live to grow old, few have large families ;
and fewer still reach the stage of saddling them-
selves with a second litter as the year advances.

HOME-RANGE.

The wild cat is a creature of very limited home-
range. If man did not exist, and there were no
wolves and such like, it would probably live and
die within a few hundred yards of some central
point, its range being dependent upon the abun-
dance or otherwise of food. As things are, a wild
cat, or, rather, a brace of wild cats, haunt one
locality till they are scared out. Then they be-
take themselves elsewhere; and thus their home-
range may appear to be greater than it is.

At one time the life of the wild cat doubtless
consisted of hunting until it was satisfied, then of
basking on a pine-limb in the sunshine, occasionally
stretching its long claws into the pink bark, or
fawning under .the stream-bank where the herbs
grow rank, rubbing its face against those that
appealed to its fancies — a life of idle plenty befitting
its abnormal powers among the creatures of the
wild. To-day we see the wild cat hanging on by a
few remaining threads all too slender to hold its
weight — hanging on at the outside edge, skulking
and nocturnal in habits — a creature which, perhaps,
we could well afford to lose, were it not that its loss
would rob our remote Highlands of yet another of
their rapidly shrinking romances.

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By F. ST MARS.
Author of "Pinion and Paw."

Illustrated by G. VERNON STOKES.

All lovers of Nature will revel in these graphic
and picturesque tales of the denizens of the wild.

From the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News.

"This work consists of a number of short sketches of the various
activities of wild creatures, each scene being set in the month of the
year when the incident described would naturally occur. Thus, in
January, we have a little tragedy of birds in the snow, and a picture
of Russian steppes in winter seen from the wolf's point of view, when
the pack of Nature's hounds pursue a flying sleigh through the frozen
woodlands, to their own undoing. In June we read of the vicissitudes
of a mother-starling before her ever-hungry brood could be induced
to take up their position 'all alive on to the roof-ridge,' in the summer
sunshine ; or of a wounded and dying lion, feebly beating off the
flies in the hot jungle, watched by a ring of hyenas waiting for the
nearing end.

"No complaint can be made of lack of variety in the wild things
that the author has pressed into his service. Denizens of various
countries are all calied upon to play their tiny tragedies and comedies
in field, wood, or moorland, on river, sea, or shore.

"We can well imagine that many readers, especially children, will
follow the adventures of Mr St Mars' strange characters with awed
fascination."

W. & R. CHAMBERS, LTD., 38 Soho Square, LONDON, W. I ;
and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH.

2/- net ; per post, 2/3.

TRACKS AND
TRACKING . .

By H. MORTIMER BATTEN.

ILLUSTRATED.

A Book for Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, and every
lover of Woodcraft.

From the Morning Post.

" This is a delightful little book by a true expert. Mr Batten does
not boast of his ability as an intimate of Dame Nature, but now and
again he relates an experience which shows he is 'far ben' in the
loving-kindness of that Lady of the greater and lesser wildernesses.

" There is not, of course, a trace of the ' Nature faker ' in Mr Batten,
who does not impute human motives to wild animals, but deduces their
characters from what he has seen of their doings and by the extra-
ordinary wealth of circumstantial evidence which he has collected and
here collated into less than a hundred pages. Diagrams of the tracks
of all British wild creatures are given, and every careful student of
his little book will leam to read the palimpsests of the fields, whether
in snow-time or at more genial seasons, with absolute certainty."

W. & R. CHAMBERS, LTD., 38 Soho Square, LONDON, W. I ;
and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
BERKELEY

Return to desk from which borrowed.
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.

JUN 14 1948

I960

JUL 2 8 1950

LD 21-100m-9,'47(A5702sl6)476

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681300

BIOLOGY
UBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY