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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of "Wee Tim'rous Beasties", by Douglas English.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of "Wee Tim'rous Beasties", by Douglas English
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: "Wee Tim'rous Beasties"
+       Studies of Animal life and Character
+
+Author: Douglas English
+
+Release Date: July 24, 2007 [EBook #22129]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK "WEE TIM'ROUS BEASTIES" ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Anne Storer and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p class="tn">Transcriber's Note: Captions on horizontally conjoined illustrations
+have been altered by adding an (l) and (r). Those conjoined vertically,
+the captions have been placed above and below the illustration.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 95%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 395px;">
+<img src="images/imgcover.jpg" width="395" height="531" alt="Cover" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>&ldquo;WEE TIM&#8217;ROUS BEASTIES&rdquo;</h2>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img002.jpg" width="500" height="471" alt="The Black Rat" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the black rat sat back on his haunches,<br />
+pricked up his ears, and listened.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>&ldquo;WEE TIM&#8217;ROUS BEASTIES&rdquo;</h1>
+
+<h2>STUDIES OF ANIMAL LIFE AND<br />
+CHARACTER</h2>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">BY</p>
+<h2>DOUGLAS ENGLISH</h2>
+
+<p class="small">FELLOW OF THE ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN<br />
+AUTHOR OF &ldquo;PHOTOGRAPHY FOR NATURALISTS&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><strong>SECOND EDITION</strong></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><em>WITH ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS FROM<br />
+HIS PHOTOGRAPHS OF LIVING CREATURES</em></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><strong>LONDON</strong></p>
+<p class="center"><strong>S. H. BOUSFIELD &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span></strong></p>
+<p class="center">12, PORTUGAL STREET, W.C.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">To</span></p>
+<p class="center">MY DEAR CHILDREN</p>
+<p class="center">BRYAN AND WINNIE</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<p style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%; line-height: 1.5em;">
+For permission to include in this volume &ldquo;The Awakening of the Dormouse,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;The Purple Emperor,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Harvest Mouse,&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Trivial Fortunes of
+Molge,&rdquo; I have to thank the Editor of the <em>Girl&#8217;s Realm</em>, and for &ldquo;The
+Story of a Field Vole,&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Passing of the Black Rat,&rdquo; I am indebted
+to the courtesy of the Editor of <em>Pearson&#8217;s Magazine</em>.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%; line-height: 1.5em;">
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">DOUGLAS ENGLISH.</span></p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%; line-height: 1.5em;">
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;" class="smcap">Hawley,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;" class="smcap">Dartford,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><em>September, 1903</em>.</span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li><span class="smcap">Mus Ridiculus</span>
+	<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></span>
+    </li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Story of a Field Vole</span>
+	<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></span>
+    </li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Apology of the House Sparrow</span>
+	<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_48">48</a></span>
+    </li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Awakening of the Dormouse</span>
+	<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_66">66</a></span>
+    </li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Purple Emperor</span>
+	<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></span>
+    </li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Harvest Mouse</span>
+	<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></span>
+    </li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Trivial Fortunes of Molge</span>
+	<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_142">142</a></span>
+    </li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Passing of the Black Rat</span>
+	<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></span>
+    </li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Fox&#8217;s Tricks are many; One is Enough for the Urchin</span>
+	<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_192">192</a></span>
+    </li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img007.jpg" width="500" height="198" alt="Chapter Image" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>&ldquo;WEE TIM&#8217;ROUS BEASTIES&rdquo;</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>MUS RIDICULUS</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mus ridiculus! The taunt had been flung at him by a stout field-vole, and,
+by reason of its novelty as well as of its intrinsic impertinence, had
+sunk deep into his memory. He had felt at the time that &ldquo;Wee sleekit,
+cowrin&#8217;, tim&#8217;rous beastie&rdquo; was but a poor rejoinder. But he knew no Latin
+and chose what was next in obscurity. Besides, he was a young mouse then,
+and breathless with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>The scene rose vividly before him&mdash;the moon shining grimly overhead, and
+the mouse-folk stealing from the half-threshed stack across two fields
+into the farmstead.</p>
+
+<p>Since that night he had never entered a wheat-stack, for fear of the
+leaving of it. For there are some things which, from a mouse standpoint,
+will not bear repetition.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 2]</span>There had been a grey, slanting ghost-swish above, and his brother had
+vanished skywards from within an inch of his side. He had turned to stone
+before two ice-cold eyes, and realized the honest yard of snake behind
+them. A stoat had passed him with its mouth too full to snap&mdash;and all
+within two fields.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img008.jpg" width="500" height="376" alt="Mus Ridiculus!" title="" />
+<span class="caption">mus ridiculus!</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Mus ridiculus! The vole was not so far wrong after all, for could
+anything, whose intelligence was otherwise than laughable, be in his
+present plight? In front of him were three horizontal wires, above him
+were nine more, on either side an upright wooden wall, behind him a
+slanting one, whose lower extremity nipped his tail. On the floor lay
+innumerable crumbs of evil-smelling cheese.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 3]</span>When the door of the trap had clicked behind him, he had naturally been
+startled. His fright, however, was due not so much to his surroundings&mdash;he
+was used to close quarters&mdash;as to the forcible restriction of his tail.
+Still, the cheese was within easy reach, and he had determined to enjoy
+it. Indeed, he ate his full. Now, cheese on an empty mouse stomach acts
+as an intoxicant. He had fallen into a drowsy slumber, crouched in a back
+corner of the trap, and so he slept for an hour.</p>
+
+<p>His awakening was gradual, but rude. It was due to a steadily increasing
+discomfort in his tail. It was not the first time, however, that he had
+realized that a long, tapering tail has its disadvantages as well as its
+uses. As a controllable balancing-pole, there is probably nothing to equal
+it. As a parachute, it serves its purpose in a precipitate leap. As a
+decoy, it frequently disturbs the enemy&#8217;s aim. But, when once it is firmly
+jammed, it is liable to congestion, and this is what awoke the mouse.</p>
+
+<p>At first he was inclined to treat the matter lightly. He had been caught
+by the tail often enough, after all. He tried the normal methods of
+release. Swinging round on his haunches, he caught the offending member
+between his two fore-paws, so as to ease it out by gentle side-shifts.
+Then he brought his tongue into play as a lubricant. Then he simply
+pulled. By this time he was fairly awake and could feel.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 4]</span>It was unfortunate that a door banged above him, for, mouse-like, he leapt
+forward with all his leaping strength. The leap freed him, but at a price,
+and the price was his tail, or, rather, all that made a tail worth having.
+For the first half-inch it proceeded soundly enough, a series of neat,
+over-lapping, down-covered scale-rings, then, for the next
+two-and-three-quarter inches it presented all the naked hideousness of an
+X-ray photograph. It was not so much the pain he minded as the indignity,
+and he surveyed himself with gloomy disgust. There was, however, just a
+grain of consolation. With an imprisoned tail, escape was impossible. Now
+that he was free to move, there was surely a chance of squeezing through
+those bars. He must take heart and gird himself for the struggle. No
+mouse, however, if he can help it, enters upon a serious undertaking
+ungroomed. So he sat back on his hind legs and commenced an elaborate
+toilet. First he licked his tiny hands and worked them like lightning
+across and down his face. This he continued for a full minute, until his
+whiskers bristled like tiny needles, without a speck of dust throughout
+their length. Then he combed the matted fur of his waistcoat with his
+teeth, and smoothed and polished it until every hair was a gleaming strand
+of silk. Finally he turned his attention to his back and sides, twisting
+his body cat-fashion to reach the remoter portions of himself.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 5]</span>Once, in the middle of his operations, he stopped with a jerk and sat up
+motionless, save for a tremulous quiver of his muzzle. There was certainly
+something moving close at hand. Long before the faint vibration had reached
+his ears, his whiskers had caught it and flashed their danger-signal to his
+brain. It was only a cockroach, however. As it came in sight, he snapped at
+it viciously through the bars, and squeaked at its precipitate flight. Not
+that he grudged it the cheese crumbs, but his nerves were on edge, and it
+had frightened him.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img011.jpg" width="500" height="415" alt="Only a cockroach" title="" />
+<span class="caption">it was only a cockroach, however.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Body, head, and feet alike, were sleek and resplendent before he caught a
+glimpse of his disreputable tail.<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 6]</span> He was dubious as to whether polishing
+would have any beneficial effect on its appearance; but the stump, at any
+rate, must be healed, and to do this he set to work with nature&#8217;s remedy.
+Taking the stripped portion in his fore-paws&mdash;for, to his astonishment, he
+found that he could not move it otherwise&mdash;he pulled it gently between his
+hind legs up to his mouth. It parted like a pack-thread. Somehow he felt
+indifferent. A rigid, lifeless tail was little use, after all. He was
+bound to lose it sooner or later, and he was too old to care what the
+other mice might think. Besides, as the father of a hundred and fifty, he
+was surely entitled to set the fashion. He licked the stump until it felt
+easy, shook himself once or twice, gave his whiskers a final polish, and
+prepared to walk out.</p>
+
+<p>He felt sleek enough to squeeze through anything&mdash;confident, too, though
+just a trifle thirsty. It must have been the cheese, for the hot taste
+still lingered in his mouth, and he loathed the sight of the remaining
+fragments. He flicked them into a corner and carefully surveyed his
+position. The bars stretched at even intervals, above and in front. He
+tried each one separately and found that, with one exception, they were
+fixed and immovable. The exception was number three from the front above
+him. It was easily distinguishable from the others, for a curved wire
+swung free from its centre. When he gripped his fore-paws<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 7]</span> round it, he
+felt it twist in its sockets. Why did that curved wire rattle about when
+he touched it? Those from which he had stolen so many dainty morsels in
+the past had seemed fixtures. Perhaps he had gone too recklessly to work
+this time. He had certainly been extremely hungry. Anyhow, the bar from
+which it hung was loose&mdash;he would work that clear of the wood in no time,
+and so gain freedom.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 309px;">
+<img src="images/img013.jpg" width="309" height="500" alt="Tried each bar" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he tried each bar separately.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>He raised himself on his hind legs and commenced gnawing vigorously at the
+socket-hole. The position was a terribly strained one, and time after time
+his teeth slipped and met with a scrunching jar upon the metal.</p>
+
+<p>Then he leaped up and swung head downwards, gripping the bars with all
+four feet. In this position he could at least nip the cross-piece, and
+worry it with his teeth. Every muscle of his small body was strained to
+the utmost. The bar rattled in its sockets, slipped round once or twice,
+bent the merest trifle, and&mdash;jammed<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 8]</span> immovable as the others. He felt that
+he was wasting his strength, and dropped sullenly to the floor. He had
+never been so thirsty in his life; yet, true to his instincts, he started
+to wash his face and smooth his draggled fur afresh.</p>
+
+<p>This time it was a harder task, for his mouth was parched and tender, and
+his fingers ached with exertion. Still, he managed to put his whiskers
+into proper trim, and pulled himself together, with every sense alert for
+the air-current which should betray some outlet.</p>
+
+<p>He explored every cranny of his prison, slowly and calmly at first, then
+with increasing anxiety and speed. By using all his strength, he raised
+the door a tail&#8217;s-breadth. For fully an hour he struggled at this chance
+of exit. Five times he forced his nose under the sharp wood edge, and
+sobbed as it snapped back, mocking at his failing strength.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until he was sick with weariness, and mad with thirst, that
+he lost his head. Then he flung himself recklessly in every direction,
+bruising his poor body against the unyielding bars, desperate, grimy,
+pitiable.</p>
+
+<p>Nature intervened at length, and lulled him into a semi-conscious,
+dream-bound indifference.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>There was something to be said for the stack-life, after all. All good
+stacks come to an end, but, while they last, it is honey for the
+mouse-folk. Picture to<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 9]</span> yourself the basement of a wheat-stack, occupied
+by a flourishing mouse colony&mdash;five hundred tiny souls, super-abundance
+of food, and no thought for the morrow. The companions of his youth stole
+into his dream with all the vividness of early impressions. The
+long-tailed wood-mouse&mdash;a handsome fellow this, with great black liquid
+eyes, and weasel colouring; the harvest-mouse, that Liliputian rustic to
+whose deft fingers all good mouse-nests are indiscriminately assigned; the
+freaks, white, black, and nondescript; and, finally, the great brown rats.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 449px;">
+<img src="images/img015.jpg" width="449" height="500" alt="The Harvest Mouse" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the harvest mouse, that liliputian rustic.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the presence of the latter he had always felt<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 10]</span> nervous, but he had
+recognized their usefulness. Had he not seen four of them combine and rout
+a weasel? In the midst of plenty they were harmless enough, at least they
+had never molested him. Moreover, they were the main tunnel builders, and
+it was refreshing for a mouse, who had wormed his way through two yards of
+powdery corn-husks, to find a run where he could stretch his limbs and
+scamper.</p>
+
+<p>And what wild scampers those were! For free, unimpeded, safe racing, there
+is nothing to touch the rat tunnels of a wheat-stack.</p>
+
+<p>He was a fortnight old when he first ventured out into the unknown. He
+remembered but little of his earliest sensations, only the vague comfort
+of nestling with six companions under his mother&#8217;s soft fur, and the vague
+discomfort caused by her occasional absence. But that first journey was
+unforgetable. The maze of winding burrows, the myriad eyes peering at him
+through the darkness, the ceaseless patter of tiny feet, before, behind,
+and on all sides, the great brown rat sniffing dubiously as it passed, the
+jostling, the chattering, the squeaking. He had been a proud mouse when he
+had returned, and told his faint-hearted brothers what the great world
+outside was really like.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was a bluebottle that roused him. It floundered heavily against the
+bars, crawled through, and brushed<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 11]</span> across his nose. No! he was not dead
+yet, but the bluebottle soon would be. He leaped at it, and, to his
+amazement, fell short and missed. Yesterday, he had cleared a flight of
+stairs with one light-hearted bound, and left a bewildered kitten at the
+top. He sank back heart-broken, and the bluebottle circled solemnly
+overhead, buzzing, buzzing, buzzing.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 463px;">
+<img src="images/img017.jpg" width="463" height="500" alt="Bewildered kitten" title="" />
+<span class="caption">and left a bewildered kitten at the top.</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Buz-z-z-z! whir-r-r! He was back in the wheat-stack once more, listening
+to the dull humming of ten thousand bluebottles. From without came the
+sound of heavy tramping feet, whirring wheels, rough, human<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 12]</span> voices. The
+wheaten mass rocked and vibrated above his head: half the runs were
+choked, and he, with twenty more of his kind, sat cowering in a corner of
+the foundations. Nearer and nearer came the voices, for the thrashing had
+commenced at sunrise, and now, as evening approached, three-parts of the
+stack were gone. Only once had he ventured to the edge of his shelter and
+looked out. A pair of grinning jaws crashed against the outlet, and
+snapped within a hair&#8217;s-breadth of his nose. It was his first sight of
+a terrier, and he realized that to break cover was certain death.</p>
+
+<p>Death, indeed, was very busy outside. Every minute a dog&#8217;s yelp, the shout
+of its master, and the dull thud of a bludgeon, told plainly enough the
+tale of some unhappy rodent&#8217;s dash for freedom.</p>
+
+<p>And so the sun went down blood-red.</p>
+
+<p>It was midnight, however, before the remnant gathered themselves together,
+and agreed on flight. The trek was headed by an old brown rat. Of the
+dozen that survived it, he was the only mouse.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Better, after all, to have never finished the journey, and, yet, why
+should he complain? He had lived longer than most, and had had his supreme
+moments.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;The mouse behind the mouldering wainscot shriek&#8217;d.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 13]</span>He had been dozing behind the wainscot in the dining-room, and the squeak
+of irritation had been due to a passing spider. The apt quotation reached
+him through the panel.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<em>Squeaked</em>, surely?&rdquo; The correction came in a soft, woman&#8217;s voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, <em>shrieked</em>; I am certain of it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Squeaked, I think; a mouse doesn&#8217;t shriek.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/img019.jpg" width="600" height="283" alt="He rushed off" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he rushed off to tell her before he should forget it.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, but this mouse had a poetic licence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look it up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The book was taken from within two inches of where he sat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Shrieked&rsquo; it is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It amused him vastly, for he had never shrieked in his life.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 14]</span>&ldquo;Do you like mice?&rdquo; It was the first voice speaking again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hate them&mdash;smelly little things.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img020.jpg" width="500" height="395" alt="Queen among mice" title="" />
+<span class="caption">she was a veritable queen among mice.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you remember that thing of Suckling&#8217;s?&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&ldquo;&lsquo;Her feet beneath her petticoat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Like little mice, ran in and out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As if they feared the light.&rsquo;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pretty, rather, I think.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&#8217;s pretty?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I don&#8217;t know&mdash;your feet, I suppose.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 15]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img021.jpg" width="500" height="304" alt="Fought five suitors" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he had fought five suitors to win her.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 17]</span>
+He felt disappointed. Surely it was the feet that profited by the
+comparison. Still, he knew that the whole conversation would amuse his
+wife, and rushed off to tell her before he should forget it.</p>
+
+<p>He had been rather anxious about her of late. Only the previous evening he
+had peeped from behind the bookcase and seen her backed into a corner, and
+defying six feet of solid humanity with brandished paws. Behaviour of this
+kind was courageous, but unmouselike, and would assuredly get her into
+difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>He found her in the midst of tiny wisps of paper, thread, and wool, that
+had been her chief concern for three days past.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did you ever <em>shriek</em>?&rdquo; he cried.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she replied; &ldquo;but I shall do if you can&#8217;t be less clumsy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her in amazement. Then the truth burst upon him. He was the
+father of seven, and was awkwardly seated upon three of them.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>She had been a good wife to him, this first. He had three especial
+favourites, the first, the third, and the sixth, but it was unquestionably
+the first that he had been the most proud of. She was a veritable queen
+among mice, and he had fought five suitors to win her. The madness of it!
+He had gone from basement to ceiling, challenging all and sundry who
+ventured to<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 18]</span>
+dispute his claim. But she was worth it. All he knew of
+house-life he had learnt from her. It was she who showed him the way to
+rob a trap. First she would sit upon the spring-door and satisfy herself
+that it was not lightly set, then with flattened body she would steal
+beneath it, and push, instead of pull, the bait.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 19]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img024.jpg" width="500" height="388" alt="Spring-door" title="" />
+<span class="caption">first she would sit upon the spring-door.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Under her guidance he learnt every nook and corner of the rambling house,
+the swiftest ways from garret to<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 21]</span> cellar, the entrances and exits of the
+runs, their sudden drops and windings, and all the thousand intricacies of
+architecture that make life under one roof possible for both mice and men.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img025.jpg" width="500" height="181" alt="Steal beneath it" title="" />
+<span class="caption">then with flattened body she would<br />
+steal beneath it.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>He learnt, moreover, from her that fighting the cat was merely a game of
+patience, and that even the human male has a warm corner in his heart for
+the mouse that is bold enough to approach him.</p>
+
+<p>And yet she fell a victim to the cat herself. It was out of pure bravado
+that she crossed its tail to prove that a cat with its eye on a mouse-hole
+has no eye for anything else.</p>
+
+<p>He, too, had been in the cat&#8217;s clutches once. It was hardly to his
+discredit. He had been with his wife at the time, had heard the sneaking
+footfall, and was in the act of pushing her into shelter when he felt
+himself pinned down.</p>
+
+<p>The moment the cat&#8217;s paw touched him he had relaxed every muscle and
+feigned death. The ruse succeeded. The cat loosened her hold, and he had
+a two-yard run before he was pinned afresh.</p>
+
+<p>Then he was flung into the air and caught like a ball, dashed aside and
+caught again, and swung, and twirled, and shaken, until he was too dazed
+to move a limb, and lay, a yard away from his tormentor, staring stupidly
+into her eyes. Yet he had received no mortal hurt.</p>
+
+<p>He owed his rescue to a human hand, and the hand<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 22]</span> smoothed his poor
+draggled coat, and pushed him inside his hole, while the cat complacently
+purred. For two long hours he lay just within the entrance, exhausted, but
+unattainable, and for two long hours the cat sat waiting for his
+reappearance. Whenever he raised his head their eyes met.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Their eyes were meeting now. Consciousness returned to him for a few
+seconds, and in those few seconds his blood turned to water, even as
+before. She sat on the window-ledge outside. Her muzzle was pressed
+against the glass, and he could trace the snarling curl of the lips,
+which just revealed her teeth. He cowered back as far as possible.
+Sooner or later she would find her way inside&mdash;and then?</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>He had only once been actually caught, but he was very near it in the
+corn-bin. Now, a house-mouse has no right whatever in the corn-bin, and
+yet it was a point of honour with the house-mice that they should visit
+their stable relations at least once a week. It was the love of
+excitement, more than the love of corn, which impelled them.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 23]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img029.jpg" width="500" height="290" alt="Pushing her into shelter" title="" />
+<span class="caption">was in the act of pushing her into shelter.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Crossing the yard was always risky work, whether one skirted the shadowy
+side of the wall, or made a bold dash in the open. Then the simplest way
+into the storeroom was through a hole in the corner of the<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 25]</span> window-sill,
+and to reach this meant a clamber along a half-inch ledge, with the
+certainty of falling into the water-tank if one missed one&#8217;s hold.
+Finally, the stable itself was the training-ground for the household
+kittens.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img031.jpg" width="500" height="400" alt="Stable relations" title="" />
+<span class="caption">their stable relations.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img032.jpg" width="500" height="418" alt="Clamber along" title="" />
+<span class="caption">a clamber along a half-inch ledge.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was not a kitten, however, but a dog that so nearly terminated his
+career. There must have been thirty or forty mice in the corn-bin at the
+time. The lid was suddenly flung open, their eyes were dazzled by the
+blaze of an upheld lantern, and, before they could<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 26]</span> realize their
+position, a terrier was amongst them, dealing out scientific murder.
