ect plan to mislead a single
enemy pursuing by scent could hardly be conceived. A pack of hounds,
"checking" on the path, would in all probability have "cast" around,
and, sooner or later, would have struck the line afresh in the marshy
field, but a fox or a polecat would surely have been baffled, either at
the leaping places or where the hares had crossed through the shallow
water.

Man's intelligence, united with the intelligence, the eagerness, the
pace, the endurance, and the marvellous powers of scent possessed by a
score of hounds, and then pitted against a single creature fleeing for
its life, should well nigh inevitably attain its end. Nature has not yet
taught her weaklings how to match that powerful combination. And so a
naturalist, in studying the artifices adopted by hunted animals, should
be interested chiefly as to how such artifices would succeed against
pursuers unassisted by human intelligence. I am inclined to believe that
even a pack of well-trained harriers would have been unable to follow
the doe-hares I have referred to, unless the scent lay unusually well on
the surface of the marsh.

I stayed in the covert awhile, but when the call came for me to rejoin
Philip I hastened to the field in which he was waiting. I told him what
I had seen, and, together, we paid a visit to the doe-hares' "forms."
One of the "forms" lay in a clump of fern and brambles near the corner
of a fallow, the other on a slight elevation where a hedger had thrown
some "trash" beside a ditch in a field of unripe wheat.

While we stood in the wheat-field, Philip remarked: "We mustn't stay
long before going back to the Crag; but I'll call the doe I sent you
from this 'form,' and perhaps you'll see one of her tricks to mislead a
fox as she returns home. She's very careful of her young till they're
about a fortnight old, though soon afterwards she lets them 'fend' for
themselves. We'll hide in the ditch, and I'll imitate a leveret's cry.
But I mustn't imitate it so that she may think her little one is hurt,
else she's as likely as not to come with a rush, and you won't see how
she'd act under ordinary circumstances."

When we were comfortably settled in the fern, the poacher twice uttered
a feeble, wailing cry, and, after being silent for some minutes,
repeated the quavering call. Then, after a long interval, he again,
though in a much lower tone, repeated the cry. No answering cry was
heard, but suddenly, as she had appeared on