hiding-place from behind
which to shoot the rabbits of a burrow, not one will come out within
gun-shot that evening. They know-that it is something strange, the use
of which they do not understand and therefore avoid. When I first began
to shoot, the difficulty was to judge the distances, and to know how far
a rabbit was from a favourite hiding-place. I once carefully dropped
small green boughs, just broken off, at twenty, thirty, and forty yards,
measuring by paces. This was in the morning.
In the evening not a rabbit would come out anywhere near these boughs;
they were shy of them even when the leaves had withered and turned
brown; so that I took them away. Yet of the green boughs blown off by a
gale, or the dead grey branches that fall of their own weight, they take
no notice.
First, then, they must have heard me in their burrows pacing by;
secondly, they scented the boughs as having been handled, and connected
the two circumstances together; and, thirdly, though aware that the
boughs themselves were harmless, they felt that harm was intended. The
pheasant had been walking about in the corner where the hedges met, but
now he went in; still, as he entered the hedge in a quiet way, he did
not appear to be alarmed. The sheep, tired of being constantly driven
from their food, now sheered out from the hedge, and allowed me to go
by.
As I passed I gathered a few haws and ate them. The reason why birds do
not care much for berries before they are forced to take to them by
frost is because of the stone within, so that the food afforded by the
berries is really small. Yew-berries are an exception; they have a
stone, but the covering to it is sweet, succulent, and thick, and dearly
loved by thrushes. In the ditch the tall grasses, having escaped the
scythe, bowed low with the weight of their own awn-like seeds.
The corner was not far off now; and I waited awhile behind a large
hawthorn bush growing on the 'shore' of the ditch, thinking that I might
see the pheasant on the mound, or that at least he would recover
confidence if he had previously heard anything. Inside the bush was a
nest already partly filled with fallen leaves, like a little basket.
A rabbit had been feeding on the other side, but now, suspicious, came
over the bank, and, seeing me, suddenly stopped and lifted himself up.
In that moment I could have shot him, being so near, without putting the
gun to the shoulder, by the sense of direction in the han
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