+Fortunately, he, with one companion, had been where the corn was highest,
+and a frantic scramble had landed them over the edge of the bin and down
+behind it. But, from where he lay, he could hear plainly enough what was
+happening. The mice were leaping in every direction against the polished
+sides of the bin, missing their footing and falling back into the
+terrier&#8217;s mouth. His final recollection was of five and twenty small
+corpses laid out in a neat row<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 27]</span> upon the stable floor. Perhaps half a
+dozen of his companions had escaped by burrowing in the corn.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 380px;">
+<img src="images/img033.jpg" width="380" height="500" alt="Landed them over the edge" title="" />
+<span class="caption">a frantic scramble landed them<br />over the edge of the bin.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>He awoke with a start this time, for the trap had suddenly turned up on
+end. The door was standing open, but a shadow hung across it, and the
+mouse felt the shadow&mdash;<em>and shrieked</em>.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img034.jpg" width="500" height="405" alt="Chapter Image" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>THE STORY OF A FIELD VOLE</h2>
+
+
+<p>His earliest recollections were somewhat confused, nor is this to be
+wondered at, for he was one of eight, and in the same hole lived another
+family of seven, fifteen tiny creatures in all, of the same age and
+outwardly indistinguishable.</p>
+
+<p>Under such circumstances it is difficult to retain one&#8217;s individuality,
+let alone one&#8217;s impressions. Moreover some little time had elapsed before
+he really <em>saw</em> his companions. Not that he was long actually blind,&mdash;that
+is the prerogative of the carnivora, but his career commenced some feet
+below the surface of the earth, at the<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 29]</span> termination of a long winding
+burrow, and a full fortnight had elapsed before he eluded his mother&#8217;s
+vigilance, and, after a clumsy scrambling ascent, beheld for the first
+time the tall green grasses which shrouded the entrance, and the blue of
+the sky peeping down irregularly between them.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img035.jpg" width="400" height="344" alt="His first sensation" title="" />
+<span class="caption">his first sensation was<br />one of extreme cold.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>His first sensation was one of extreme cold, for his fur was at this time
+little better than down; Nature&#8217;s brilliant colouring only dazzled and
+frightened him; his tender skin shrank from contact with the sharp-edged
+herbage, and, after a short blundering excursion, he was glad to scuttle
+down below once more.</p>
+
+<p>His next effort was more successful. His fur had thickened, and, like all
+good voles, he had the sense to defer his exit until the evening. Still,
+even when he had reached the mature age of three weeks, the murky, warm
+atmosphere below ground proved more seductive than any other, and he spent
+the greater portion of his existence there, sleeping, nest-making, or
+fighting with a companion over food.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 30]</span>The making and re-making of the nest was learnt on kindergarten principles.
+At first he was employed in softening slender grass filaments, by dragging
+them through his teeth; then he learnt to intertwine them, and sat in the
+middle of an ever-growing sphere of delicate network; finally, like his
+mother, he tackled large, stiff grass stems, biting them into short
+lengths, and splitting them, or letting them split themselves, lengthways.
+By the time he was a month old, he was an expert nest-builder, and, given
+the material, could build a complete nest for two inside the hour.</p>
+
+<p>On the score of meat and drink he had no anxieties. A marshy meadow had
+been selected by his forbears for colonization. The burrow terminated
+outwardly on the bank of a half-dried watercourse, and, within its
+recesses, was all manner of vegetable store&mdash;seeds, bulbs, leaves, clover,
+and herbs in fascinating variety and profusion. Nor was there any lack of
+greener food. Bog-grass surrounded the burrow, and the most succulent
+portion of bog-grass is the most easily attained.</p>
+
+<p>He soon learned to reach up on his hind legs and gnaw the standing plant.
+The management of a dry and slippery corn-ear at first presented some
+difficulty, but, as his muscles strengthened, he found himself able to
+sit up on his haunches and hold it squirrel-fashion in his fore-paws,
+nibbling, to begin with, at the pointed end, which is the best way into
+most things. Once, as the<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 31]</span> family were grubbing together, a nut turned up
+at the back of the pile. After a desperate conflict, he secured it, but,
+the tough shell was too much for him. It takes a red vole&#8217;s training to
+reduce a nut.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img037.jpg" width="500" height="338" alt="Nibbling the pointed end" title="" />
+<span class="caption">nibbling, to begin with, at the pointed end.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>So the weeks passed on, and he grew thicker and sturdier and more furry.
+He was never graceful, like his cousin the red vole, for his face was
+blunted, his eyes small, and his tail ridiculously insignificant. Nor
+could he cover the ground with the easy swinging jump that makes one
+suspect relationship between the red vole and the wood-mouse. Still for a
+common, vulgar, agrarian vole, he was passable enough, and could hold his
+own, tooth and nail, with his nest-fellows.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 32]</span>He was five weeks old before he commenced to go out foraging on his own
+account. He never ventured far, but contented himself with timorous
+excursions along the banks of the watercourse, crouching amid the
+undergrowth, and ready, at the first scent of danger, to glide with
+flattened body back to cover. Sometimes he accompanied his mother on her
+visits to distant portions of the colony, but the old vole more often left
+her octet behind, and then he would lie huddled up with his companions,
+waiting for the squelching sound of her footsteps, as she returned across
+the mud, and quarrelling in anticipation of what she would bring.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img038.jpg" width="500" height="351" alt="First scent of danger" title="" />
+<span class="caption">ready, at the first scent of danger,<br />
+to glide back to cover.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Now and again a different sound would reach the hollow&mdash;the dragging tail
+swish of the water-vole, or<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 33]</span> the fussy scramble of some belated moorhen.
+These he soon learned to distinguish from the stealthy, broken, hanging
+footfall of the beast of prey. When that was heard, both he and his
+companions would crouch together in the darkest corner of the burrow and
+hold their breath.</p>
+
+<p>Once such a sound stopped abruptly and close at hand; a faint f&oelig;tid
+odour permeated from without, and he felt instinctively that the enemy was
+at the gate. The danger passed, but that night the old vole failed to
+return.</p>
+
+<p>The night following the same sound came, and ceased. This time, however,
+the silence was succeeded by a fierce scratching, and he soon realized
+that the entrance to the nest was blocked, and that something, bigger and
+stronger than he yet knew of, was working its way nearer and nearer. There
+was a clatter of falling stones and earth, and the &ldquo;something&rdquo; was
+whirling in their midst. Wild confusion followed. The whole interior of
+the nest seemed occupied by a swift-circling, curling, sinuous form.</p>
+
+<p>Small as he was, and crouching as only a vole can crouch, there was no
+escape from contact with it. Three times the hot loathsome breath hissed
+over him, as he lay flattened to the ground. Then, as the lithe body swept
+round, he was flung aside, and, by a lucky chance, found himself opposite
+the outlet. In an agony of terror he scrambled up the shaft, and concealed
+himself in an<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 34]</span> adjoining grass-tuft. He was sick, and dizzy, and bruised
+all over.</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely had he recovered sufficient coolness to look about him, when the
+object of his terror emerged with dripping jaws, and he was enabled, for
+the first time, to form an opinion of the arch-enemy of vole-kind.</p>
+
+<p>To avoid the bird of prey, a vole need only remain below the surface; to
+avoid the little gentleman in black, he need only rise above it; but from
+the grim pursuit of the weasel, bent on meal or murder, there is no
+escape.</p>
+
+<p>Terror-stricken as he was, he could hardly help admiring the easy supple
+swagger of the creature&#8217;s movements. She held her broad browed head erect,
+the bristles pointed like needles from her blood-streaked muzzle, grit and
+pluck could be traced in her every movement, and, in her eyes, universal
+defiance.</p>
+
+<p>Down the dark watercourse she went, twisting her lithe chestnut body
+S-wise in and out of the coarse grass-clumps. A frog leaped before her. In
+a flash she had flung herself upon it, her white teeth clicked together in
+its brain, and she sauntered slowly out of sight, bearing her latest
+victim in her mouth. It was hideous. To eat vegetables was natural enough,
+but to eat living, quivering flesh! A sickening faintness crept over him,
+and it was full an hour before he could leave his shelter.</p>
+
+<p>Very cautiously he retraced his steps to the familiar<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 35]</span>
+entrance, and stopped to listen. A flood of moonlight burst through the clouds,
+and his trembling shadow danced ink-black before him. He was a clear mark for
+every kind of foe, yet he still paused irresolute. It was too horribly
+silent below. A clumsy whirring beetle alighted at his feet and stumbled
+heavily down the hole. Another followed. He turned and fled, blindly,
+recklessly, anywhere to escape that exhaling reek of murder.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img041.jpg" width="400" height="398" alt="Paused irresolute" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he still paused irresolute.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Away from the watercourse the grasses grew shorter and more slender. It
+was easy, but risky going. Small pyramids of soil dotted the ground in
+different directions,<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 36]</span> some massed together almost in circles, others at
+wider intervals. At the edge of one of them he stopped and commenced idly
+burrowing with his fore feet. For a few inches the light, crumbling earth
+yielded easily to his efforts. Then the floor seemed to subside beneath
+him, and he found a shelter ready made. Two narrow rough-hewn tunnels led
+from beneath the centre of the heap. He rested for a few minutes, then
+started to explore one of them.</p>
+
+<p>It could hardly be described as a burrow, for, at intervals, it was half
+choked with earth-falls, and he had to work his way through them. In
+direction it was fairly straight. After a few yards progress he found its
+termination. It opened on a larger tunnel running at right angles to
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>The sides of this latter were smooth and polished, smoother even than
+those of the approach to the old home. It was wide enough for two voles to
+run abreast in. The straggling grass-roots which hung overhead proved it
+of trifling depth. Indeed, the roof was very thin, in places hardly solid.
+Through these the moonlight seemed to filter down, forming dull bluish
+patches on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>From the main road passages branched out at intervals. He turned into one
+of them. The sides were rough and crumbling, and it came abruptly to an
+end. He soon retraced his steps, but paused when he had<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 37]</span> regained the
+meeting of the ways. Something was approaching along the main tunnel. He
+took the wisest course, and crouched within the shelter of the side
+gallery. A crimson pointed snout, a huge paddling foot, and a dark
+shapeless mass passed in quick succession before his eyes, and vanished
+in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>As it swept by, the foot caught the crumbling edge of his retreat,
+covering him with a shower of light mould. For the second time he
+experienced the sickening, paralyzing agony of fear. This was succeeded by
+an irresistible impulse to break cover. He sprang into the main shaft once
+more, determined to take advantage of the first outlet. A shadowy blue
+glimmer shone before him, and he quickened his pace towards it. Suddenly
+the light was extinguished, the walls of the tunnel seemed to cave in
+around him, in front of him he heard a dull, choking gasp, and he found
+his nose in contact with a warm, palpitating velvet body.</p>
+
+<p>This time his nerve failed him completely, and he lay absolutely
+motionless, conscious, with only a dull indifference, that death stared
+him in the face. But death seemed slow in coming, and, as he lay, his
+indifference changed to a fierce longing, first for a speedy end of it
+all, then for life at any price. Slowly and with difficulty he lifted his
+head; the dark mass lay silent alongside of him, and the faint movements
+had ceased. He could trace the creature&#8217;s hind foot, it<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 38]</span> was rigid and
+cold. Then the truth burst upon him. He had nothing to fear&mdash;the owner
+of the foot was dead.</p>
+
+<p>Still, he could scarcely move his limbs, for the soil lay thick and heavy
+around him. After a prolonged effort he disengaged his fore feet, and
+started to scratch himself free. On one side of him lay the dead body; he
+worked vigorously along it. He was checked, however, by an obstacle beyond
+his strength. The body was enclosed by a tight-fitting ring, and on this
+he could make no impression.</p>
+
+<p>Fastening his tiny fingers in the fur on one side, and scraping with his
+free fore-paw on the other, he forced his way upwards. The soil grew
+lighter above him, and in a few minutes he had reached the upper air, and
+lay panting on the surface.</p>
+
+<p>He then tried to pick up his position. The mole-run had brought him
+some two hundred yards, nearly to the edge of the marshland. Across the
+boundary rose a small plantation. Here he determined to seek shelter. He
+had but fifty yards to go, and started to glide stealthily from tuft to
+tuft.</p>
+
+<p>On all sides the ground was alive with tiny insects. The larger kinds
+seemed mostly to be sleeping. He ran full tilt against a drowsy butterfly,
+sweeping its close-folded wings through half a circle, as he passed. They
+sprang back with a jerk, but the insect itself<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 39]</span> remained motionless.
+Grasshoppers clung to every other grass-stem; their eyes were dead and
+staring. Here and there he saw a spider gripping its support and waiting
+for the sunrise.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img045.jpg" width="500" height="378" alt="Pick up his position" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he tried to pick up his position.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Once he found himself confronted by a bloated toad. The amphibian surveyed
+him solemnly, but never moved. A low hiss whistled through the grass. He
+crouched in terror while four feet of grass-snake undulated by. A
+shrewmouse broke cover in front of him, followed by its mate. The air
+resounded with shrill defiant<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 40]</span> squeaks as the two bunchy velvet balls
+rolled over one another out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>So he worked his way along towards the boundary; pausing at intervals to
+gnaw at the growing plant-stems, or to sit on his haunches and nibble some
+fallen seed which took his fancy.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img046.jpg" width="500" height="323" alt="He was no ordinary vole" title="" />
+<span class="caption">vole-like this latter was,<br />yet he was no ordinary vole.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was close to the plantation that a familiar movement in the grass
+seemed to betray the presence of a near relation. Hastening towards it
+he found himself confronted by a total stranger. Vole-like this latter
+undoubtedly was, yet he was no ordinary vole. Delicate chestnut fur,
+brilliant white feet, a whitish waistcoat, and a paste-coloured two-inch
+tail proclaimed the red vole at once.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 41]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 430px;">
+<img src="images/img047.jpg" width="430" height="600" alt="Gazing at one another" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>In size there was little to choose between them, and they sat gazing at
+each other for some moments stolid and undismayed. Yet, despite the
+equality of fighting weight, he felt himself somehow the inferior
+creature. His thoughts ran on the old legend of the field-vole who mated
+with a wood-mouse of high degree, and whose descendants to this day bear
+the marks of their noble origin. So, when the stranger turned and leapt
+lightly into the undergrowth that fringed the wood, he humbly tried to
+follow.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 42]</span>
+That was no easy matter, for, where the other jumped, he could only
+scramble, and on the flat he felt himself hopelessly outclassed. Still,
+once beyond the outskirts of the wood, the tangled thickets gave way to
+something less luxuriant, and he could sight his leader more frequently.
+All at once he checked himself, and, with a sudden access of natural
+caution, flattened himself to earth. He had blundered into the red-vole
+community.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img048.jpg" width="400" height="287" alt="Wood-mouse" title="" />
+<span class="caption">a wood-mouse of high degree.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Five small active forms were gliding hither and thither among the fallen
+leaves. They were too busy to notice him, and were evidently working with
+some<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 43]</span> method, for, at intervals, one or the other would make his way
+slowly to a definite spot, and then return light-footed to his task. He
+edged a little closer to observe them. Then the meaning of it flashed upon
+him. They were nut-hunting.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the nut was carried in their mouths, sometimes rolled along the
+ground, sometimes wedged between the chin and fore-paws, but, when they
+reached their goal, it seemed to vanish.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img049.jpg" width="500" height="381" alt="The stranger leapt lightly" title="" />
+<span class="caption">so, when the stranger leapt<br />
+lightly into the undergrowth.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Of this there could be but one solution. The nuts<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 44]</span> were being taken to a
+burrow-entrance. Curiosity overcame him, and, seizing a quiet moment, he
+slipped down the burrow. It plunged abruptly for about a foot, passed
+under a curving root, squeezed between some small root branches, and
+terminated in a double compartment. Three nuts hit him from behind as he
+descended.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img050.jpg" width="500" height="400" alt="Tried to follow" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he humbly tried to follow.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>To his left lay the nest, a mass of feathery grass and mosses. He slipped
+into it, and, as he cleared the shaft entrance, the three nuts followed
+with a rush. He lay there quiet until his eyes had become accustomed to
+the semi-darkness.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 45]</span>Then he perceived that he was not alone. The right-hand portion of the
+hollow held a lady tenant. She had her back to him, and was busily
+employed in the storeroom. He could just distinguish that the farthest
+recess held a great pile of nuts, and that her business was to collect the
+nuts as they toppled down the shoot, and stack them in as small a space as
+possible.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img051.jpg" width="500" height="426" alt="Sniff suspiciously" title="" />
+<span class="caption">she paused, and he saw her sniff suspiciously.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Suddenly she paused, and he saw her sniff suspiciously, she swung round,
+and he was discovered. He had barely time to back into a corner, before
+she was upon him, and at the first nip, he knew that he had met a better
+vole. Over they rolled, scratching, biting, tearing.<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 46]</span> Her sharp, chisel
+teeth met in his ear and tore the half of it away. The blood blinded him,
+but he stuck grimly to his task.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 359px;">
+<img src="images/img052.jpg" width="359" height="400" alt="He was discovered" title="" />
+<span class="caption">she swung round,<br />
+and he was discovered.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Physically he was at an immense disadvantage. His clumsy movements availed
+but little against the fierce agility of the red vole. Time after time he
+snapped at her and missed; for, even as he aimed, she could swing her
+lithe body round and leap upon him from behind. Nor, when they grappled,
+could he retain his hold on her. Against the leverage of those powerful
+hind legs he could do nothing.</p>
+
+<p>His cause, moreover, was a bad one. Was he not<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 47]</span> the intruder? and when was
+ever mercy accorded to such among four-footed things? His strength was
+fast failing when he fled, hotly pursued, up to the open once more. He
+only exchanged one foe for four. Lacerated, faint, and bleeding, he
+crouched, waiting for their attack. It was a short and savage one. An owl
+hooted above, the red voles rushed to cover, but he remained behind.</p>
+
+<p>He had only really felt one bite. A pair of razor teeth had nipped his
+spine, and&mdash;he had hardly noticed a dozen other wounds. He was terribly
+thirsty, and struggled to reach a dewdrop which hung above his head, but
+his hind legs were paralyzed and powerless. Gradually his eyelids drooped,
+and he sank slowly over on one side. It was growing very dark and very
+cold.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE APOLOGY OF THE HOUSE SPARROW</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<span class="smcap">Note.</span>&mdash;It would not be morally profitable to describe how I learnt
+Sparrowese. The language of the sparrow is the language of the
+gutter. I have Englishized it throughout.]</p></div>
+
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was the odd egg, for one thing,&rdquo; said the sparrow. He was speaking with
+his mouth full, as usual.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img054.jpg" width="500" height="386" alt="Speaking with his mouth full" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he was speaking with his mouth full, as usual.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What on earth do you mean by that?&rdquo; I replied.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 49]</span>He laughed offensively. &ldquo;Do you know anything about sparrows?&rdquo; he sneered.</p>
+
+<p>I confessed I did not know much.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I never knew any one write about them who did,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;What was I
+saying when you interrupted me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You said you were the odd egg,&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;What <em>is</em> an odd egg?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you know what a <em>clutch</em> is?&rdquo; His intonation was insolence itself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A clutch,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;is, I believe, a sitting of eggs destined to be
+simultaneously hatched.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps you may have noticed,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;that in our family&rdquo;&mdash;his every
+feather bristled with importance, and the white bars on his wings were
+beautifully displayed&mdash;&ldquo;we do not confine ourselves to a single monotonous
+pattern of egg.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A string of variegated sparrows&#8217; eggs was one of my earliest treasures,&rdquo;
+said I.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then, if you know that much, and don&#8217;t know what the odd egg is,
+you must be a fool,&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard to be insulted by a sparrow, and, as it is, I have toned down
+the expression, but I preserved a meek silence.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Any one,&rdquo; he went on, with bland condescension, &ldquo;who has seen a few
+clutches of sparrows&#8217; eggs, and has<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 50]</span> not noticed that there is an odd egg
+in each clutch, must be an uncommonly poor observer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is not in the books,&rdquo; I ventured to protest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Books!&rdquo; he screamed, &ldquo;books! What do the people who write books know
+about sparrows? And yet, do you know that there has been more ink spilt
+over sparrows than over any other bird? that laws innumerable have been
+passed concerning sparrows? that associations have been formed to
+exterminate sparrows? that&mdash;that&mdash;that&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img056.jpg" width="400" height="339" alt="Odd egg" title="" />
+<span class="caption">there is an odd egg in each clutch.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The excitement was too much for him; he had been keeping time with his
+tail to this declamatory crescendo. With the last effort he cocked it a
+shade too high, lost his balance, and landed, considerably<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 51]</span> ruffled, some
+four feet beneath his own reserved and particular twig. His eye was on me,
+and I felt it too serious a matter for laughter. He made what was
+evidently intended for a dignified ascent, choosing, with minute
+exactness, the steps he had originally employed on my approach. It was a
+full minute before he broke the silence, and for that full minute I had to
+preserve my gravity.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/img057.jpg" width="300" height="270" alt="He broke the silence" title="" />
+<span class="caption">it was a full minute before<br />
+he broke the silence.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you any clutches by you?&rdquo; he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>I had, and fetched them.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;look at that one, four dark and one light; look at this,
+four light and one dark; and at this, six light mottled, and one among
+them with a few black spots.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I had to admit that it seemed true.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;True,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;of course it&#8217;s true. Didn&#8217;t I tell you that I was the
+odd egg myself?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, <em>one</em> of you had to be the odd egg, I suppose?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wrong again,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;What you don&#8217;t seem to realize is, that the odd
+egg is nearly always addled; in my case it wasn&#8217;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then, in your case,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;there was one more<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 52]</span> mouth to feed than your
+parents expected. How did they take it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mother kept it quiet as long as she could,&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And father?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Father didn&#8217;t find out for a day or two, and when he did, he pushed one
+of my brothers over the side of the nest&mdash;he did holler for his life!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The little beast was actually chuckling at the recollection.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He hung head downwards by one leg, and wouldn&#8217;t let go till father dug
+his beak into him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Brutal,&rdquo; I murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Brutal! not a bit of it. You can&#8217;t feed more than a certain number of
+nestlings; besides which, there wouldn&#8217;t be room in the nest. As it was, I
+fell out before I could fly.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What happened then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, the old folks came and fed me, and helped me back again the shortest
+way up the bark. Brutal, wasn&#8217;t it? A martin wouldn&#8217;t do that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Which reminds me,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;that you were not born in a martin&#8217;s-nest.
+Are trees the fashionable quarter just now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They&#8217;ve come in more since thatched roofs went out,&rdquo; said the sparrow.
+&ldquo;It&#8217;s tree or martins&#8217;-nests nowadays.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You do really drive away the martins, I suppose?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 53]</span>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he sniggered; &ldquo;poor, dear little martins! Look here,&rdquo; said he, and
+his voice changed from a snigger to vicious earnest. &ldquo;We sparrows are just
+about sick of being accused of bullying martins. White of Selborne started
+it, but he didn&#8217;t know what it would lead to. Would you like to know the
+truth of the matter?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was one of the things I did want to hear, and I nodded assent.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The disappearance of martins is a loss really of national importance,&rdquo; he
+began, in a sickly whine. &ldquo;It is a shame to see how the pretty house
+martins are decreasing in this country at the hand of the sparrows,&rdquo; he
+continued. &ldquo;He drives away our migratory and pre-eminently useful
+insect-eating birds, even turning out the eggs of the owners and using the
+locality for its own nest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He was obviously quoting from the pro-martin authorities, and I stopped
+him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have heard all that before,&rdquo; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&#8217;s a fair amount of it about, pages and pages,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;there&#8217;s
+one story, for instance, of twenty or thirty martins blocking up the bold,
+bad sparrow inside the nest, which the said bold, bad sparrow had usurped.
+What do you think of that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think it is untrue,&rdquo; I promptly replied.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It <em>is</em> untrue,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;but it isn&#8217;t far away from<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 54]</span> truth, for all
+that. Many a dead sparrow has been found in a martin&#8217;s-nest, and many a
+time the entrance was too small for a sparrow to have got out of; but,
+still, it wouldn&#8217;t take a healthy sparrow long to break up a
+martin&#8217;s-nest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What has happened then?&rdquo; said I.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img060.jpg" width="500" height="403" alt="One part of white arsenic" title="" />
+<span class="caption">one part of white arsenic to fifteen parts of<br />
+corn-meal, is the usual recipe.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, of course, the sparrow was dying when it got in. One part of white
+arsenic to fifteen parts of corn-meal is the usual recipe. It is illegal,
+as you doubtless know, but it has the advantage of acting slowly. Of
+course, if we <em>saw</em> a friend of ours writhing about in the feeding-ground,
+we should give that feeding-ground a wide berth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 55]</span>&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;but what about the entrance being plastered up?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is never quite plastered up,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;and even if it was, a healthy,
+able-bodied sparrow could knock the whole thing to pieces with two pecks.
+No; when there are any disputes as to proprietorship between sparrows and
+martins, the martins have a trick of waiting till the sparrow is out, and
+then narrowing down the entrance so that the sparrow will have a job to
+get in decent nest material. When a live sparrow is in possession, he very
+soon lets callers know it. The martins, in these cases, miss their usual
+greeting, and probably conclude that the sparrow is away, whereas he is
+really dead inside. That&#8217;s just about the whole truth of the matter.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But why on earth,&rdquo; I protested, &ldquo;can&#8217;t you build a proper nest for
+yourself?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&#8217;t know why it is,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;but the mere thought of a martin makes
+a sparrow feel bad inside. Why does a dog naturally go for a cat? One
+thing is quite certain, however. We both fancy human dwellings, and, if we
+left the martins altogether alone, they would have all the best places in
+no time. Now, that wouldn&#8217;t be fair at all. I appeal to you as a fellow
+Briton. We are British born and bred. We stay with you all the year round.
+The martin only comes to look you up in the fine weather. Then he puts on
+his showy foreign manners, and you say, &lsquo;How charming! so<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 56]</span> different to
+those dirty, vulgar sparrows!&rsquo; but, as soon as the weather breaks, off he
+goes. Now, a hard winter is no fun for the sparrows. We are glad of any
+shelter we can get, and the martins&#8217; deserted nests come in very handy.
+Not only do we use them, but we keep them from falling to pieces, line
+them with feathers, and make them into snug winter quarters. Back comes
+the martin in the spring. &lsquo;Dear me!&rsquo; he says, &lsquo;most gratifying, I am sure.
+So kind of you to act as caretaker. Why, I declare, the old place looks
+better than when I left. Of course, you won&#8217;t mind my coming in at once.
+I&#8217;ve got to make my family arrangements for the season.&rsquo; &lsquo;Not quite,&rsquo; says
+the sparrow. &lsquo;If it hadn&#8217;t been for me, this nest would have been down in
+the last gale. I&#8217;ve put money into this nest, and you can jolly well go
+and build another. You ought to have stayed to look after it, if you
+wanted it again.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is all very well,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;but it seems to me that there ought to
+be room for both of you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, there isn&#8217;t,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and Nature has worked it out that there
+shan&#8217;t be, and if you write a thousand letters to the <em>Field</em>, you won&#8217;t
+alter that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Suppose the martins got the pull over the sparrows, do you think it would
+be better for things in general?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You mean better for yourself,&rdquo; said the sparrow, sharply.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 57]</span>On reflection, I came to the conclusion that that was just what I did
+mean.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&#8217;t believe an increase of insect-eating birds would do you much
+good,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;Suppose, for instance, the ichneumon flies were
+decimated, what a time it would be for the caterpillars! How would some
+of your plants get on if there weren&#8217;t enough insects to fertilize them?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I felt it was time to shift my ground. &ldquo;Let us get back to your early
+history,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;What was the nest like?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was in a hole of a tree-stump,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;A silly sort of place, I
+think, not ten feet from the ground. Now I always build as high as I
+can&mdash;just underneath the rooks&#8217;-nests, in fact. You&#8217;re safe from boys;
+they don&#8217;t shoot your nest to bits for fear of shooting the rooks&#8217;-nests
+too; and there&#8217;s abundance of insect food on the spot. The nest itself was
+mostly feathery stuff, though I remember a piece of pink paper, which used
+to tickle me. I suppose the colour of it took the old birds&#8217; fancy. Of
+course the nest was distinct from the casing. That was the usual straw. I
+think it is the casing of sparrows&#8217;-nests that you humans object to as
+untidy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We chiefly object to the portion which stops up the water-pipes,&rdquo; said I.
+&ldquo;What did you have to eat?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 58]</span>&ldquo;Insects, I expect, to start with. At least, that is what I always give my
+youngsters; then, as my gizzard strengthened, small, hard seeds; then
+bigger ones; finally, corn itself. That is my favourite diet at the
+present time. Three parts of what I eat is corn, the rest is insects,
+seeds, and scraps.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 392px;">
+<img src="images/img064.jpg" width="392" height="500" alt="Hole of a tree-stump" title="" />
+<span class="caption">it was in a hole of a tree-stump.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You can get corn all the year round?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh! easily enough. In the fields, when it is growing; round the
+wheat-stacks later, or among the<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 59]</span> poultry&mdash;people don&#8217;t shoot into the
+middle of the poultry&mdash;anywhere, in fact.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you really like corn better than anything?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There is nothing quite so nice in the world,&rdquo; said the sparrow, &ldquo;as
+fresh, young corn in the ear, which you can just squeeze the juice out of
+and then drop.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And are you aware of the amount of damage which you do to the poor,
+struggling farmer?&rdquo; said I, assuming a judicial severity which I was far
+from feeling.</p>
+
+<p>The flippancy was infectious.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A recent estimate places it at &pound;770,094 per annum,&rdquo; said the sparrow.
+&ldquo;Just think of that!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In this country alone,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;You seem to forget America, Australia,
+South Africa, and all the other places to which you have been unhappily
+introduced as an insecticide.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You seem to forget,&rdquo; he retorted, &ldquo;that it was you yourselves who made
+the introduction. You tried to improve on the natural balance which was
+ordained for this string of countries, and a pretty mess you have made of
+it. Now you want to crown your folly of introducing the sparrow where
+Nature said it was not wanted, by exterminating it where Nature says it is
+wanted&mdash;and that&#8217;s here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&#8217;t think any one has suggested that you should be exterminated,&rdquo;
+said I.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 60]</span>&ldquo;&lsquo;To lessen their numbers in our country, every possible means must be had
+recourse to.&rsquo; There&#8217;s a pretty piece of grammar for you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He was obviously quoting again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You couldn&#8217;t exterminate me if you tried, and, therefore, you very
+properly don&#8217;t suggest it. I have been called the Avian Rat, and I <em>am</em>
+the Avian Rat. You can no more get rid of me than you can of my
+four-footed counterpart. It would be a bad day for you if you could.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you must admit that both you and the rat are increasing in numbers,
+and, therefore, in destructiveness. What is to be the end of it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The end of it will be that you will preserve our enemies instead of
+shooting them at sight.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Meaning?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hawks, owls, weasels, and so on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But hawks would never come near the towns?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We aren&#8217;t in town the whole year round. Even the cockneyest of sparrows
+has his month or two in the cornfields. I don&#8217;t mind telling you that one
+of the reasons we have for clinging to human habitations is that we are
+thus sure of sanctuary. Our natural enemies will always be welcomed with a
+gun. They know that, too, and keep away. Make it an offence to kill a bird
+or beast of prey, and you will see a difference in the rats and
+sparrows.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 61]</span>&ldquo;What about the pheasants?&rdquo; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There would be fewer pheasants,&rdquo; said the sparrow; &ldquo;and, if you only knew
+it, they would taste better, if there were.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img067.jpg" width="500" height="379" alt="Been shot at" title="" />
+<span class="caption">you have been shot at.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sparrow,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;to speak disrespectfully of the battue places you at
+once outside the pale. You <em>are</em> an Avian Rat. You <em>do</em> consume an
+inordinate quantity of corn. Since history began you have been an impudent
+parasite on man. As a hieroglyphic character you signified the enemy.
+Choleric old gentlemen have been roused to frenzy over your misdeeds. You
+have been shot at, trapped, poisoned, netted. Like the chafers,<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 62]</span> you have
+been excommunicated. You have been made into a yearly tribute, by the
+thousand. Laws have been enacted to compass your destruction, letters have
+been written to the <em>Field</em>, and yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;an inscrutable Providence
+has decreed that you shall survive, increase, and multiply. What <em>good</em> do
+you do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img068.jpg" width="500" height="359" alt="Trapped" title="" />
+<span class="caption">trapped.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you ever heard me sing?&rdquo; said the sparrow.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sing!&rdquo; I cried; &ldquo;that sempiternal twitter, that intolerable chirrup that
+destroys the best and latest hours of sleep! Do you call that singing?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What bird would you prefer?&rdquo; he blandly inquired.</p>
+
+<p>I considered for a moment. The grim possibility of ten thousand
+nightingales yodelling in chorus, of ten<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 63]</span> thousand skylarks, or of ten
+thousand cuckoos, determined my answer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I cannot think of one,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;But this is no merit on your part, it is
+merely a qualification of evil.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img069.jpg" width="500" height="404" alt="Netted" title="" />
+<span class="caption">netted.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought you would acknowledge <em>that</em>,&rdquo; said the sparrow. "But,
+seriously, you ask me what good I do, and I will tell you. That my infant
+food consisted entirely of insects and caterpillars you already know. Turn
+the statistician to work who has so cunningly reduced my corn-depredations
+to pounds, shillings, and<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 64]</span> pence, and he will assuredly find that the
+insects devoured by the infant sparrow population in a year will amount to
+hundreds of millions. These, mind you, are insects large enough to be
+brought to us in our parent&#8217;s beaks.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img070.jpg" width="500" height="316" alt="Avian rat, indeed!" title="" />
+<span class="caption">avian rat, indeed! rather avian scavenger!</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But what of the insect eggs devoured by us in winter, when most of your
+pretty insect-eating birds have flown to where the insect is commoner,
+fatter, and fuller-flavoured? It is we stay-at-home British birds that
+really keep the insects down. I know that insect eggs do not appear in our
+poor dissected gizzards. How should they? How would you recognize their
+remains, O sapient sparrow-shooters? But they are there, for all<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 65]</span> that.
+Those blessed with eyes can see us hunting for them in the fallen leaves,
+among the garbage, in the crannies of the very pavement.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img071.jpg" width="500" height="266" alt="I felt ashamed" title="" />
+<span class="caption">i felt ashamed.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What, again, of weed seeds in general, and knotgrass in particular? Avian
+Rat, indeed! rather Avian Scavenger, who draws his hard-earned pay in
+corn. Can you grudge him a few paltry millions? Would you exterminate him
+because in your blindness you only note the debit side? There is a Power
+behind the sparrow. It is Nature herself, and against Her fixed resolve
+nothing avails.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He had worked himself into an incoherent frenzy; but, even as he relapsed
+from this fierce air of consequence to his vulgarian self, I felt
+ashamed.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE AWAKENING OF THE DORMOUSE</h2>
+
+
+<p>He lay face downwards&mdash;two tiny fists tight-clenched against his cheeks,
+his feet curled up to meet them, his tail swung gracefully across his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Nine weeks had he lain thus, self-entombed. Within the hollow of the old
+hazel-stump he had fashioned a rough sphere of honeysuckle bark; within
+this, again, a nest of feathery grass stems. He had put the roof on last
+of all.</p>
+
+<p>A winter sunbeam pierced the screen of woodbine, and, for a moment, shed
+the warmth of springtime on the nest. His whiskers gave a feeble flicker
+in response. Next day the treacherous radiance lingered. He unclenched one
+fist, and wound four tiny fingers round a grass-stem. On the fourth day he
+half-opened his eyes (even half-opened they were beautiful), and sat up,
+dazed and blinking. The sunbeam had reached his heart.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 67]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 369px;">
+<img src="images/img073.jpg" width="369" height="500" alt="The squirrel" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&ldquo;what, awake?&rdquo; shouted the squirrel.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Yet it was a full hour before he was conscious that he lived. At first he
+felt nothing but a dull quickening throb within his body. His feet and
+hands were ice-cold, and he swayed from side to side, feeling for his<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 69]</span>
+strength. Then came the pricking of ten thousand tiny needles in his
+limbs. His heart beat as though it would burst its prison. His whole
+frame quivered. His bristles stood stiff-pointed from their roots. As the
+heart-throb slowed, his muscles slackened and obeyed his will, but yet he
+felt that something was amiss. Before him danced a yellow quivering haze,
+his feet were heavy and awkward, his chest ached as he breathed, and he
+was cold, oh, so cold! It was no easy matter to reach the nest-top. He
+climbed mechanically upwards, digging his toes into the meshwork of the
+sides, and sobbing from sheer weakness as he climbed.</p>
+
+<p>He made a small parting in the roof, and peeped out. It was only for a
+moment, for he fell back stunned and blinded by the glare. Still, in that
+moment, he had caught a glimpse of an unfamiliar world, leafless,
+lifeless, silent, miserable. He tucked his nose between his four paws,
+swung his tail across his eyes, and waited patiently for the darkness.
+With the darkness came the cold. It stole upon him gently, quelled the
+heart-throb, reclenched the tiny fists, and lulled him to forget.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was better the next time. The old hazel was making coquettish efforts
+to renew its youth. It had hung its last remaining shoot with dancing
+catkins. Here and there lurked a crimson bud, ready to catch the floating
+pollen. On the sloping banks below were<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 70]</span> splotches of violet and primrose,
+and, over all, hung the green shimmer of spring.</p>
+
+<p>To the dormouse&#8217;s eyes the glare was, for the first few moments, as
+painful as before, but this time it was tempered with moisture. Great
+rain-drops swung on the swaying grass-stems and twinkled with a thousand
+prismatic colours. The slow drip of the woods resounded in his ears.</p>
+
+<p>As his hearing sharpened, the old familiar sounds returned, the chirping
+of the titmice, the starling&#8217;s discord, the sniggering of the robin, the
+squirrel&#8217;s bullying cough. How he had hated the squirrel&mdash;a midget
+incarnation of mischief, whose whole life was spent in practical joking.
+How often had he heard that hateful cough shot into his ear, as My Lady
+Shadowtail whisked past him, a sinuous brown flash curling round the tree
+trunk! How often had he promptly dropped his hard-earned nut in
+consequence, only to see it seized by a field-mouse! How often had he
+swung at the end of a tapering twig, while the squirrel feinted at him
+with all four paws!</p>
+
+<p>He looked up, and caught the squirrel&#8217;s eye.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What, awake?&rdquo; she shouted. &ldquo;It&#8217;s not quite time for good little dormice.
+You wait till it&#8217;s dark, and see how cool it is. Why, even with my tail
+(and she bent it into a figure of eight to show its amplitude) it is hard
+enough to keep warm.&rdquo;<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 71]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img077.jpg" width="500" height="347" alt="Lady shadowtail - Mother" title="" />
+<span class="caption">(l) my lady shadowtail. (r) mother!</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 73]</span>&ldquo;Chuc!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The dormouse had felt it coming, and had discreetly retired. As it was,
+the better part of the roof caved in, the result of slight mistiming on
+the part of the squirrel.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wish you wouldn&#8217;t do that,&rdquo; said the dormouse.</p>
+
+<p>He was addressing vacancy, for the squirrel had in the mean time completed
+the circuit of three tree-tops. She was back again, however, in time to
+catch the next remark.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you any nuts?&rdquo; said the dormouse. &ldquo;I feel most horribly hungry, and
+this light is very trying to my eyes. It will have to be darker before I
+can hunt for any myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&#8217;ll be asleep two hours before it&#8217;s dark,&rdquo; said the squirrel, &ldquo;and I
+haven&#8217;t any nuts, or rather, I haven&#8217;t the least idea where I put them.
+Didn&#8217;t you make a store?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Only a small one&mdash;seeds, I think,&rdquo; said the dormouse. &ldquo;I was very drowsy
+when I made it, and I daren&#8217;t hope that it is in good order.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where is it?&rdquo; said the squirrel.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The second hazel on the left,&rdquo; said the dormouse; &ldquo;the third hollow from
+the top.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The second hazel on the left was twenty yards away. Before the dormouse
+had finished speaking the squirrel had started, and the boughs by which
+she reached it were still quivering as she returned.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 74]</span>&ldquo;There&#8217;s your store.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The dormouse looked up, and gave a dolorous squeal of disappointment. A
+straggling nosegay was being thrust through the roof, and he realized at
+once that the seeds had sprouted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why didn&#8217;t you nibble the ends off?&rdquo; said the squirrel. &ldquo;You can&#8217;t expect
+seeds to be seeds for ever. Oh, it&#8217;s your first hibernation, is it? Well,
+you&#8217;ll know better next time. Here&#8217;s a nut for you.&rdquo; She had held it
+concealed in her palm, and produced it like a conjuror.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She&#8217;s not such a bad sort, after all,&rdquo; thought the dormouse, as he
+proceeded to examine the nut.</p>
+
+<p>It was a hard nut, and would take some getting through. He sat back on his
+haunches, grasped it in his eight little fingers, gave it a twirl or two,
+and commenced gnawing three strokes a second. He gnawed for two minutes
+without a break.</p>
+
+<p>It was harder than any other nut he remembered. He had never been more
+than a minute getting through one; sometimes they had obligingly split in
+half before he had fairly started. He tried another part, and worked even
+more vigorously than before.</p>
+
+<p>Assuredly it was the very hardest nut in all the world. Twenty minutes&#8217;
+hard work produced a small round hole, ten minutes more enlarged it so
+that he could thrust his lips inside. Then he sucked vigorously<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 75]</span> to secure
+the kernel, and secured instead a mouthful of black dust.</p>
+
+<p>Of course the squirrel had known it all along. It did not need the guffaw
+he heard above to tell him that. This time he did not even protest. His
+spirit was broken. He was cold and tired and hungry. He merely huddled in
+a corner, still grasping the nut, and breathing in queer short gasps.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never mind, dormouse,&rdquo; shouted the squirrel, &ldquo;you will know a bad egg
+next time. Try this.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>For five seconds there was a faint rasping sound, then a sharp crack, and
+the rustle of two half-nutshells through the leaves. One of them struck
+the side of the hazel-stump and bounded off like an elastic ball. Before
+the dormouse had collected his wits, a fine kernel was thrust through the
+nest and the squirrel had once more regained her bough.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Eat it,&rdquo; she shrieked; &ldquo;eat it before the sun goes down. It&#8217;s going now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And it was. Before a quarter of the kernel was accounted for, the western
+sky had turned to lurid orange; before the half was gone, the chill struck
+him. The nut dropped from his nerveless hands, his limbs tightened, his
+ears sank into his skin, his eyelids drooped, and he was asleep once more.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The primroses had long yielded pride of place to the<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 76]</span> daffodils; these in
+turn had paled before the marsh marigolds, but the most glorious yellow in
+the picture was the Sulphur Butterfly. He zigzagged lightly down the
+hedgerow, catching the sunshine at every turn, and the marigolds drooped
+their heads at the sight of him. Close to the nest he dropped on a
+briar-leaf, like a floating petal. He was more than colour now&mdash;he was
+form. For a full minute he poised there motionless, the most exquisitely
+graceful, the most exquisitely coloured of all our butterflies, and, for
+a full minute, the dormouse watched him.</p>
+
+<p>Next came a quivering, amber-tinted flight, resolved at rest into a
+delicate medley of green and white and saffron. It was the orange-tip,
+and the dormouse rejoiced, for the orange-tip meant spring. Such dainty
+frailty could never stand the winter.</p>
+
+<p>To tell of all he heard and saw that day would fill a book. At first, as
+he peered through the crevices, he only grasped the more vivid tints&mdash;the
+azure of the hyacinth, the roseblush of the almond, the crimson glow of
+the clover, the purple of the foxglove. Then, as his senses quickened, the
+whole glorious colour-scale, from ashbud to whitethorn, stood revealed.</p>
+
+<p>From heaven above came the skylark&#8217;s defiant challenge; from earth
+beneath the fussy scream of the blackbird; on all sides the tweetings,
+twitterings, chirrupings, chirrings and pipings of petulant finches, and,<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 77]</span>
+in tender modulation to the avian chorus, the deep-throated, innumerable,
+drowsy hum of insects. Colour and sound, love and war, it was spring
+indeed.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img083.jpg" width="500" height="461" alt="Orange-tip" title="" />
+<span class="caption">it was the orange-tip.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>For the dormouse, one tiny penetrating note dominated all. He knew that
+the singer of that note was four-footed. Have you ever heard a cricket&#8217;s
+serenade? It was something like that. Have you ever heard a tree-creeper
+talking to itself? It was something like that also. He looked down and
+saw, as he expected, a round fur ball rolling in and out the grass-stems.
+At times the ball sat up and sniffed. He knew the puny fists and tapering
+snout at once. It was the shrewmouse. &ldquo;Shrewmouse!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;is it
+time?&rdquo; But the <span class='pagenum'>[Pg 78]</span>shrewmouse had crouched to dodge the shadow of a passing
+bird, and he saw him no more. However, he had seen enough. He stretched
+his hands and feet as though he would rack them from their sockets. Like
+Tennyson&#8217;s rabbit, he fondled his harmless face in the most elaborate of
+toilets, then he took one nibble at the remnant of the squirrel&#8217;s nut,
+and dropped off to sleep till the twilight.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<span class="caption">before him lay the twilight world he loved.</span>
+<img src="images/img084.jpg" width="500" height="437" alt="Twilight World" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&ldquo;figure somewhat stout,&rdquo; says the book.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is time to describe him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Figure somewhat stout,&rdquo; says the book, &ldquo;a single pair of pre-molars in
+each jaw, first toe of the fore-foot rudimentary, tail cylindrical,&rdquo; etc.
+The dormouse was anything but stout&mdash;six months&#8217; fasting, save<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 79]</span> for half a
+nut, had effectually restrained any tendency that way. No doubt in other
+respects he was in fair accordance with museum pattern, but he differed in
+one essential particular&mdash;he was alive.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img085.jpg" width="500" height="411" alt="His eyes" title="" />
+<span class="caption">his eyes? nor pen nor camera can present them.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>His colour? When he had first retired to rest he had closely resembled a
+young red vole, buff grey all over save for his white waistcoat and the
+hair-parting along his back and down the ridges of his limbs. This<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 80]</span> was a
+delicate auburn. During his sleep the auburn had overspread his back,
+softened into cream colour on his sides, and thence into a pure white
+front. Ages ago his ancestors had been white all over; now, amid changed
+surroundings, the white only lingered where it was least conspicuous.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes? Nor pen nor camera can present them. Imagine a black pearl
+imprisoning a diamond; imagine a dewdrop trembling on polished jet; add
+to these beauties <em>life</em>, and you will have the dormouse eye.</p>
+
+<p>His tail? Distichous, say the books. Feathers are mostly distichous,
+hair-partings are distichous, the moustache is distichous. So is the
+dormouse tail; but the hairs along it do more than merely part. They
+curl, upwards from the root, downwards to the point, and form a plume.</p>
+
+<p>The plume is a natural parachute, not so obvious, perhaps, as in the
+squirrel&#8217;s case, but, weight for weight, of equal service.</p>
+
+<p>His feet? Ten toes behind and eight before, sharp-pointed toes that grip
+the slenderest twig, and catch the slightest foothold in the bark.</p>
+
+<p>His ears? Small, say the books. Not small, but rather hidden in the deep
+surrounding fur.</p>
+
+<p>Had you seen the dormouse at the moment of his final awakening, you might
+have recognized him from this description. A few minutes later and the
+grey,<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 81]</span> flitting shadow might easily have baffled you. For, as he reached
+the surface of his nest, the sun went down.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 421px;">
+<img src="images/img087.jpg" width="421" height="500" alt="Sharp-pointed toes" title="" />
+<span class="caption">sharp-pointed toes that catch the<br />
+slightest foothold in the bark.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Before him, at last, lay the twilight world he loved. Nature had ceased
+her noise and commenced her melody. From the brook below came the dull
+plash of the rising trout; now and then one could catch a stealthy rustle
+in<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 82]</span> the herbage&mdash;the beetles were abroad, ay and the mice and the beasts
+of prey; a hare paced by with easy lilting stride; his gentle footfall
+hardly stirred the dust. In the distance sounded the cry of a lost soul.
+It was the barn owl starting on her rounds. The dormouse cowered back
+until she passed&mdash;white&mdash;gleaming, swift and silent as a moth.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 181px;">
+<img src="images/img089.jpg" width="181" height="300" alt="Same soft fur" title="" />
+<span class="caption">it was the same<br />soft fur that he<br />had nestled in<br />
+last year.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/img089b.jpg" width="300" height="261" alt="Magic pulse" title="" />
+<span class="caption">once more he felt the magic pulse of life within him.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>There was no discordant note. Wood, meadow, and hedgerow were bathed in
+liquid blue. The very tree trunks stood out as indigo against the sky.
+Daisy and marigold, hyacinth and clover were attuned to the same soothing
+minor chord. The work-a-day world was at rest, but the sleep-a-day world
+was holding high revel.</p>
+
+<p>Before he was halfway down the stump he had caught the glint of twenty
+pairs of eyes. The voles and wood-mice had waited, like himself, until the
+owl had passed. Before each tuft of grass now stood its latest tenant.
+From beneath the root of a neighbouring hazel came a stealthy procession
+of five bank voles. Each, as it gained the entrance, performed its normal
+round. First it sniffed for weasel, then it sat up and washed its face,
+then it sniffed again, finally it stole off, foraging among the
+grass-stems. He saw his friend the shrewmouse scuffling with its mate;
+he saw the wood-mice nut-grubbing; he saw the night reunion of the
+stump-tailed voles; but the first of his own kind that he saw was mother.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 83]</span>He had swung himself to the top of a broken twig, and, as he looked down,
+perceived her climbing stiffly up towards him. Mother had aged since the
+autumn, but, when she drew closer, he knew her well enough; it was the
+same soft fur that he had nestled in last year.</p>
+
+<p>Together they went out into the night. Once more he felt the magic pulse
+of life within him, and ran to the top of the hedge and down again twenty
+times for the mere joy of running. Head upwards he flew, head downwards,
+backwards, forwards, sideways. Sometimes he paused for a moment, lightly
+balanced on a branch end, then swung himself to the next friendly
+projection. Sometimes there was no pause. In one easy unbroken course he
+travelled to the end,<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 84]</span> cleared the intervening gap, and landed on the
+neighbouring branch below. He never missed, he never stumbled; for he
+was tumbler and wire-walker and saltimbanque in one.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 440px;">
+<img src="images/img090.jpg" width="440" height="500" alt="Waited for her" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he waited for her as long as he dared.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>And mother? Mother had lost some of her<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 85]</span> spring, but she had developed
+judiciousness, and a fine eye for country. It was this latter which, to
+her son&#8217;s amazement, usually kept her two bushes ahead. It was this which
+made him miss her as the day broke.</p>
+
+<p>He had been to the very topmost pinnacle of a thorn-bush; halfway down
+he had leapt four feet on to a neighbouring hazel; he had looked back in
+self-congratulation at the abyss, and, when he had turned again, she had
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>He waited for her as long as he dared, and then crept back subdued and
+lonely to his nest. Next evening perhaps he would see her again. But the
+next evening passed, and the next, and the next, and he never saw her
+again until the end.</p>
+
+<p>Some other time I will tell you how he passed that summer, how he
+fought for and won a wife, how they built a nest together and made a store
+together, of the four little dormice, and of the sad fate that befel two
+of them. Here I can only tell the last scene.</p>
+
+<p>It was late autumn. His wife had already felt the coming of winter, and
+retired to her six months&#8217; sleep. He himself had sealed her in.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 234px;">
+<img src="images/img092.jpg" width="234" height="500" alt="Climbing painfully" title="" />
+<span class="caption">mother was climbing painfully up to him.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>He had taught the two small dormice how to build their nests (honeysuckle
+fibre and dead leaf), and pointed out the necessity of getting into them
+before<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 86]</span> Christmas. He had rebuilt his own nest in the same old hollow, for
+he knew that he could not hold out much longer.</p>
+
+<p>With every light breeze that crept down the hedgerow now came the rustle
+of the falling leaf. Each night he had seemed less inclined to wake, and
+this night he seemed less inclined than ever.</p>
+
+<p>The sun had scarcely set before he felt chilled and uncomfortable. To
+warm himself he did three minutes&#8217; gymnastics. The end of them found him
+perched on the same old broken twig, and, when he looked down, even as
+before, mother was climbing painfully up to him.</p>
+
+<p>It needed but a glance to see that she would not outlive the winter. Had
+she made a nest? No, she had not troubled. The hole she was in last year
+would do. Perhaps she<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 87]</span> would take his nest, he could easily build another.
+Most certainly she would not. He could help her to put some leaves into
+hers to-morrow. But that night came the first frost.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 197px;">
+<img src="images/img093.jpg" width="197" height="200" alt="First frost" title="" />
+<span class="caption">but that night came the first frost.</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE PURPLE EMPEROR</h2>
+
+
+<p>Down by the brookside the Sallow drooped her sunburnt leaves despondently.
+Things were at their dullest.</p>
+
+<p>Three months ago she had been a tree of importance. Her dark, slender
+branches had formed a fashionable <em>rendez-vous</em>. Each evening she had seen
+her golden catkins studded with opals&mdash;the eyes of soft, furry, blundering
+moths. Each day the bees had thronged to pay court to her.</p>
+
+<p>Then came Palm Sunday. Her catkins were stripped from her, worn for a few
+hours in yokels&#8217; hats, and flung aside. The moths came no more; the bees
+forsook her for the bluebells.</p>
+
+<p>But the kingfishers cared nothing for her appearance. They nested, as
+usual, deep in the bank below, in a hollow formed by her roots.</p>
+
+<p>The kingfishers were always in a hurry, and their colours were fussy and
+discordant. They flashed up and down the brook like a pair of demented
+fireworks. The whole bank reeked with the discarded meals of their
+progeny.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 89]</span>By the time the nestlings were fledged, the sallow wore its summer mantle,
+a down-lined cloak of green.</p>
+
+<p>The interesting event had been a diversion. Now there seemed nothing to
+look forward to.</p>
+
+<p>On the one side lay the meadow-land, stretching in unbroken monotony to
+the sky-line; on the other, the brook; beyond its wooded bank, more
+meadow-land.</p>
+
+<p>The brook was not what it had been. Its waters were being drawn away to
+thirsty London, and herein lay the sallow&#8217;s chief vexation.</p>
+
+<p>This year her upper boughs had never flowered. Summer arrived, and she had
+hoped against hope. They had never even put forth leaves.</p>
+
+<p>To be prematurely bald is disheartening. This baldness was so premature as
+to be serious. It was the first warning of decay.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The Empress Mother came sailing over the hill, high in the sky as befitted
+her. Behind her, in the far distance, lay the white-ribbed downs, and,
+along their ridge, there stretched against the sky a thin, shadowy, broken
+line. It was the great oak wood, the dominion she had abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>The Empress Mother was looking for a black sallow. Sallows there were in
+plenty in and about the great wood, but she wanted one all to herself; one
+fit for an<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 90]</span> imperial nursery. So she came with unerring instinct to the
+brook.</p>
+
+<p>The air hung motionless in the grip of a midsummer noon. As she floated
+earthwards in stately majesty, the sunlight flung its radiance round her,
+and her broad, white ribbon gleamed on its velvet ground like molten
+silver.</p>
+
+<p>The sallow humbly drooped her leaves as one who receives royalty.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/img096.jpg" width="250" height="117" alt="Translucent cone" title="" />
+<span class="caption">a small, green-yellow, translucent cone.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>For an hour the Empress Mother was busy. The leaves that she honoured were
+chosen with the nicest discrimination, and she honoured more than a dozen.
+Each, as she left it, bore on its upper surface a small, green-yellow,
+shiny, translucent cone, rounded at the top, flat at the base, and ribbed
+along its sides.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest of the day the sallow held her head high.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>There were fourteen eggs in all. Six reached<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 91]</span> maturity, but we are only
+concerned with one of them. Outwardly he was much like the others. A day&#8217;s
+exposure softened the yellow of his shell to olive. Save at the base he
+matched his leaf surroundings to a nicety. The base was suffused with a
+faint blush of purple. As the days passed the purple darkened to black,
+and shifted upwards, leaving the parts beneath it pale and colourless. It
+seemed to struggle towards the sun. On the eighteenth day the shell parted
+at the summit, and the little Emperor was hatched.</p>
+
+<p>His youthful Majesty was mostly dark brown head. Such body as he could
+boast of was tapering and greenish. But his head caught the eye. It was
+well-nigh as large as the egg from which he came. Until he had fed he
+seemed indifferent to his changed surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing that he ate was his minute discarded shell, and, from this
+slender meal, resulted disproportionate energy. He started forthwith on
+his travels, outwards towards the light as far as he could go. On the leaf
+point he built himself a pigmy throne of silk; and this was his citadel
+for a week. He only left it to feed, nibbling the leaf edge jerkily on
+either side of him. At the week&#8217;s end he lost his appetite. His body was
+now of a decided green&mdash;green with the finest powdering of yellow. About
+his waist the yellow fused into a crescent. Nine of him would have
+measured an inch.</p>
+
+<p>On the eighth day he ceased feeding altogether. He<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 92]</span> sat with his
+hind-quarters anchored to his throne, his head and fore legs raised from
+off the leaf, rigid and immovable. For three days he grew yellower and
+yellower. Then his skin split down his back, and he successfully
+accomplished his first moult. In his short span he passed through many
+changes, but never one more quaint than this.</p>
+
+<p>During his abstinence he had grown two horns. They branched straight out
+before him, bristling with short spines, a full third of his length.</p>
+
+<p>He moulted once again before the winter, but this was merely a growing
+moult. Until October he never left his leaf point. Then Nature herself
+warned him to seek shelter. The weather was breaking. Rain he did not
+mind, but wind was different. Suppose his leaf was torn from its socket
+and hurled a hundred yards into the field?</p>
+
+<p>Leaves were falling all round him, and it was time to take up his winter
+quarters. He spent a day or two in reaching them, yet they were not far
+off&mdash;merely the junction of his own particular branch to the parent stem.
+There, in the shelter of the fork, he spun himself a silken blanket, and
+in it he slept peacefully till April.</p>
+
+<p>Peacefully through everything, and in spite of everything. Rain beat in
+drenching floods against the sallow, hailstorms lashed her branches, snow
+enshrouded her, hoar-frost bespangled her,&mdash;the little Emperor was quite<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 93]</span>
+unmoved. As the bark weathered from ebony to rusty olive, chameleon-like,
+he changed with it. This was the only outward sign he gave of life.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The catkins bloomed once more, and once more were rudely gathered. With
+the bursting of the leaf the little Emperor crept from his blanket. He
+found the world much as he had left it. Only the leaves were covered with
+soft down, smaller, and easier to bite. He was by now a full half inch in
+length, big enough to roam at large, and hungry enough to eat the tree. He
+started on the first leaf he came to, and, in five minutes, had gnawed a
+neat crescent out of it. There was method in his gnawing. He fixed his
+claspers firmly to the stalk, then stretched his head as far as he could
+reach, and nibbled the leaf edge backwards. When his feet reached his
+claspers, he commenced afresh.</p>
+
+<p>Before the winter he had only fed at night; now he fed from sunrise to
+sunset, and at night as well. He fattened steadily, and in proportion,
+growing more slug-like every day. His horns but emphasized the likeness.
+He carried them well forward, and, at his rare sleeping intervals, they
+lay flat against the leaf. Thus with his swollen waist he seemed to fall
+away both ends. Three times he outgrew his coat. Each time he had eaten
+till it stretched to bursting point. Each time the process of disrobing
+was the same.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 94]</span>He dragged his slow bulk to some thick mass of leaves, selected the
+innermost of them, and spun a web of silk upon its surface. From this he
+hung himself head downwards. His weight helped him, and, in due course,
+the old skin split along his back, and he emerged resplendent in a fresh,
+untarnished, elastic livery.</p>
+
+<p>Each moult was marked by some embellishment. Rusty olive gave place to
+pale sap green, this in turn to the green of the young willow-leaf, and
+this again to the green of lush grass. Nor was the change in body colour
+all. His sides in time were decked with slanting stripes of yellow. A
+V-shaped orange girdle marked his waist. Its buckle was a tiny splotch of
+crimson. His horns were tipped with russet brown, and head and tail alike
+were faintly tinged with blue.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, for all his rainbow tints, Nature had decreed that he should live
+invisible. To this end she had coloured him to match his food plant. The
+lines of yellow on his sides broke the monotony of green, as veins break
+the monotony of a leaf. The blue about him was sister to the blue of
+summer that played amid the foliage with quivering transparent lights and
+shadows.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did the cunning harmony end here. In form as well as tint he cheated
+observation. His outline, as he lay at rest, formed the most perfect
+outline of a twisted leaf. <span class='pagenum'>[Pg 95]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
+<img src="images/img101.jpg" width="700" height="328" alt="Slug-like" title="" />
+<span class="caption">(l) growing more slug-like every day. (r) for all his rainbow
+tints, nature had decreed that he should live invisible.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 97]</span>Birds passed him by unnoticed. Once, and once only, the ichneumon marked
+him down.</p>
+
+<p>It was after his fifth and final moult. He was just a shade too light for
+nature, and the ichneumon has a pretty sense of colour. She buzzed
+viciously through the foliage, and settled for a moment on his back. She
+had reckoned without her host. His skin was indeed dangerously bright, but
+it was sensitive in proportion.</p>
+
+<p>Before she could establish herself, a vicious back-sweep of his horns
+dislodged her.</p>
+
+<p>Again and again she returned to the attack. Could she but pierce the skin,
+her paralyzing venom would quickly do its work. Then the murderous task
+would be easy. Eggs would be laid deep in the wound; grubs would hatch
+from them, and batten luxuriously on their unwilling host, sapping his
+strength, but cunningly avoiding his vitals, until they were full-fed. As
+they turned to pup&aelig; he would die, and from caterpillar, or may be
+chrysalis, there would then issue, in place of gorgeous butterfly, a host
+of dingy hymenoptera. So would the race of ichneumons be preserved.</p>
+
+<p>The little Emperor was fat and well-liking&mdash;an ideal <em>cr&eacute;che</em> for young
+ichneumons; but the little Emperor was very wide-awake.</p>
+
+<p>The fly could find no foothold on him. He flung his armed head backwards
+to his tail. He pawed the air with six fore feet. He shook himself in
+paroxysms of<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 98]</span> fury. The fly cared little for the latter, but the horns
+were hard and formidable. They covered his whole body with their sweep,
+and struck with lightning speed.</p>
+
+<p>At sundown she withdrew discomfited; the little Emperor&#8217;s horns had served
+him well.</p>
+
+<p>His life was uneventful after this. When he had reached a length of two
+inches, his growth ceased. He fed less ravenously and less frequently.
+Three parts of his time he spent in contemplation of a special leaf. It
+was hard to tell wherein lay the fascination. He had spun a silken carpet
+on it. At rare intervals he tore himself away and snatched a hurried meal,
+but he infallibly returned to its friendly shelter. He rested on its
+mid-rib, facing the foot-stalk. His body was strongly arched and so
+compressed that the ridges of its crowded segments recalled the pile of
+velvet. His head and fore feet scarcely touched the surface. So he made
+ready for the second change.</p>
+
+<p>For this even the favourite leaf was discarded. He roamed about the tree
+for days, seeking one that would suit his purpose. At last he found one,
+hidden in a thick-set cluster. It hung free, but he secured it in such
+fashion to its stem that a stiff breeze could hardly shake it. He
+stretched silken ropes from its edges and passed them completely round the
+foot-stalk. Then, on its under surface, he spun a little boss of silk,
+gripped it with his hind-claspers, and swung with easy confidence<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 99]</span> head
+downwards. For three days he hung thus motionless, yet within him there
+was a lively motion.</p>
+
+<p>From the time he left the egg his life had been a dual one. The eye saw
+nothing but the outward mask, the caterpillar-form. Within this living
+vehicle that moved and spun and fed, lived the true butterfly&mdash;life within
+life, being within being.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img105.jpg" width="500" height="386" alt="Crowded segments of his body" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the crowded segments of his body<br />recalled the pile of
+velvet.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The caterpillar mask had done its work, and having done its work, must
+die. Yet one can hardly call such dissolution death. As it hung suspended,
+all the marvellous mechanism which had formed a moving, eating, spinning,
+sentient being, was absorbed into the chrysalis it covered. Merely the
+outer empty shell remained.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 155px;">
+<img src="images/img106.jpg" width="155" height="300" alt="Chrysalis head" title="" />
+<span class="caption">on the chrysalis head were two short-pointed horns.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 428px;">
+<span class="caption">colour and form combined<br />their skilful mimicry.</span>
+<img src="images/img107.jpg" width="428" height="600" alt="Sallow-leaf" title="" />
+<span class="caption">its form the form of the sallow-leaf.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>On the fourth day this shell split cleanly at the tail, and, from the
+opening, the hind part of the chrysalis<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 100]</span> emerged. It jerked from side to
+side, to all appearance aimlessly. Yet there was method in its madness. A
+side-swing forced it deep into the boss of silk, and, in a moment, the
+hooks that studded its extremity were fast entangled. The chrysalis had
+its <em>point d&#8217;appui</em>.</p>
+
+<p>Again the old skin cracked, this time behind the neck. The chrysalis head
+was free. On it were two short, flattened, pointed horns. A jerky movement
+of the shoulders followed&mdash;first expansion, then contraction. At each
+expansion the old skin slipped a trifle upwards. Turn by turn the segments
+of the body did their work, until it lay in gathered folds about the tail,
+just as the pushed-off stocking lies about the ankle.</p>
+
+<p>But even so, the task was not completed. The skin must be got rid of. Its
+dull white mass, with dangling skeleton horns, was too conspicuous. Nature
+had armed the chrysalis with the needful tools, a grip attachment and a
+set of tiny sharp-edged hooks. The skin was fast entangled in the boss of
+silk. The chrysalis secured an independent foothold (using as
+stepping-stone the skin itself), spun itself from side to side, and cut
+the threads that bound<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 101]</span> it. It jerked lightly from leaf to leaf, until it
+reached the ground. The second change was accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>Outwardly the chrysalis was nothing but an extra leaf. Colour and form
+combined their skilful mimicry. Its colour was the green of the sallow;
+its form, the form of the sallow-leaf.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 102]</span>For fifteen days it hung unchanged and motionless. On the sixteenth change
+was obviously impending. The upper segments had lengthened, the lower
+segments had darkened. On the twentieth day came the last great change of
+all.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img108.jpg" width="500" height="366" alt="He chose the loftiest branch" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he chose the loftiest branch<br />of the loftiest oak in the
+forest.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was a normal July day. Thunder was over the Downs. Now and again great
+rain-drops struck the sallow. They were few and far between, however. The
+thunder was content to grumble on the hills, leaving the valley to the
+sunshine. For all the midday<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 103]</span> heat the air was laden with moisture. This
+was at once both good and bad for the little Emperor, good because it made
+the bursting of his cerement easy, bad because it made the drying of his
+wings slow.</p>
+
+<p>Still he had no choice in the matter; his time had come, and he must make
+the best of it.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img109.jpg" width="400" height="355" alt="Whites" title="" />
+<span class="caption">whites.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Barely a minute passed between the first yielding of the shell and his
+complete emergence. He issued head foremost, groping with bewildered legs
+for something to cling to. He struck the only thing within his reach, the
+chrysalis case itself. To this he clung with desperation, and he had need
+to. As yet he had no means of flight.</p>
+
+<p>There is no room for wing expanse inside a chrysalis.<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 104]</span> Material for wings
+was lying ready on his shoulders, it was moisture laden, packed in
+crumpled folds, and lifeless.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img110.jpg" width="400" height="320" alt="Brimstones" title="" />
+<span class="caption">brimstones.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The thunder passed away seawards, drawing the valley moisture in its
+train. From eastward came a gentle drying breeze. It crept from leaf to
+leaf with its soft-whispered message until it reached the leaf that most
+had need of it.</p>
+
+<p>The little Emperor trembled with excitement. His wings were coming into
+being. One by one, like petals of an opening flower, the clinging folds
+relaxed and told their secret. One by one the branching nervures hardened.</p>
+
+<p>By sundown the great change of all was over. The<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 105]</span> Emperor, no longer
+little, was fit to mount his throne. Westward, as if in sympathy, the sky
+was flooded with imperial purple.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>He chose the loftiest branch of the loftiest oak in the forest. Before him
+stretched an acre of clearing, thronged with his subjects. Every class was
+represented, or rather every class but one. Ages ago the Swallow tail
+disputed sovereignty with the Purple Emperor. Fortune declared against
+him, and he retreated, like some Hereward, to the fens. There to this day
+he holds a third-rate court.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img111.jpg" width="400" height="331" alt="Peacocks" title="" />
+<span class="caption">peacocks.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was a brilliant gathering that greeted the Emperor. Every colour, every
+form was there. Whites and<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 106]</span> brimstones, silver-studded fritillaries,
+peacocks, red admirals, and painted ladies, walls and ringlets,
+hairstreaks, blues, and skippers, even the little Duke of Burgundy, even
+the white and admirable Sibylla.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img112.jpg" width="400" height="291" alt="Hairstreaks" title="" />
+<span class="caption">hairstreaks.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Happy midsummer children! They flashed their dainty tints from leaf to
+leaf, from flower to flower, their life one long-drawn revel in the
+sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>From his high throne the Emperor watched and envied. He was tiring of
+lonely grandeur. Now and again he soared a hundred feet into the air, then
+with his wings full spread and motionless, sailed slowly back on to the
+summit of the oak.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 107]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img113.jpg" width="500" height="247" alt="Admirals" title="" />
+<span class="caption">admirals.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Never was flight more exquisite. As he rose, one caught the glint of the
+imperial purple; as he descended, its full glory was revealed. Nowhere in
+nature is the pure radiant effulgence of that purple surpassed. It is
+the purple of the rainbow itself. <span class='pagenum'>[Pg 109]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img115.jpg" width="400" height="240" alt="Skippers" title="" />
+<span class="caption">skippers.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 399px;">
+<img src="images/img115b.jpg" width="399" height="400" alt="Sibylla" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the white and admirable sibylla.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Once, and once only, did he deign to touch the<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 110]</span> ground. Deep in the hollow
+behind the clearing, where the footpaths crossed each other, a shallow
+muddied pool had formed. In it the Emperor saw, from on high, his own
+reflection. Perhaps it was mere vanity that drew him closer; perhaps the
+fancy that he saw a rival; perhaps, but this is not likely, thirst. Close
+to the margin lay a rough-edged clumsy flint. On this he settled, and,
+Narcissus like, feasted his eyes on his own beauty. He nearly met
+Narcissus&#8217; fate. It was the flint that saved him. He felt the shadow,
+almost before it reached him, but even so he rose too late. For half a
+minute he, the Purple Emperor, was prisoner in a boy&#8217;s straw hat. Had
+the hat covered the flint<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 111]</span> completely, he must assuredly have graced a
+cabinet. Fortunately for him the flint was just an inch too wide. The hat
+lay slant-wise across it, leaving a narrow crescent outlet on each side.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 370px;">
+<img src="images/img116.jpg" width="370" height="400" alt="She sat on an oak pinnacle" title="" />
+<span class="caption">she sat on an oak pinnacle<br />
+outlined against the sky.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 395px;">
+<img src="images/img117.jpg" width="395" height="400" alt="The emperor alighted" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the emperor alighted within a foot of her, ... as he opened
+his wings to show their beauty.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>An old collector would have doffed his coat to cover hat and flint alike,
+would have sat beside them patiently till nightfall, would have done
+anything to make certain of his prize. But this collector was only a boy.
+With youthful recklessness he raised the brim a hair&#8217;s-breadth off the
+flint, and, in a moment, the Emperor was fifty feet above him.</p>
+
+<p>It had been a near thing. Higher he soared, and<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 112]</span> higher, exulting in his
+freedom, and, as he soared, he sighted the Princess. She sat on an oak
+pinnacle outlined against the sky. Who was she? Whence had she come? On
+her wings was the broad white ribbon of butterfly royalty.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 239px;">
+<img src="images/img118.jpg" width="239" height="400" alt="She turned her back" title="" />
+<span class="caption">she turned her<br />back on him.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 114]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img120.jpg" width="500" height="218" alt="The emperor" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the emperor once more settled<br />on a neighbouring leaf.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Emperor alighted within a foot of her. For the first time in his life
+he felt humble. As he opened his wings to show their beauty, she turned
+her back on him; as he closed them again, she sought another tree.<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 115]</span> But
+the Emperor was not so easily baffled. He followed in hot haste, and once
+more settled on a neighbouring leaf. The Princess drooped her upper wings,
+as if she was asleep. But she was not. The Emperor crept along the leaves
+a little closer.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img121.jpg" width="400" height="400" alt="The emperor" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the emperor crept along the leaves a little closer.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 391px;">
+<img src="images/img122.jpg" width="391" height="400" alt="White ribbon" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he showed her the broad,<br />white ribbon that he also wore.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was the strangest courtship imaginable, for it was all on one side.
+From tree to tree they went, the Emperor flashing his purple in the
+sunshine, the Princess, to all appearance, unconscious of her suitor&#8217;s
+presence.<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 116]</span> Yet he tried every allurement he could think of. He circled
+round her, changing from purple to violet, from violet to velvet black. He
+soared above her skywards until he was a mere speck in the blue. He showed
+her the broad ribbon that he also wore. He even uncurled his slender
+saffron proboscis, and toasted his divinity in the sap of the oak-leaf.</p>
+
+<p>What made her change her mind at the eleventh tree? What had he said to
+her? I cannot tell you, but I can tell you this. From that tree they rose
+together, circling round each other. Higher they went and higher,<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 117]</span> until
+the oakwood shrunk to a copse beneath them; higher and higher, until the
+sea was their horizon; higher and higher, until they passed from sight.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img123.jpg" width="400" height="355" alt="Uncurled his saffron proboscis" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he even uncurled his saffron proboscis, and toasted her in
+the sap of the oak-leaf.</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img124.jpg" width="400" height="330" alt="Harvest mouse" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>THE HARVEST MOUSE</h2>
+
+
+<p>Once upon a time, and not so very long ago either, the Harvest Mouse was
+the smallest of British beasties, absolutely the very smallest. Even the
+museum men, who look through microscopes, had to admit that.</p>
+
+<p>Then a Liliputian shrewmouse turned up. He was found stretched dead in the
+middle of the path, and the time, as any book that deals with shrewmice
+would tell you, was the autumn. He was so small that, had he not died in
+the path, he would assuredly not have been found at all.</p>
+
+<p>Now, because of his smallness, and because he was found dead in the autumn
+(from which you may assume that he was full-grown), he was sent to the
+museum men; and the museum men examined his teeth, and rubbed<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 119]</span> their hands
+with glee, for they found that his upper incisors were abnormal.</p>
+
+<p>So they had his poor little body stuffed, and propped him up with wire in
+the way they thought he looked nicest, and wrote a brand new ticket for
+him&mdash;<span class="smcap">Sorex Minutus</span>. The lesser shrew. The <em>smallest</em> British quadruped.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img125.jpg" width="400" height="327" alt="Liliputian shrewmouse" title="" />
+<span class="caption">then a liliputian shrewmouse turned up.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 204px;">
+<img src="images/img126.jpg" width="204" height="400" alt="Prehensile tail" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he, and he only, has a prehensile tail.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Thus was one unique distinction stolen from the harvest mouse. But to this
+day the harvest mouse shrugs his furry shoulders and says, that there are
+plenty of dwarfs with abnormal teeth in his own family, if the museum men
+want them.</p>
+
+<p>He can afford to be superior, for he has yet another unique distinction
+left, and that is not likely to be taken from him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 120]</span>Of all the four-footed creatures in Great Britain and Ireland, he, and he
+only, has a prehensile tail. The middle of it he can bend through half a
+circle, the last half-inch he can wrap completely round a cornstalk. It is
+pale chestnut above, and pasty white below. Taken all round, it is the
+most marvellous tail in the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>A mass of whipcord muscle, it can be made rigid, or flexible, at will. He
+can sit back with his hind feet resting on one stalk, hitch his tail round
+another, and lean his full weight against it. His full weight is one-sixth
+of an ounce. Were the G.P.O. more friendly to naturalists, a score of him
+could travel for a penny; but, even so, his tail is trivial in proportion.</p>
+
+<p>He is so proud of it that he cleans it continually. Other mice clean their
+tails at odd times&mdash;only when they really seem to need it. The harvest
+mouse cleans his tail as a matter of regular toilet routine, and he does
+his toilet fifteen times a day. First his whiskers, then his head and
+ears, then his body, and finally his tail. He pulls it forward between<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 121]</span>
+his hind legs and combs it with his teeth. It is quite worth it.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img127.jpg" width="500" height="485" alt="The harvest mouse" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the harvest mouse sat on the top of a<br />stalk and nibbled his
+supper.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The harvest mouse sat on the top of a cornstalk and nibbled his supper.
+His first summer had been most successful. So much had been crowded into
+it that he could only dimly remember the oat-stack in which he was born.
+Even the hedgerow seemed difficult to recall. He had lived in that two
+months, next door to the wood-mouse, and from him he may<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 122]</span> have learnt
+something of the art of nest-building. Then he had wandered abroad. The
+field, on the left of the hedgerow as you walk westward, was, when he
+entered it, tinged with uncertain green,&mdash;a sand-stained green like that
+of shallow sea. Yet there was cover enough for him. In a week&#8217;s time, the
+sprouting corn had got the mastery, shrouding with its exquisite mantle
+the humble mother soil it seemed ashamed of; then, as if it had imprisoned
+the sunbeams, it turned to golden yellow, and now, wearying of conquest,
+had borrowed the copper radiance of a dying day.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 299px;">
+<img src="images/img128.jpg" width="299" height="300" alt="The wood-mouse" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the wood-mouse.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was with the first budding and ripening of the young corn that the
+harvest mouse tasted the true joy of living. In the hedgerow it had
+been mere existence; for there had been no real scope for his tail. The
+grasping portion of it could only encircle the tiniest twigs. Here, Nature
+herself seemed to have been at pains to suit him. Whichever way he looked,
+there stretched before him long yellow avenues of pygmy<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 123]</span> trees. Had they
+been passed through a gauge, they could not have better suited his
+proportions. He could whip his tail round any one of them. As he travelled
+from ear to ear, there was always something handy to grip on to. To reach
+the top of a cornstalk from the ground took him just two seconds and a
+half. He ran up it, he did not condescend to climb. Once among the ears,
+he travelled with little jumps, sometimes waiting for the wind to sway the
+corn, and help him, sometimes boldly leaping from the summit, and trusting
+confidently to his tiny hands and feet to pull him up a foot or so below.
+Even if he blundered to earth he had nothing to fear, for, of all the
+denizens<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 124]</span> of the cornfield, he alone could thread the avenues in perfect
+silence.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
+<img src="images/img129.jpg" width="700" height="211" alt="Ripening of the wheat" title="" />
+<span class="caption">(l) in the first budding and ripening of the wheat<br /> he tasted
+the true joy of living.<br />(r) sometimes waiting for the wind to sway the corn and help
+him.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The stoat heralded his coming by a stealthy swish that could be heard full
+twenty yards away. Many a foolish bewildered vole he caught, but never a
+harvest mouse.</p>
+
+<p>The rat&#8217;s approach was a blundering four-footed <em>crescendo</em>, clear
+to mouse-ears as is the ringing of a horse&#8217;s hoofs to man. Little else
+appeared at all. Now and again came a foolish hen-faced pheasant, strayed
+from its nursery, and screaming for its keeper. One was shot as it crossed
+the path in front of him, but we must not say anything about that. Now and
+again a corn-crake, moving in silence, bowed to the ground, but betrayed
+by its loquacity. Now and again a trembling glass-eyed rabbit. To each and
+every footstep he had one invariable response. He ran up the nearest
+cornstalk, as high as he could go, and watched the author of it pass
+beneath him. He was rarely sighted. Once a weasel leapt at him. The weasel
+is a pretty jumper, but this time a tendril of convolvulus upset his aim.
+Before he reached the ground again the mouse was five and twenty feet
+away, playing with his tail.</p>
+
+<p>Half the summer passed before he tired of these diversions. The coming
+of the sparrows put an end to them. They came just as the corn-ears had
+commenced to harden. There must have been a thousand. They<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 125]</span> were not in
+the field all day, but, while they were there, life was not worth living.
+Picture it to yourself. A thousand unkempt, shrieking hooligans, plucking
+at the corn-ears, flinging the milky grain aside half eaten, filling the
+air with the whirring of their wings as they sighted man a hundred yards
+away, back again as man departed, quarrelling incessantly, blatant, noisy,
+vulgar. The cornstalks were no place for mice while sparrows were about.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img131.jpg" width="400" height="252" alt="Harvest mouse" title="" />
+<span class="caption">as dainty a little harvest mouse<br /> as ever crossed a
+cornfield.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But the evil had been of short duration. A month had seen the end of it.
+During that month the ways of the mouse were humble. He wandered in and
+out the undergrowth, feeding on what the sparrows had discarded. Not that
+he was really afraid of them. Had they cared to eat him, they assuredly
+would have done so at the start. But they never missed the opportunity<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 126]</span> of
+making him jump, and involuntary jumping is always unpleasant.</p>
+
+<p>However, the life below had its compensations. He would certainly have
+lost her in the waving maze above. As it was, he saw her at the end of a
+straight avenue, and he could more or less mark her direction. She was
+running at full speed, as dainty a little harvest mouse as ever crossed
+a cornfield.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 346px;">
+<img src="images/img132.jpg" width="346" height="400" alt="Her front was of the purest white" title="" />
+<span class="caption">her front was of the purest white, and twisted in a dainty
+curve to match her features.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Her coat was of the softest fawn-chestnut; sharply contrasted with her
+pure white front, and twisted in a<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 127]</span> dainty curve to match her features.
+Her feet and tiny claws were the pink of a sea-shell. Her eyes were small
+(harvest mice have small eyes), but they were very gentle. As she sighted
+him, she swung lightly up a thistle stem, and sat for a moment balanced on
+the head. Evidently he was not altogether uninteresting.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img133.jpg" width="400" height="336" alt="Her eyes were small" title="" />
+<span class="caption">her eyes were small,<br /> but they were very gentle.</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Far into the evening he pressed his suit. When the inevitable rival
+mouse appeared, half the sun&#8217;s disk was already masked by the hedgerow.
+Ungainly, straggling shadows spread across the field, dark bars<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 128]</span> across a
+lurid crimson ground. Never was finer <em>mise-en-sc&egrave;ne</em> for such a conflict.
+They fought on the very summits of the stalks, and the sun just managed to
+see the finish.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img134.jpg" width="400" height="373" alt="Conflict" title="" />
+<span class="caption">never was finer <em>mise-en-sc&egrave;ne</em><br /> for such a conflict.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>They built the nest together. It was his part to bite the long ribbon
+leaves from their sockets, hers to soften them and knot them and plait
+them until they formed a neat, compact, and self-coherent sphere.</p>
+
+<p>Nine cornstalks formed the scaffolding. Six inches<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 129]</span> from the ground she
+built between them a fragile grass-blade platform. Then she started on
+the nest itself. Her only tools were her fore-paws, tail, and teeth. The
+latter she employed to soften stiff material. The weaving she did from
+below upwards by pure dexterity of hand and tail. For six hours she worked
+indefatigably, and in six hours it was finished. But it was not meant to
+live in; it was merely a nursery. All day long the happy pair enjoyed each
+other&#8217;s company aloft, leaping from corn-ear to thistle-head, from
+thistle-head to poppy, and back again to corn-ear, feasting, frivolling,
+stalking bluebottles. Their life was one long revel in the sunshine; for
+the harvest mouse has this distinction also, that, like a Christian, he
+loves the blue of the sky and sleeps at night.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/img135.jpg" width="350" height="348" alt="Frivolling" title="" />
+<span class="caption">frivolling.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 130]</span>But he is wise in his generation, and lives far from the haunts of men.
+You must be quieter than a mouse if you want to see him.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 275px;">
+<img src="images/img136.jpg" width="275" height="400" alt="Enjoyed the novel sensation" title="" />
+<span class="caption">for an hour they enjoyed the novel sensation.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>At night they lived in a tiny burrow, a foot below the surface of the
+ground. They had no claim to it, but they had found it empty. Empty
+burrows belong to the first mouse that comes along.</p>
+
+<p>Once only did they stay above the surface after sundown. For an hour they
+enjoyed the novel sensation. Then the long-drawn wail of the brown owl
+drove them below in haste.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 394px;">
+<img src="images/img137.jpg" width="394" height="400" alt="Long-drawn wail" title="" />
+<span class="caption">then the long-drawn wail of the brown owl drove them below
+in haste.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Perhaps they realized that prey on the surface is the owl&#8217;s ideal. It
+is also the hawk&#8217;s. But, where under-keepers are armed with guns, the
+night-bird has the better prospects. Both would have their wings clear as
+they strike. The owl&#8217;s great chance comes when the corn is &ldquo;stitched&rdquo; in
+shocks of ten. Then he quarters the stubble, and nothing clear of shelter
+escapes him.</p>
+
+<p>So the summer had passed&mdash;the perfect summer that comes once in a century.
+Day after day the sun had<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 131]</span> blazed through a cloudless sky; night after
+night the dews had fallen and refreshed the earth. The young mice, though
+pink, as yet, about the nose and waistcoat, were as promising as young
+mice could be. Everything was altogether and completely satisfactory.</p>
+
+<p>So, as the western sky crimsoned and the shadow of each cornstalk gleamed
+like copper on its neighbour, the harvest mouse stole down from his
+eminence and sought<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 132]</span> his burrow, for, as I have said before, the nest was
+only a nursery.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>He was up betimes. He was a light sleeper, and half a noise of that kind
+would have roused him. It was clank and whirr and swish and rattle in one.
+At first it sounded from the far corner on the right; then it passed along
+the hedgerow, growing more and more menacing until it seemed to be within
+a yard of him. Then it shrank away to nothing on the left, ceased for a
+moment, and, in obedience to human shouting, commenced afresh. So from
+corner to corner, <em>crescendo</em> and <em>diminuendo</em>. The harvest mouse was in
+the very centre of a square field.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 247px;">
+<img src="images/img138.jpg" width="247" height="300" alt="Towering stalks" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he climbed between<br /> two towering stalks.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 196px;">
+<img src="images/img138a.jpg" width="196" height="300" alt="Aloft once more" title="" />
+<span class="caption">in five minutes he was up aloft once more.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 133]</span>When the sound seemed at its greatest distance, he climbed between two
+towering stalks and strained his eyes in its direction. He could not see
+for more than twenty yards before him. The world beyond was wrapt in soft
+white mist. Never had he seen anything so uncanny. Yet, had he been an
+early riser, he might have seen it often. Even as he watched it, it
+seemed to shrink away before the sunshine. The hedgerow loomed like a
+mountain-ridge before him. Down he slid, making a bee-line for the nest.
+That was all right; but his wife was evidently perturbed. Her mouth was
+full of grass-blades, and she was sealing every crevice on its surface. In
+five minutes he was up aloft once more. The whirring still continued, and
+now, through the lifting haze, he could distinguish its origin. Horses it
+was for certain, ay, and men&mdash;a small man sat upon the leading horse; but
+there was something behind these.</p>
+
+<p>Had the harvest mouse ever seen a windmill, he would assuredly have
+concluded that a young one had escaped, and was walking in ever-narrowing
+circuits, round the field. The mist lifted further, and he saw the thing
+more clearly. Its great red arms swung dark against the sky, gathering the
+corn in a giant&#8217;s grasp to feed its ravenous cutters. Round and round the
+field it went. Each time as it travelled to the distant corners the mouse
+dropped down to earth; each time as it thundered close at hand, he dashed
+like lightning up the<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 134]</span> stalk to look. Sometimes his wife came with him.
+Closer it drew and closer. Nor was the mouse the only thing that noticed
+it. All things that lived within the field, all things that loved its
+borders, were crowding in mad confusion to its centre.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 239px;">
+<img src="images/img140.jpg" width="239" height="400" alt="Crept two grains higher" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the mouse crept two grains higher when he saw him.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>First came the hare. His was a wild, blundering, panic-stricken stampede.
+He hurtled through the corn, crossing his fore feet at every second leap,
+his eyes starting backwards from his head, his ears pressed flat against
+his back. He passed the harvest mouse heading<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 135]</span> for the farther side, and
+the harvest mouse saw him no more, for he broke cover, trusting to his
+speed. Then, one by one, bewildered rabbits. Backwards and forwards they
+rushed. Now they sat up and listened; now they flung their white tails
+skywards, and vanished down some friendly seeming alley. In two minutes
+they were headed off.</p>
+
+<p>Among the rabbits, of all things, a stoat! The mouse crept two grains
+higher when he saw him. He stole in and out the undergrowth with easy
+confidence, yet in some sense unstoatlike. The mouse looked down, and
+for a moment caught his eye&mdash;the most courageous eye in all the world.
+Something was very wrong indeed with the stoat&mdash;he never even bared his
+teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Next, a flurried brood of nestling partridges, flattened to earth, and
+piping dismally to one another. Time after time they passed and repassed
+below him, until at last they were utterly weary, and crouched in a
+huddled mass together, with uplifted hunted eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Then the rats and mice and voles. House-mice and wood-mice, red voles,
+and grey. Last of all, Berus the adder. Not a mouse stepped aside, as he
+worked his slow, sinuous length between the cornstalks. He, too, was of
+the hunted to-day.</p>
+
+<p>Nearer and nearer drew the hoarse rattle of the reaper. More and more
+crowded were the few yards round the harvest mice. A large brown rat
+limped<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 136]</span> through, bleeding about the head. He had come in from the
+firing-line, and had incompletely dodged a stone. The stoat flung its
+head up as it scented him, but let him pass. He had never let a rat pass
+in his life before.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Only a square of forty yards remained, packed from end to end with
+desperate field-folk. Each prepared for its last stand in different
+fashion.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/img142.jpg" width="600" height="236" alt="Berus the adder" title="" />
+<span class="caption">berus the adder made a flattened spiral of his coils.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The rat selected a stout thistle-clump, planted his back against it, and
+sat back on his haunches. Berus the adder made a flattened spiral of his
+coils, and raised his head a trifle off the ground, ready to fling his
+whole weight forward from the tail. The pheasant chicks ceased piping, and
+lay still as death. The red voles<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 137]</span> and wood-mice dashed aimlessly to and
+fro. The stump-tailed voles trusted to the ludicrous cover of the broken
+ground. The stoat arched his back and bared his teeth to the gums. But
+the harvest mice sat on the top of the stalk and awaited events, to all
+seeming unmoved. Perhaps they were too small to be frightened. They were
+certainly too small to be confident. Yet, as things turned out, the top of
+the stalk was the safest place of all. Swish went the cutter. The nest was
+scattered to fragments before their eyes, and the rush began.</p>
+
+<p>The rabbits started it. They flattened their ears, shut their eyes, and
+made a blind dash for the open. Not a rabbit escaped, for there were dogs.
+The rats fared no better; they held their ground to the last, and were
+mercilessly bludgeoned. The partridges were cut to pieces. Most of the
+mice and voles shared their fate. The stoat died game. He charged one
+yokel and routed him. Then he was set upon by three with sticks. In the
+open the stoat is no match for three with sticks.</p>
+
+<p>Berus the adder lay still in a hollow. The cutter passed completely over
+him. He was always ready, but his earth-colour saved him the necessity of
+striking. As the evening shadows lengthened, he stole grimly from his
+shelter, crossed the field, climbed the slope, and regained his
+furze-bush.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 338px;">
+<img src="images/img144.jpg" width="338" height="500" alt="The harvest mouse&#39;s nest" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the harvest mouse&#8217;s nest.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>And the harvest mice? The mother-mouse dashed to her nest as she saw it
+falling, and a wheel of the<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 138]</span> reaper passed over her. The father-mouse was
+saved, but through no merit of his own. Until the reaper was actually upon
+him, he clung to his stalk with tail and eighteen toes. Then it was too
+late to leave go. The great red arms gathered his stalk in the midst of a<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 139]</span>
+hundred others, swept the whole on to the knives, and dropped them on the
+travelling canvas platform. Up he went, and down again. For a moment he
+thought that he was being stifled. His eyes started from their sockets.
+His ribs seemed to crumple within him&mdash;fortunately they were elastic, as
+ribs no thicker than a stout hair must be. Then the pressure relaxed. The
+automatic binding was complete, and one more sheaf fell with a thud to
+earth. In that sheaf was the harvest mouse, bruised but alive, a prisoner
+in the dark. The stalks pressed tight against his body; but for the
+pitchfork he could never have got out.</p>
+
+<p>The pitchfork shot through the middle of the mass, and missed him by half
+an inch. Once more he felt his surroundings flying upwards, but this time
+they fell more lightly. They formed the outside of a stitch of ten. As the
+fork was withdrawn the binding of the sheaf was loosened. He could breathe
+with comfort, and he could also see. He peered out, and found the whole
+face of Nature changed. The waving cornfield had gone. In its place was
+a razed expanse of stubble. The corn-sheaves stretched in serried piles
+across it. The harvesting had been neatly timed. Behind the hedge was the
+crimson glow of sunset. After all, that had not changed.</p>
+
+<p>For an hour he waited within the sheaf, dubious and uncertain. Then he
+stole from his shelter. Within five<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 140]</span> yards he found her, gripping the
+shattered fragments of the nest. Close by lay a bludgeoned rat, and, five
+yards farther on, there sat a living one. It had its back to him, but by
+its movements he could see that it was feeding.</p>
+
+<p>The field was flooded with moonlight. On all sides resounded the ominous
+hum of beetles&#8217; wings. Nature had summoned her burying squad. They had
+their work cut out, and blundered down from every quarter. For death had
+been very busy, and it was not the death that needs seeking out. About the
+centre of the field the ground was stained with smears of half-dried
+blood. So the beetles came in their thousands, and before morning broke
+their task was done.</p>
+
+<p>But the harvest mouse did not wait till the morning. The fragments of his
+nest were empty, and he dared not look to see what the rat was eating.</p>
+
+<p>He reached the sheaf-pile only just in time, for the brown owl was still
+abroad, quartering the field with deadly certainty of purpose. As he crept
+beneath it, he heard the brown rat scream.</p>
+
+<p>His was the last sheaf to be piled, it was also the last sheaf to be
+lifted. It travelled to the stack on the summit of the last load, and, by
+a happy chance, formed one of the outside layer. By scratching and gnawing
+continuously for an hour, he worked his way to the butt of it, paused for
+a moment on the precipitous<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 141]</span> steep, and then scrambled lightly down to
+earth. A perpendicular descent was nothing to him.</p>
+
+<p>The foundations of the stack were already tenanted. Some of the inmates
+had been, like himself, conveyed in sheaves, but more had rushed for
+shelter across the bared expanse, which, on all previous nights, had been
+a cornfield. There were mice of all kinds, there were half a dozen rats.
+Before a week had passed, like had joined like. The rats were undisputed
+masters of the basement; midway lived the common, vulgar mice; and,
+highest of all, as befitted them, for they only could thread the
+interstices of the upper sheaves, and they only had prehensile tails,
+the harvest mice.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE TRIVIAL FORTUNES OF MOLGE</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was a bubble that launched him into a practical existence. They were
+rising by hundreds from the ooze that cloaked the bottom of the ditch. The
+sunshine called them up and scattered them into nothingness as they
+appeared. It was merely by chance that one, in its upward rush, hit his
+envelope of starwort; it was merely by chance that the envelope needed no
+greater stimulus to burst asunder.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he was arranged to take advantage of the smallest jar. Like any other
+newt, he had started life as a small white rounded egg; for ten days he
+had remained, to all outward appearance, the same; cunningly enfolded,
+neatly glued down, but still an egg. Then the temperature rose, and he
+changed from sphere to cylinder, from cylinder to clumsy crescent, from
+crescent to watchspring. The core of the watchspring was his head, the
+extremity his tail, and, when the bubble touched him, he flicked out like
+the works of a Waterbury. His first colour sensation was the green of
+thick glass. As he sank, it grew dimmer and dirtier and browner, and
+presently, as he reached the ooze, it was blotted out. <span class='pagenum'>[Pg 143]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
+<img src="images/img149.jpg" width="700" height="496" alt="Stalwort" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 145]</span>He was straight, but unlovely&mdash;nothing but two black lines and three dots,
+cased in a filament of jelly. The lines were destined for his backbone and
+stomach; the dots for his eyes and mouth. The latter was ready for
+immediate work, given only the impulse. As he sank slowly, head downwards,
+the impulse was supplied. Out from his neck there floated two sprays of
+gossamer network, of such delicate texture, such dainty tracery, that
+nothing but the gentle laving of water could have unravelled them and
+left them whole. Through them the water flowed, and with it came the dim
+consciousness of individual life, the dim instinct of self-preservation.
+As he touched the bottom, the middle dot resolved itself into a sucker.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately his tastes were vegetarian and indiscriminate. For three days
+he contentedly sucked in his slush surroundings, and, in that time, the
+two outer dots bedecked themselves with rings of burnished copper. He
+could breathe, he could eat, he could see.</p>
+
+<p>On the fourth day he could move. The black lines had also played their
+part. Both had intensified, but not equally. The uppermost had outstripped
+its fellow. For half its length it now ran alone, tapering to its end and
+carrying with it a ribbon envelope, transparent and invisible as glass.</p>
+
+<p>Its use he learnt by grim experience. When first he moved it, it drove him
+headlong into inky darkness.<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 146]</span> His gills crumpled in the rough embrace of
+the mud, and his eyes and sucker were choked with slime. It was only a
+desperate, convulsive, aimless wriggle that freed him. The next time he
+cleared his immediate surroundings, and shot a full six inches upwards,
+only to sink slowly to the ooze again, motionless, and exhausted. He had
+described an elegant parabola.</p>
+
+<p>Day by day his excursions grew longer and higher. Nor were they without
+adventure. Sometimes he would be caught in the wake of a stickleback, and
+would reach the bottom spinning, or on his back. He was lucky to reach it
+at all. Sometimes a sunbeam&#8217;s dazzling radiance would check him in
+mid-career, and his callow eyes would take an hour to recover. It was a
+month before his eyelids developed. Sometimes he would collide with others
+of his own kind, equally unskilled in steering, and sometimes a vague
+quiver in the water caused him instinctively to mimic death, and thus
+avoid death in reality.</p>
+
+<p>In a week&#8217;s time he had grown out of all knowledge. To be accurate, he had
+doubled in size. But, even then, it was only the copper gleam of his eyes
+that saved him from utter insignificance. The remainder of him, for the
+most part of jelly transparency, was invisible against his sombre
+surroundings. His sucker had taken the semblance of a mouth, his gills
+were longer and more feathery, the curves of his tail were<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 147]</span> more shapely,
+but still he was, as yet, the merest apology for a tadpole, and so he
+remained until his limbs grew. They came in front at first&mdash;froggy&#8217;s come
+behind, he wants them to swim with&mdash;the most curious spindle-shanks of
+arms that can be imagined, with elbows always flexed, and fingers always
+stretched apart. In due course his legs followed, of like purpose and
+absurdity. For swimming he only used his tail, but for balancing and
+steering, his feet and hands. Would he rise to the surface, he must flick
+his tail, and turn his toes and fingers upwards. Would he seek the bottom,
+he must depress them. Would he lie motionless, suspended in mid-water, he
+must point them straight outwards from his sides.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 348px;">
+<img src="images/img153.jpg" width="348" height="200" alt="Sucker" title="" />
+<span class="caption">his sucker had taken the<br /> semblance of a mouth.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 262px;">
+<img src="images/img153b.jpg" width="262" height="200" alt="Gills" title="" />
+<span class="caption">his gills were longer and more feathery.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was the charm of a free-swimming existence that divorced him from a
+vegetarian diet. To be continually sucking in plant sludge was a low
+grubby business at the best. Besides, he was now furnished with a
+respectable<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 148]</span> pair of jaws, not to mention the rudiments of teeth. Daphne
+was his first victim. Daphne sounds somehow floral, but this Daphne was
+equipped with one eye and several pairs of legs, and practised abrupt
+jumpy flights through the water. In short, she was a branchiopod, to
+be vulgarly precise, a water-flea. The succulence of Daphne led to
+experiments on Cyclops&mdash;Cyclops is her first cousin&mdash;and the taste,
+once acquired, never left him.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the pursuit of this latter that he lost a leg, and thus realized
+that the problems of existence before him were twofold: he must not only
+eat, he must avoid being eaten. It was probably a stickleback that took
+his leg. A more powerful enemy would have taken the whole of him. So
+intent was he on his quarry that he scarcely realized the severance until
+he found himself swimming in an aimless lopsided circle. Then he sought
+the friendly shelter of the weeds, and sat still to ruminate. The leg was
+undoubtedly gone&mdash;his right hind leg&mdash;it was nipped off close to his body.
+He felt no pain, but, the moment he left his support, he realized that he
+was at a great disadvantage. The more studied his efforts to progress
+straight, the more certainly abnormal was his course. In letting himself
+sink slowly to the bottom he showed prudence. It was only at the bottom
+that he was likely to escape notice.</p>
+
+<p>He stayed there for a succession of days, getting hungrier and hungrier,
+for it was only the smallest fry<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 149]</span> that came within his reach. It was lucky
+for him that his gills lasted out. It was a full month before a new leg
+commenced to fill the vacancy, and, by that time, they had shrunk from
+feathery exuberance to two ugly stunted tufts. It was the most painful
+period in his whole career. Every day his breathing grew more laboured.
+Instinct told him to seek the surface, but, each time he made the effort,
+he capsized before half the distance was accomplished. In six weeks&#8217; time
+came relief. He had not yet secured a new leg, but the growing stump
+fulfilled its purpose. He reached, by strenuous efforts, the surface of
+the water, opened his mouth and <em>breathed the air</em>.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/img155.jpg" width="250" height="132" alt="Stayed there" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he stayed there for a succession of days.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But for his unfortunate accident, it is probable that the transformation
+from a water-breathing to an air-breathing animal would have accomplished
+itself imperceptibly. It is likely indeed, that, for a short period, while
+his gills were decrepit, and his lungs infantile, he might have breathed
+air and water alternately and at will. Now, however, his gills were, for
+all practical purposes, useless; his lungs, ready but unpractised. The
+necessity of air-breathing was forced on him at a moment&#8217;s notice.</p>
+
+<p>Small wonder that he commenced by overdoing<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 150]</span> matters. To begin with he
+distended himself so that he could not sink at all. Then he sank with
+far too small a reserve, and struggled to the surface spluttering and
+half-drowned. It was only after much tribulation that he adjusted matters
+to a nicety, diving with just sufficient air-supply to last his purpose,
+and emerging at the proper moment. A silver bubble, the waste product of
+his life, marked his downgoings and uprisings.</p>
+
+<p>What made him quit the water altogether? For days he had lain
+half-submerged on a mass of starwort, his limbs idly anchored off his
+body, his quaint, puckered face and goggle eyes fixed immovably on
+infinity. He was, to all appearance, carved in stone when the impulse took
+him; and then&mdash;it was as if the swimming instinct had left him&mdash;he
+commenced to <em>crawl</em> across the natural bridge of pond-weed to the bank.
+Nor can I tell you where he went. Sometimes you may meet his kind in dark,
+damp corners, wedged between stones, or in the crannies of fallen tree
+trunks. Sometimes it is the gardener that brings word of him. &ldquo;A&#8217; dug the
+spade a fut deep and turned he up, the poisonous effet, a&#8217; soon stamped on
+he!&rdquo; Sometimes it is the housemaid. &ldquo;Please m&#8217;m there&#8217;s lizards in the
+cellar, I dursn&#8217;t go near.&rdquo; Sometimes a halfpenny head-line. &ldquo;Can Life be
+Indefinitely Prolonged? Startling Discovery in a Lump of Coal.&rdquo; But,
+wherever he may have got to, I can assure you of this, that for three
+whole years he<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 151]</span> stayed there and never willingly saw the light of day.
+Nature looked after him in his seclusion, Nature brought him such food as
+he required, and Nature never forgot him, but guided him back in due
+course to the brook in which he first saw light.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>He was a dingy object from above. His eyes, it is true, had kept their
+tadpole lustre, but his coat had darkened to a dusky olive, and the only
+vivid colour about him, his orange waistcoat, was invisible as he crawled.</p>
+
+<p>Even if it had been visible it would not have been to his disadvantage. Of
+all the colours in Nature there are none more warning than contrasted
+black and orange. Show me a creature of this colour combination, and you
+will show me something that is dangerous or nauseous or poisonous. It was
+this, perhaps, that was his salvation as he crawled from his land retreat
+back to the water he had left three years before. Perhaps it was simply
+his insignificance, for the journey was made by night, and he was crawling
+in and out of thickly twisted grass stems. Perhaps, though, it was his
+appearance, which, I will freely admit, was at this time, repulsive. A low
+set ridge along the centre of his back, and a faint violet tinge upon his
+sides were all that told of the glory that was to be.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/img158.jpg" width="350" height="258" alt="He glided" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he glided into the water slowly.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>He glided into the water slowly, and, as it were,<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 152]</span> ashamed. But he
+need not have been. In three years&#8217; seclusion he had swelled to fair
+proportions. He was no longer of necessity the hunted, in most cases
+now he was to be the hunter. As his head parted the surface, myriads of
+frightened atoms fled panic-stricken before him. Each lash of his tail
+scattered a microscopic community, and, as he progressed, the sense of
+mastery grew upon him. Food was here, and in plenty. He had only to open
+his mouth and take his fill. Yet he had no appetite. For the first few
+days of his water existence he sat amid the weed, rising only at rare
+intervals to the surface for air, and eating nothing. He was feeling the
+sudden change. His skin was tense and drawn all over, so tense, indeed,
+that each time he opened his mouth he felt the strain of it. Nor was the
+discomfort in his mouth<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 153]</span> alone. His coat was stretched to bursting-point
+along his back; his limbs seemed cased in gloves a size too small. A crawl
+ashore brought no immediate relief, but helped him indirectly. As he
+brushed between two grass stems, the skin of his lips split asunder, and,
+when he entered the water again, that friendly element gently forced its
+way into the gap. Every forward movement that he made now eased his old
+worn skin a little backwards.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img159.jpg" width="400" height="309" alt="His old skin" title="" />
+<span class="caption">his old skin hung before him.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>First his head came free, and its old covering lay in tattered rags upon
+his neck. He pulled his hands out next, leaving their casing as the
+fingers of a turned glove. Next came his body&#8217;s turn, for this he had to
+squeeze himself between the weed-stalks. Lastly, he cleared his legs and
+tail.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 154]</span>His old skin hung before him on the starwort, white-gleaming and
+transparent, a perfect, neatly folded model of himself. Of himself, did I
+say? It scarcely did his present splendour justice. Along his back now
+rose the budding undulations of a crest. His flanks had lost their sombre
+olive shade, and were suffused with mottlings of velvet black, mottlings
+that turned to purple as they crept across his orange front.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img160.jpg" width="500" height="399" alt="Tadpoles" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the tadpoles were lazily browsing on the starwort.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Even these beauties paled before his tail&mdash;a ribbon whose jet black centre
+shaded into violet, and whose edges were flushed with crimson.
+<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 155]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img161.jpg" width="500" height="343" alt="Sticklebacks" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the very sticklebacks fought shy of him.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 157]</span>Had he not been consumed with hunger, he might well have lingered in
+complacent admiration of himself. But hunger such as he had never felt
+before rose superior to his &aelig;sthetic sense, and he left his weed-shelter
+in ravenous haste.</p>
+
+<p>He had not far to go&mdash;a swim of ten yards, and he was among the tadpoles.</p>
+
+<p>They were in a patch of sunlight, lazily browsing on the starwort, mild
+as any sheep, with foolish, staring eyes, gaping suckers, and bodies that
+gleamed as if sprinkled with gold dust. For three days he settled in their
+neighbourhood, growing each day sleeker and more gorgeous. His orange
+waistcoat took a warmer hue, the crimson deepened on his tail and tipped
+the summits of his festooned crest. In six days&#8217; time he was a very
+perfect newt, decked and caparisoned for love or war. The very
+sticklebacks fought shy of him. One, it is true, charged him with spines
+erect&mdash;he had a nest to guard and would have charged a pike&mdash;but even he,
+for all his burnished panoply of emerald and vermilion, shrank back and
+bristled defiance from a safe distance. As for the shoal, they scattered
+in flashing rainbow-tinted disarray at his approach.</p>
+
+<p>He was master of his surroundings, but there came a time when tadpoles
+palled upon him. For one thing, they were becoming daily more bony. Those
+with hind legs developed were difficult to swallow; those with front<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 158]</span> legs
+also were hopeless. A change of diet was imperative, and, in seeking for
+this, he came into collision with the water-spider.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img164.jpg" width="400" height="235" alt="He bristled defiance" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he bristled defiance from a safe distance.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 159]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img165.jpg" width="500" height="290" alt="Rainbow-tinted disarray" title="" />
+<span class="caption">scattered in flashing, rainbow-tinted disarray.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Now, the water-spider lived by himself in a bubble of his own making. His
+legs were stout and long and hairy, his countenance was horrible, and his
+bite a thing to be avoided. When the newt first saw him he was devouring a
+caddis-worm. Vanity had been the worm&#8217;s undoing. Instead of casing itself
+with tiny sticks and pebbles and sojourning at the bottom, as Nature
+ordained, it had put on a gaudy livery of starwort leaves. Trusting
+to this elegant protective mimicry, it boldly sought the surface. The
+disguise availed it nothing. The spider drove its fangs through the flimsy
+covering that but half concealed its head. The newt had seen it all. The
+bunch of animated foliage carelessly advancing, the spider&#8217;s leap from its
+bubble, the glint of its shears as<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 161]</span> they met in the wretched creature&#8217;s
+neck, the ghastly quivering tremor of the case. Then the fierce
+eight-legged efforts to extract the victim, and finally the<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 162]</span> awful cunning
+that seemed intelligent of Nature&#8217;s devices, and pulled it out, as any
+angler would, tail foremost.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<span class="caption">the water-spider lived by himself<br /> in a bubble of his own
+making.</span>
+<img src="images/img167.jpg" width="400" height="505" alt="Water-spider" title="" />
+<span class="caption">when the newt first saw him he<br /> was devouring a
+caddis-worm.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was not so much animus against the spider as a longing for the worm
+that brought about the conflict. For the newt to snap at it was certainly
+unpardonable. Had he anticipated the resultant display of force, he would
+have hesitated. He had judged the spider solely by his size. When he felt
+six legs firmly fixed about his face, when he felt the cunning leverage of
+two more added to the pull, and a hideous pair of jaws drawing closer and
+closer, he dropped the worm, a useless martyr in Nature&#8217;s scheme, and bit
+for freedom. The spider lost a foot, but left its mark, and the spider&#8217;s
+hairy foot was not worth eating.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img168.jpg" width="400" height="275" alt="Infant dragon-fly" title="" />
+<span class="caption">snatched an infant dragon-fly from the jaws of the
+water-scorpion.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In his next robbery he was more judicious. He<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 163]</span> snatched an infant
+dragon-fly from the jaws of the water-scorpion, devoured it with pleasure,
+and then turned his attention to the water-scorpion himself. He found him
+flat and tasteless. The water-boatman was more succulent, but, with only
+one soft spot, difficult to do justice to. It was the same with all the
+larger creatures. He was reduced to stickleback fry, small larvae, and
+even juveniles of his own race. But nothing touched the tadpole, whose
+unkind destiny it is to furnish half the water-world with food. Had it
+not been for a diversion, he would have left the water in disgust.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<span class="caption">the water-boatman was difficult to do justice to.</span>
+<img src="images/img169.jpg" width="600" height="330" alt="xx" title="" />
+<span class="caption">it was a case of mutual attraction.</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Probably it was a case of mutual attraction. He swung his tail and crest
+before her, comeliest and most<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 164]</span> debonair of all her suitors; and she, with
+an engaging smile, swung a responsive tail at him. Crest she had none,
+and, of course, her tail could not compare with his in beauty. The higher
+we get in the natural orders, the more distinctly does decoration become
+a feminine necessity. Her coat was a pale olive green; her front light
+orange. Her charm was in herself.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img170.jpg" width="500" height="370" alt="Giddy vortex" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the giddy vortex of newt society.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>For newts they made an excellent and well-matched pair. Of course they had
+their disagreements. Newts are by nature fickle and inconstant.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 165]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img171.jpg" width="500" height="324" alt="Middle deeps" title="" />
+<span class="caption">sometimes they traversed the middle deeps.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 167]</span>When she was occupied with the cares of a family, and spent her days
+and nights in deftly fashioning starwort cradles for her eggs, it
+was irritating that he, whose duty it was to frighten the marauding
+sticklebacks, should have preferred to rush away into the giddy vortex of
+newt society. It was more than irritating when, by way of showing that her
+cradles were insecure, he opened six and devoured the contents himself.</p>
+
+<p>She profited by the experience, however, and the next series were
+exquisitely finished. The egg was placed in the exact centre of the leaf,
+the leaf was folded over, and sealed, tip to base, with all the strength
+of her hind feet. Her mouth put the finishing touch.</p>
+
+<p>When she had visited some half-dozen stalks, and left each adorned
+throughout its length with a neat series of symmetrical bows, she felt
+that her task was done and that she was at liberty to accompany him.
+Together they learnt the brook from end to end. Sometimes they walked
+along the bottom, stirring to right and left of them a host of low-class
+life, slimy leeches, dingy crustaceans of every imaginable kind. Sometimes
+they traversed the middle deeps, brushing against the beetles and the
+boatmen and the water-snails. Sometimes they sunned themselves on the
+surface, snapping idly at the measurers and whirligigs.</p>
+
+<p>It was the flood that parted them. For three days it had rained
+unceasingly on the surface of the brook.<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 168]</span> As they rose to breathe, their
+noses were lashed by pigmy waves. Each raindrop made its own widening
+eddy, its own pattering sound. Rain on the roof is noisy enough to those
+beneath, but rain on the water is deafening.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img174.jpg" width="400" height="194" alt="Sunned themselves" title="" />
+<span class="caption">sometimes they sunned<br /> themselves on the surface.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the brook, as I have said, it rained for three days. In one part or
+another of the valley it rained for a week. The meadow-land gave its
+surplus to the brook, and the brook sought the river for relief. But the
+river was already filled to overflowing, so that brook and river met each
+other halfway, and the life in each was intermingled.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img175.jpg" width="400" height="210" alt="Roach snapped idly" title="" />
+<span class="caption">a roach snapped idly at him.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img175b.jpg" width="500" height="147" alt="Lampern" title="" />
+<span class="caption">each lampern was anchored by its sucker<br /> to a rounded
+pebble.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/img176.jpg" width="250" height="250" alt="Stubby" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the new portion was <br />stubby and colourless.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Now, between brook-life and river-life there is a great gulf fixed. There
+is no sideways in the river. All things that would stay at rest obey the
+current. The fishes point their noses against it; the<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 169]</span> plants lie as it
+guides them. Up or down is the law of quiet existence. The newt knew
+nothing of this, and, when a rush of waters swept him into the river-bed
+his natural instinct was to seek the bank. This laid him broadside and
+helpless. A roach snapped idly at him as he floundered past the shoal. The
+snap cost him his tail, and was probably his salvation. Without a<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 170]</span> tail
+his biteable area was halved. A young trout missed him, and he pulled up
+amid the lamperns in the shallows. The lamperns were too busily engrossed
+to notice him. Each was fast anchored by its sucker to a rounded pebble.
+Across their slender undulating bodies he struggled to the shore,
+battered, bruised, and tailless, but alive. He entered the first brook he
+came to, and there he remained a month in gloomy solitude, for he felt
+that his chief glory had been taken from him. In a month&#8217;s time his tail
+had partially repaired itself. The new portion was stubby and colourless.
+In another fortnight his crest had shrunk to half its former size. This
+blow decided him. He left the water definitely. Where he went I cannot
+tell you, nor do I know what happened to her, but I think they will meet
+next year, and by that time his tail will be as beautiful as ever.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE PASSING OF THE BLACK RAT</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<span class="smcap">Note.</span>&mdash;The old English black rat, for some three hundred years
+predominant in this country, is now well-nigh extinct. He has been
+superseded, some think exterminated, by the brown Hanoverian rat, a
+more powerful and disreputable species, which made its appearance
+in the course of the eighteenth century.]</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The black rat sat back on his haunches, pricked up his ears, and listened.
+It was something different to the faint lapping wash of the sewer;
+different to the dull hum of the traffic. It was an uncanny, unfamiliar
+scratching.</p>
+
+<p>Every rat knows the scratching of his relations; but the black rat had no
+relations.</p>
+
+<p>Six weeks ago there had been at least two others of his kind in
+existence&mdash;the one he had fought with, and the one he had most
+unsuccessfully fought for. As a matter of fact, he had crawled away from
+that encounter to die. Instead of dying, he had recovered. That his rival
+was in reality the better rat he could not allow. Position is everything
+in the rat <em>duello</em>, and position had not favoured him.</p>
+
+<p>After a series of disastrous frontal attacks, he had<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 172]</span> limped behind the
+old corn-bin, with half his mouth torn away, and his front paws mangled
+and useless. He had bowed his head and waited sullenly for the <em>coup de
+grace</em>. But the <em>coup de grace</em> never came. There had been a diversion in
+the rear, and into the cause of that diversion he had not troubled to
+inquire.</p>
+
+<p>He had seen neither him nor her since, and, until he had recovered from
+his wounds, had hardly felt his loneliness. For a wounded rat, loneliness
+is normal and necessary. Of late, as he sniffed dubiously round the old
+familiar corners, the sense of desolation had forced itself upon him.</p>
+
+<p>He recalled, dimly, the few weeks before his misfortune. Every day the
+number of the tribe had lessened. First went the patriarch, white about
+the muzzle, grizzled all over, tottering and feeble, but still of eminent
+distinction&mdash;the black rat does not coarsen with age&mdash;then, one by one,
+with fearless inconsequence, the younger ones; lastly, save two, his own
+contemporaries.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The scratching seemed to get louder. The black rat glided, like a shadow,
+towards it. It sounded from the bottom of the door.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 173]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img179.jpg" width="500" height="232" alt="The patriarc" title="" />
+<span class="caption">first the patriarch, white about the muzzle, grizzled all
+over, but still of eminent distinction.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Three sides of the cellar&mdash;for a hundred years the cellar had been the
+rats&#8217; stronghold&mdash;were solid masonry. The fourth side was a wooden
+partition. At one corner<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 175]</span> of this stood the door, close-fitted to its
+sill and frame, and shrouded in cobwebs, which, in rats&#8217; memory, had
+never parted. Along the wall opposite ran a six-inch shelf, and, at the
+extremity of this shelf, where the fittings entered the brickwork, was
+the entrance of the run.</p>
+
+<p>Generations of rats had used that run. Its sides were smooth and polished
+as a metal tube. Here it was narrower, there wider, but throughout its
+length it was free and unimpeded.</p>
+
+<p>For the most part it lay between wall and wainscot. At times it seemed
+to pierce the masonry itself. Midway in the ascent the path of least
+resistance had been towards the outer wall. Two round holes pierced its
+surface&mdash;a brick&#8217;s length dividing them. One can understand the making of
+the first hole, but the making of the second? Fifteen feet below resounded
+the busy traffic of the city. Did two tunnels converge by chance? did they
+converge by design? or was the second made by some colossal rat, stretched
+at full length, and trusting his life to his superhuman hearing? I can
+only state the facts. I do not pretend to explain them.</p>
+
+<p>From the second hole the run passed into the masonry once more, zigzagged
+upwards into the storeroom, and ended.</p>
+
+<p>From the storeroom there were countless exists&mdash;down the gutter into
+the courtyard (a short cut to the<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 176]</span> shambles), beneath the flooring to the
+scullery, and thence along the drain-pipe to the great sewer, through the
+ventilator on to the roof&mdash;anywhere, everywhere.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The scratching was certainly louder. The black rat was stepping very
+delicately, but a slippery corn-husk shot from underneath his foot, and
+with the rustle of the corn-husk the scratching ceased.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing but a rat could have heard that; it was certainly a rat, but who?</p>
+
+<p>For ten minutes he waited, listening. Then he stole forward, until the
+points of his whiskers brushed lightly against the door. Instantly there
+was a movement on the far side&mdash;a four-footed movement. Caution against
+such cunning seemed superfluous. He boldly forced his nose between door
+and flooring and sniffed; but only for a second, for his nose had gone
+farther than he meant; the bottom of the woodwork had been gnawed through
+until it was a bare half-inch thick all along its length. He drew back
+with a jerk, and waited another ten minutes, staring at the door and
+thinking.</p>
+
+<p>The silence on the far side grew unendurable. The black rat whisked round,
+and rushed madly for the run. He gained the shelf by a beautiful swinging
+leap, easy and silent as a cat&#8217;s.
+<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 177]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img183.jpg" width="500" height="186" alt="He stole forward" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he stole forward until the points of his whiskers brushed
+lightly against the door.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>For the first few yards, between brickwork and<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 179]</span> wainscot, the run was
+clear enough; but, as it turned upwards to the floor above, something
+seemed unfamiliar.</p>
+
+<p>The light, which had always faintly shimmered from the hole in the outer
+wall, was gone. As he drove forward headlong, he bruised his nose against
+the cause of its disappearance. The wall had been repaired with concrete.
+It was utterly ungnawable, and he slowly retraced his steps to the cellar.
+He was just in time to hear the scratching recommence.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img185.jpg" width="500" height="340" alt="He tried to steady himself" title="" />
+<span class="caption">he tried to steady himself by<br /> nibbling at a stray
+corn-ear.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It drew closer and closer. It got upon his nerves. He tried to steady
+himself by nibbling at a stray <span class='pagenum'>[Pg 180]</span>corn-ear. He dropped it before he had
+fairly tasted it, and crept forward to the door once more. There was more
+than one unknown at work. At times a light quiver ran the whole length of
+the bottom ledge.</p>
+
+<p>From a rat standpoint, it was the worst position conceivable. That
+attack was impending was certain; it was equally certain that retreat was
+impossible. Desperation, rather than bravado, determined him to reverse
+the positions. In one spot the wood had been fined to a quarter of an
+inch. Light filtered through, and cast a dull red shadow on the floor. It
+was at that spot that he flung himself. As he touched it, every other
+sound ceased. He had the field to himself, and he worked it to the best of
+his ability. The splinters flew before his chisel teeth; he wrenched, and
+scratched, and tore. Before five minutes were gone, the flimsy wooden
+screen had been transformed into a neat three-cornered hole.</p>
+
+<p>He thrust his head forward, and stared with all his eyes. At first
+he could distinguish nothing. The far side of the partition was, in
+comparison with his recent surroundings, brilliantly lighted. Gradually
+the form of the enemy shaped itself before him. It was certainly a rat,
+but what a rat! Until his muzzle had shot through the opening, it had been
+facing him, waiting and watching. Now it had leapt backwards, and
+presented a three-quarter rear view.
+<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 181]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img187.jpg" width="500" height="274" alt="ill-conditioned beast" title="" />
+<span class="caption">it was the most vulgar, ill-conditioned<br /> beast he had ever
+set eyes on.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 183]</span>It was the most vulgar, ill-conditioned beast he had ever set eyes on.
+Its muzzle was coarse and blunted; its ears were half concealed in
+coarse-grained, unkempt hair; its tail, instead of tapering, like his own,
+to an elegant infinity, was short and stumpy; its eyes were, to say the
+least of it, insignificant. But its colour! a dirty, nondescript, khaki
+brown!</p>
+
+<p>The sight of it was enough, and he drove at it full tilt.</p>
+
+<p>Appearances were undoubtedly against the brown rat, but it knew something
+of tactics. With a lightness, such as one could hardly have expected, it
+swung to one side, and, before his brilliant charge could take effect, had
+got its back to the wall. He had made the same mistake again&mdash;the mistake
+of brainless breeding all the world over. It mattered not whether he
+approached from front, or right, or left, the same whirling flail of
+fore-paws was ready for him. He leapt clean over its head, and was flung
+back&mdash;by the brickwork. Whichever way he tried he had only half a foe to
+aim at. Still he never flinched, happy in the conviction that blood must
+tell.</p>
+
+<p>Blood might have told against a single enemy. Against a score it availed
+little. And a full score were advancing. The ungainly, stubby forms seemed
+to rise from every crevice in the floor.</p>
+
+<p>They came very slowly at first&mdash;a dirty cohort of<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 184]</span> khaki Hanoverians;
+their muzzles uplifted and quivering at the scent of blood, their beady
+eyes fixed seemingly on vacancy, but really on himself. He felt them
+coming, and, for a moment, paused in his attack. The whole group might,
+save for the restless nostrils, have been carved in stone; the duellists
+eyeing each other warily, the scavenger ring waiting on events; but the
+whiskers of each one trembled, and gave the whole group life.</p>
+
+<p>It was the watchman&#8217;s tread that broke the spell. The black rat knew
+that tread well enough. He knew every tread in the warehouse; but to the
+invaders it was unfamiliar. Before the footsteps had resounded twice, he
+was left alone; the host had vanished as quickly as it came.</p>
+
+<p>The black rat retreated in good order, and established himself once more
+in a corner of the cellar. It was a mistake, but he wanted time to recover
+himself, and time to think.</p>
+
+<p>Of the world on the far side of the partition he knew nothing, but he
+realized that there was a world. Should he make a rush for it before the
+enemy had regained courage? Even so, where should he rush to? Was he
+likely to find an exit amid altogether strange surroundings? Could he
+block the hole? Rats had done such things before now, but it was only
+deferring the evil hour, and what time would he have to do it in? The
+question was answered for him. The echo of the<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 185]</span> watchman&#8217;s step had barely
+ceased, before the hole at the base of the door was, for a moment,
+obscured.</p>
+
+<p>They came in jerky disorder. First a young, loose-limbed stripling. He
+was barely out before he was back again, throwing up the pink soles of
+his hind feet, and flicking the woodwork with his belated tail. Then a
+kaleidoscopic succession of suspicious faces. The light danced on the
+floor as each thrust his neighbour aside, thrust his head like lightning
+through the opening, and as quickly withdrew it. They were masters of
+scouting, these brown barbarians. Sometimes one, bolder or younger than
+the rest, would steal a foot within the cellar. Sometimes, for minutes
+together, all would be quiet, the light patch on the floor the only thing
+amiss. The black rat never moved his eyes from that light.</p>
+
+<p>It was an hour before the chieftain himself appeared. He squeezed through
+the opening, but, for all his bulk, came quickly. Once clear, he dropped
+upon his haunches, and knit his fists before him. The position showed him
+at his best. Crouched or in motion, the clumsy angles of his body were
+forced into relief. As he sat back, the curves softened, and, as far as
+brown rat could be, he was imposing. For some moments he sat immovable,
+facing the darkness, then he turned, and, with one eye always fixed behind
+him, passed slowly out of sight.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 186]</span>There was a long silence after this. The light patch on the floor seemed
+to grow in intensity. By its dull reflection, the black rat could just
+distinguish his own whiskers. It fascinated him. He stole halfway across
+the floor towards it, and paused. As he paused, it was blotted out once
+more.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img192.jpg" width="400" height="330" alt="Showed him at his best" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the position showed him at his best.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>He was being watched. Before he was back in his corner, three of the enemy
+were through the breach. Five more followed. Then in quick confusion a
+dozen.<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 187]</span> Then a dozen more. The Hanoverian army was spreading its wings.</p>
+
+<p>Their actual number he never knew. Perhaps, for the credit of his family,
+it was as well. Reflection would assuredly have put resistance, and even
+hope, out of the question. As it was, he came forward with absolute
+indifference. His breeding again stood him in good stead. Of all the host
+he was the least uneasy. In the middle of the floor he stopped abruptly,
+confronting the situation. Fifty rats were in the cellar now, and there
+was not a rustle among them.</p>
+
+<p>He had calculated exactly where to stop. It was a foot beyond the normal
+take-off of the grown rat. He flung his head round, put all the force he
+possessed into his hind legs, and leapt, upwards and backwards, towards
+the shelf. He caught it with his fore-paws, scrambled on to it, and, for
+the moment, was safe. He was only just quick enough. As his eyes turned,
+the brown rats had rushed forward, and, even as he clutched the ledge, he
+heard them pattering against the wall.</p>
+
+<p>The floor below was a raging sea of rats; rats leaping over one another,
+jostling, biting, tearing. To the silence of a moment before had succeeded
+a babel of shrieks and hisses. But there were no jumpers among them like
+himself. He passed quietly along the ledge above them, through the
+entrance of the run, and<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 188]</span> up to its blocked extremity. There he braced his
+back against the concrete and waited.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>He waited for three days, his muzzle grounded, his eyes peering into the
+darkness, his every sense alert. He ate nothing, he drank nothing&mdash;to all
+appearance he never slept.</p>
+
+<p>On the fourth day, he crept feebly halfway towards the cellar. Privation
+was beginning to tell on him. His only hope was that the invaders might
+have retired.</p>
+
+<p>For the first few yards it almost seemed as if it was so. Neither in the
+air nor on the ground could he detect the slightest vibration; but, as he
+turned a sharp corner, the hope was dispelled. The whole run quivered with
+the stealthy whisper of rats&#8217; footsteps. Faint squeaks and whimperings
+echoed along it. The cellar was evidently still occupied in force; he was
+cornered between starvation and insuperable odds. Yet there might be a
+scrap of food this side of the cellar. He stole forward until another turn
+revealed the ledge. In the centre of the ledge were three brown rats. The
+farther one was cleaning itself, but the other two were feeding, and, at
+the sight of the food, he lost all prudence. He was upon them before he
+was perceived. The two dropped their provender, leapt blindly forward, and
+fell clumsily to the floor below, but the third slid down the junction of
+the walls.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 189]</span>The black rat realized what that meant. As he turned his head, he saw his
+retreat cut off. Two more had scaled the corner behind him. He swung about
+to face them, girded himself to charge, and, instead of charging, stopped
+dead.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img195.jpg" width="400" height="328" alt="Cleaning itself" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the farther one was cleaning itself.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>For the first time in his life he knew what fear was. Before him were his
+immediate adversaries; his quick ears caught the crumbling of plaster
+behind him. Rats were mounting that corner also.</p>
+
+<p>Five feet below lay the floor. Its surface glistened with shifting beads
+of light&mdash;light from rats&#8217; eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He was between the devil and the deep sea&mdash;the<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 190]</span> floor was the sea, and the
+devil was assuredly advancing towards him. Never before had he set eyes on
+such a beast&mdash;ten inches from head to tail, brawny, misshapen, mangy, a
+veritable Caliban of rats.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img196.jpg" width="500" height="409" alt="Caliban of rats" title="" />
+<span class="caption">a veritable caliban of rats.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The position was hopeless. All he could do was to die game. Caliban had
+crept within a foot of him, and was pulling himself into position. But he
+was too slow. Before he had raised his clumsy fore-paws from the<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 191]</span> ground,
+the black rat&#8217;s teeth had met in his throat. His huge frame quivered for
+a moment, staggered, and lurched heavily off the shelf. He carried his
+comrade with him.</p>
+
+<p>First blood! what matter whose? Caliban lay where he fell, his eyes slowly
+glazing. The eyes round him caught the reflection from his throat. He was
+the hero of a hundred fights, and the puniest ratling had its share. The
+floor was for the moment the centre of attraction.</p>
+
+<p>Had it not been for the chieftain, the black rat might have regained the
+run. But the chieftain had foreseen events. As Caliban fell he had
+clambered up, and was now blocking the entrance.</p>
+
+<p>He was grounded on his haunches, with uplifted paws, ready for anything.
+The black rat drove at him, and was hurled backwards. Among rats the
+chieftain is, of necessity, pluperfect master of defence. Again and again
+he parried the attack, until Caliban was disposed of.</p>
+
+<p>Then, in the middle of his rush, the black rat heard once more the
+stealthy footstep in his rear, paused, half turned, missed his footing,
+and fell.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he accounted for four of those below, which made five altogether.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+<h2>&ldquo;THE FOX&#8217;S TRICKS ARE MANY; ONE IS ENOUGH FOR THE URCHIN&rdquo;</h2>
+<p class="center">(<em>Old Greek Proverb</em>).</p>
+
+
+<p>Rain, and rain, and rain. For three days in succession the sun had
+defaulted. Yet he had been doing his best behind the storm-clouds. That
+very morning he had forced one straggling beam well through. It had been
+completely thrown away, for every living thing was snugly tucked up under
+cover. Now, as his time was getting short, he made one last despairing
+effort.</p>
+
+<p>Westward, the sky was banked with purple nimbus, towering in gloomy
+magnificence aloft, but fined to nothingness on the horizon. The sun saw
+his chance, and took it. As the storm-cloud was borne a trifle upwards, he
+flashed his dying radiance beneath it.</p>
+
+<p>At first the brightness was intolerable. The rain-drenched leaves were
+bathed in liquid fire; the river surface gleamed like molten metal; the
+undergrowth that fringed the bank became a tangled web of dazzling
+light-points.</p>
+
+<p>The effort was of short duration, yet, before the sun<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 193]</span> had sunk, the
+things that loved the river had caught his message.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img199.jpg" width="400" height="339" alt="Water-rat" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the water-rat came from a hole five feet above the
+river-level.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The cloud-bank lifted sullenly, and dispersed. Out of the east came a soft
+summer breeze, stealing silently across the valley, and tilting the
+balance of each dripping leaf. So the great drops of moisture slipped off
+them to swell the river, and the drying of the earth commenced.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 194]</span>That is what brought them all out together.</p>
+
+<p>The water-rat came from a hole five feet above the river-level. An
+overhanging grass-tuft masked her exit. As a rule, she used the back
+way&mdash;a gently sloping tunnel which led from nest to stream. But to-night
+it was very still. She padded quietly to the water&#8217;s edge, slid through
+the reeds that bordered it, and sat upon a silted crescent of mud that lay
+on their far side. She always sat there to commence with. From the bank
+she was invisible; up stream and down she could see for fifty yards, and
+the pith of the reed-stem, of all things in her menu most charming, lay
+ready to her orange-tinted teeth.</p>
+
+<p>The noctules came from the hollow in the old chestnut. Twenty of them
+lived there together, because it was a convenient, roomy hollow. No one
+knows how it started&mdash;perhaps the wood-peckers could tell you&mdash;but rain
+had certainly finished its excavation. The entrance was some thirty feet
+above the ground&mdash;dank, noisome, and forbidding; the end was near the
+roots.</p>
+
+<p>Of course the old chestnut was dying; but that did not concern the
+noctules. Each evening they crawled up to prove the weather; each evening,
+of late, they had shambled back again into the gloomy depths, cannoning
+awkwardly against each other, snarling and grumbling. The temper of bats
+is uncertain, and hunger does not improve it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 195]</span>But to-night it was better. One by one the ghoulish muzzles emerged,
+peered into the darkness, and were satisfied; then the clumsy,
+ill-balanced bodies, entangled in loose-folded leathern cerements&mdash;the
+noctule&#8217;s wing-spread measures a full foot; lastly, the webbed curving
+triangle of feet and tail.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 304px;">
+<img src="images/img201.jpg" width="304" height="400" alt="Noctules" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the noctules came from the hollow of the old chestnut.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Each, as it blundered free, clung, for a space, head downwards to the
+bark, then slacked the grip of its ten<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 196]</span> toes, unhooked its thumbs,
+dropped, and flew. Never was flight more graceful, never more perfectly
+controlled. For fear of the swallows, the summer beetles fly by choice at
+twilight; even then they must needs fly low, for the noctule never misses,
+and the crunch of his teeth in a beetle&#8217;s horny back is all he knows of
+music.</p>
+
+<p>The stoat came from a tree which was even more decrepit than the chestnut.
+It had been an elm once. For four centuries it had defied the elements,
+towering full fifty feet in rugged, imperial grandeur. The elements had
+outstayed it. All that remained was a caverned stump, whose jagged summit
+pointed, like an accusing finger, to the sky.</p>
+
+<p>But, from a stoat standpoint, the stump was unsurpassable. There were
+three exits from the hollow base. Up the shaft there was yet another.
+Thick brambles fringed it on every side, and in those brambles were many
+birds&#8217; nests. The stump was an ideal nursery; as such the stoat had
+employed it. He had left to its friendly protection his family of six,
+with a young rabbit to keep them occupied. He, himself, was now in quest
+of frogs.</p>
+
+<p>The hedgehog bore on his back clear tokens of his last retreat. A dozen
+withered leaves were clinging to his spines. The nearest pile of such lay
+heaped against the hen-house. The hedgehog footed through the knotgrass
+slowly, grubbing with his snout to right and left of<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 197]</span> him. Sometimes, when
+cover failed, he broke into a bow-legged run.</p>
+
+<p>The squirrel came from high up in the beech tree&mdash;the second fork from
+the top. There he had built what he called a nest, but what humans, with
+greater nicety of diction, call a drey. Speak not of squirrel&#8217;s &ldquo;nest&rdquo; to
+sportsmen; to speak of fox&#8217;s &ldquo;burrow&rdquo; were hardly less heinous. The drey
+was eminently satisfactory, for, in the summer months, it was completely
+hidden. Yet three days inside it had been more than sufficient for the
+squirrel. He was cold, hungry, and cramped in every limb. To quicken the
+blood within him, he flung himself at lightning speed from bough to bough,
+from tree to tree, up and down the branches, in and out the maze of
+dripping foliage, until his every hair was tipped with a raindrop, and he
+was almost weary. Then he paused a moment for breath and shook himself,
+dog-fashion.</p>
+
+<p>The mole&#8217;s uneasy, crimson-pointed muzzle came from a hole right on the
+water&#8217;s edge. He was feeling for the water. Last night the swollen river
+had forced its way a yard into his run, and he had blundered headlong into
+it. Swimming is easy to the mole, but swimming in an inch-wide tube is
+risky. So, to-night, he was cautious. It might have been fine all day,
+or it might have been wet, for all he knew.</p>
+
+<p>The grass-snake seemed to come up from the river bottom. His head suddenly
+parted the water beneath<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 198]</span> the old pollard, and he swam slowly across the
+stream, craning his neck before him. The pollard was inwardly rotten to
+the core&mdash;a snug retreat for snakes, to which the only entrance was a
+water-way.</p>
+
+<p>The dormouse came from halfway up the hazel, and the wood-mouse came from
+its roots. They, too, had been three days weather bound; but they were not
+hungry. Each had its winter store to draw upon.</p>
+
+<p>The moths and caterpillars and beetles, came from everywhere&mdash;crannies in
+the brickwork, joints in the palings, crevices in the bark, from
+neat-rolled envelope of leaf, from hollowed shelter of reed-stem, from
+pigmy burrows in the ground.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was the hedgehog who started it. The hedgehog has a keen sense of
+humour, and, for that reason, he loves an argument.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will back my spines,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;against any means of defence in the
+country.&rdquo; He curled himself into a forbidding spiky ball, and rolled
+slowly down the bank towards the water. On the very brink he stopped and
+uncurled himself. &ldquo;Or any means of offence,&rdquo; he added.</p>
+
+<p>This was too much.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Spines!&rdquo; sneered the stoat. &ldquo;Spines might be some use if you had any pace
+behind them. Where would they come in against a hare?&rdquo;
+<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 199]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img205.jpg" width="500" height="352" alt="Hedgehog" title="" />
+<span class="caption">it was the hedgehog who started it.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 201]</span>&ldquo;Spines would be awkward in the shallows,&rdquo; murmured the water-rat, as she
+swam quietly over to the far shore, keeping half an eye on the stoat, who
+was also something of a swimmer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Spines!&rdquo; squeaked the noctule from the safe height of a hundred feet.
+&ldquo;Why load yourself with spines? Why not fly like me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Spines!&rdquo; shouted the squirrel. &ldquo;A pretty mess you&#8217;d make of it with
+spines up here. Do you think every one spends their life grubbing after
+ground beetles?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Spines!&rdquo; purred the moths. &ldquo;We gave up spines at quite an early stage.
+Haven&#8217;t you finished moulting, hedgehog?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Spines!&rdquo; snapped the trout. &ldquo;Give me a good set of fins.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now this was exactly what the hedgehog had foreseen. As I have said
+before, he had a keen sense of humour.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am willing to hear you all,&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>So, because of his pleistocene lineage, and because of his popularity (the
+comedian is always the more popular candidate), and because he had started
+the discussion, he was voted to the chair.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 325px;">
+<img src="images/img208.jpg" width="325" height="400" alt="The noctule spoke first" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the noctule spoke first; he opened his mouth as though he
+would eat the world.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The noctule spoke first. He leant his arm against the roughened bark,
+hooked his thumb-nail into a crevice, and opened his mouth as though he
+would eat<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 202]</span> the world. He was not beautiful, and his voice was three
+octaves above F in alt. What reached the audience below was somewhat on
+these lines&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I and my kin are the only mammals that fly. Therefore I am superior to
+the hedgehog. Flying is the best state of all. Even the humans do their
+poor<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 203]</span> best to fly. Every part of me is modified for flight. My knees bend
+the wrong way so as to better stretch my wing-membranes. My tail serves as
+a rudder, and in the hollow pouch about it I can trap a beetle, ay, and
+carry him where I will. My sense of touch is the most delicate in all the
+world. <em>I</em> never dash myself, like blundering bird, against a wire. If you
+would know the secret, look at the trembling bristles on my muzzle, look
+at the earlets within my ears, look at the sensitive wing-membrane between
+my fingers. No quiver in the air escapes me. I have the sixth sense of the
+blind, and yet I see.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Next spoke the stoat, the swash-buckler. He cleared his throat with a
+short, rasping bark, glared round him, and began&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am the only flesh-eater among you all,&rdquo; said he. The hedgehog&#8217;s smile
+broadened, but he said nothing. &ldquo;Therefore I have bigger game to tackle
+than any of you. Therefore I am better armed. Scores of bats I have eaten
+in my time. I could climb your chestnut if I cared to, noctule, and eat
+the colony. I would, if you were not so evil-smelling.&rdquo; (This from the
+stoat!) &ldquo;Scores of water-rats have I eaten, too. Look at my long, lithe
+body. What burrow is too small for it? Look at my teeth. What rodent has a
+chance against them? I fear nothing, not even man himself. I can swim, I
+can run, I can climb, I can hunt by scent, and I<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 204]</span> am cunning as a fox.
+From my fur, when I am dead, comes the imperial ermine. Would you pit
+yourself against me, hedgehog?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img210.jpg" width="400" height="275" alt="The stoat" title="" />
+<span class="caption">next spoke the stoat, the swash-buckler.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 205]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img211.jpg" width="400" height="508" alt="The squirrel" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&ldquo;<em>I</em> would,&rdquo; said the squirrel.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<em>I</em> would,&rdquo; said the squirrel. Like the bats, he was some way off
+the ground; also he had mapped up a clear course of forty yards among
+the tree-tops, so he spoke recklessly. &ldquo;The stoat is an amateur climber.&rdquo;
+(&ldquo;Wait till I get to your nursery!&rdquo; snarled the stoat.) &ldquo;He has no idea
+of taking cover. A treed stoat against a human is doomed. Look at his
+black-smudged tail&mdash;only a trifle better than a weasel&#8217;s. It reminds me
+of my summer moult&mdash;but it&#8217;s worse; and, in the<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 207]</span> summer, even I must trust
+more to my hands and feet. I, the most skilful gymnast in the country,
+save only the marten, and there are too few of them to count. Give me my
+winter parachute, and see me then. Who can thread the woods like me? From
+end to end I fly, skimming the tree-tops and never touching ground. Yet,
+if the fancy takes me, I can cover land or water faster than any stoat.
+From <em>my</em> fur, when I am dead, comes the camel-hair brush.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Next came the dormouse. &ldquo;Sleep is the best defence of all,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Sleep and being very small indeed, and never coming out except after
+sundown, and having great big eyes, so that you can see things like stoats
+long before they see you. Offence I know nothing of, unless it&#8217;s eating
+beetles.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>After him the wood-mouse. &ldquo;Give me a good burrow underground,&rdquo; said he.
+&ldquo;Make it among branching roots, with half a dozen entrances and exits, and
+I defy the weasel, let alone the stoat. But in the winter, when cover is
+scanty, sleep and a store of nuts is best of all. Beans are no good&mdash;they
+rot away. Earth-stored nuts, tight packed, are the sweetest things I
+know.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What of summer?&rdquo; said the hedgehog.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Weight for weight,&rdquo; said the mouse, &ldquo;I can tackle anything that moves. As
+for voles and house-mice, I can fight two at once. When I am giving much
+away, I like my burrow handy.&rdquo;
+<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 208]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img214.jpg" width="400" height="262" alt="My fortresses" title="" />
+<span class="caption">two fields away you can<br /> see my fortresses.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 209]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img215.jpg" width="400" height="381" alt="The mole" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&ldquo;who talks of burrows,&rdquo; said the mole.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who talks of burrows?&rdquo; said the mole. &ldquo;Where is there tunnel-builder
+like myself? Two fields away you can see my fortresses. You can see them
+plainly, tunnelled maze and rounded nest and all. Some prying human has
+turned his vacant mind to nature-study, and made a clumsy section of a
+pair. Look at each in turn. Mark the one tunnel that leads upward to the
+nest, mark the two galleries that surround it, mark that they wind in a
+spiral, and are not joined by shafts at intervals. That would so weaken
+the surroundings as to leave the nest an easy prey to scratching weasel.
+Why is the spiral made? To cheat inquiry; a dozen tunnels join it<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 211]</span> from
+the run; from it are a dozen exits to the surrounding field. <em>One tunnel
+only leads into the nest.</em> Only the moles know that one. Alone I did it,
+save for my wife, who hindered me. Alone I moved two hundredweight of
+earth. Nor do my qualities end here. Were I fifty times as big, I would be
+lord of creation. Where can you find fiercer courage than mine; where,
+bulk for bulk, more mighty strength? What monster, think you, would an
+elephant, built for burrowing, be? For my weight, I am the strongest thing
+that lives. One creature, and one only, approaches me; that is the
+mole-cricket. Let him speak for himself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img217.jpg" width="400" height="237" alt="The mole-cricket" title="" />
+<span class="caption">the mole-cricket turned up from nowhere in particular.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The mole-cricket turned up from nowhere in particular, and his voice was
+the tinkling of a silver bell. It would have taken a score of him to make
+a mole.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 212]</span>&ldquo;I am older than the mole,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;yet from him I take my name. In
+dry ground I make poor progress; where it is muddy and swampy, I can run
+through it, like a fish through water. When the mole came into being, he
+borrowed the pattern of my fore feet&mdash;shovel and pick and spade in one.
+Like me, he learnt to run backwards or forwards, and that is why his hair
+has no set in it. Whichever way he goes, the clinging dust is swept from
+off its surface. He comes from grubby depths as polished as a pin. And so
+do I; but from a different cause. I am so highly polished that the damp
+soil cannot cleave to me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Burrowing,&rdquo; said the hedgehog, &ldquo;is a low form of defence. What says the
+water-rat?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I burrow, too,&rdquo; said the water-rat. &ldquo;If I have time, I burrow in the
+water. I part the surface with the tiniest ripple, keeping my fore feet
+close packed to my sides, and swim with hind legs only, below the surface,
+neatly as a natterjack. If I were better treated, I should never burrow in
+the banks at all. But I must have somewhere to go to when my breath fails
+me. I eat the mare&#8217;s tail and the pith of reed-stems. That does no one any
+harm, not even a trout-preserver. But of all good viands, commend me to a
+parsnip.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is neither defence nor offence,&rdquo; said the hedgehog.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The only offensive thing I have is a pair of<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 213]</span> incisors,&rdquo; said the
+water-rat. &ldquo;They are orange-yellow and very strong. As regards defence, I
+can do more in the water than most.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img219.jpg" width="400" height="261" alt="Young trout" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&ldquo;not more than me,&rdquo;<br /> the young trout broke in.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not more than me,&rdquo; the young trout broke in. He flung his nose jauntily
+against the surface, and the surface swung from it in widening eddies,
+circle after circle. &ldquo;I can be up to the weir and down again before you
+are halfway across the stream. When humans build their destroyers, they
+model them on me. I know that, because I have seen their clumsy models,
+trout-shaped, save the mark!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is enough from any one of your years,&rdquo; said<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 214]</span> the hedgehog. &ldquo;Little
+river-fishes run away from big river-fishes, and big river-fishes run away
+from bigger river-fishes, and they all run away from the otter.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The jack that lived in the deep below the pollard grinned, but said
+nothing. The jack knew better, but he never <em>says</em> anything. But the
+gudgeon and the troutling were terrified at the notion of bigger fishes,
+and made straight for the weeds.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img220.jpg" width="400" height="262" alt="The gudgeon" title="" />
+<span class="caption">but the gudgeon and troutling made straight for the weeds.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What think the caterpillars?&rdquo; said the hedgehog.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 199px;">
+<img src="images/img221.jpg" width="199" height="200" alt="Lobster-moth-to-be" title="" />
+<span class="caption">it was the lobster-moth-to-be that spoke first.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 257px;">
+<img src="images/img222.jpg" width="257" height="400" alt="Fling their heads back" title="" />
+<span class="caption">most of them fling their heads back, arch their necks, and
+play at being snakes.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The caterpillars were studying moral invisibility in a hundred different
+ways, for insect life is the most highly specialized of all. It was the
+lobster-moth-to-be that<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 215]</span> spoke first. He bent his head backwards until it
+touched his tail, folded the knee-joints of his skinny legs, and began&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is all bluff,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;caterpillars are past-masters of bluff. Look
+at the hawkmoths, fat, flabby, bloated things, with curly tails. Most of
+them fling their heads back, arch their necks, and play at being snakes.
+Some grow eyes upon them, not real eyes, but markings which serve as such,
+enough to scare the average chuckle-headed bird. Sometimes they trust to
+vein-markings on their bodies, which turn them into casual misshapen
+leaves. Sometimes they liken themselves to twigs&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is what we do,&rdquo; cried the loopers. Each branch of the oak had its
+loopers, feeding cheerfully, transforming themselves to twigs, and
+shamming death in quick succession.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 314px;">
+<img src="images/img223.jpg" width="314" height="400" alt="Not real eyes" title="" />
+<span class="caption">not real eyes but markings which serve as such.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sometimes,&rdquo; continued the lobster-moth-to-be, &ldquo;they are, like myself,
+really worth eating. Then, mere vulgar imitation bluff is of little avail.
+To be a withered leaf is my first line of defence; if the ichneumon
+buzzes<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 216]</span> nearer, I shift my ground and become a spider. I am the only
+caterpillar in the country with spider-legs; when they are stretched to
+their full length and quivering, they are worse to look at than the real
+thing. Should even<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 217]</span> this fail me, I show the imitation scar on my fourth
+body-ring. That usually clinches the matter. The ichneumon fondly imagines
+that I am already occupied. So, if I am lucky, I turn at length to dingy
+pupa, and thus preserve my race.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Will you hear an amphibian?&rdquo; said the toad. He<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 218]</span> came from the centre of a
+grass-tuft, and spoke with solemn deliberation. &ldquo;Not one of you is more
+persecuted than I. From time immemorial I have been the loadstone of
+credulity, and&mdash;I am altogether defenceless. I am never worth eating, for
+the shock of capture opens every pore on my skin, drenching me with what
+the poets class as venom. So I am usually thrown aside with a broken back.
+For centuries I was thought to have a jewel in my head. How many of my
+hapless ancestors were tortured for that jewel! With the<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 219]</span> toad&#8217;s death,
+the jewel was believed to vanish. How many have been &lsquo;larned to be a toad&rsquo;
+by baffled, disappointed rustics! That is what puts the sad expression in
+my eye. How have I survived it all? By dogged perseverance. I lay so many
+eggs that one at least <em>must</em> survive. Thus is the balance of the race
+preserved. I myself was one of five hundred, the only one that reached
+maturity. Yet all were in the same long ribbon coil. The swan that gulped
+the coil, gulped all but me. I dropped into the brook alone, and there I
+quietly passed through my novitiate, egg to tadpole, tadpole to toadling,
+toadling to toad. When my tail was absorbed<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 220]</span> into my body, I sought a
+land-retreat. There I have spent my time for twenty years. None of you
+know it, and none ever will. I leave it only at twilight, and, as you
+pass, I shield my face with my fore feet. Froggin is much the same;
+nothing but his prolific quality saves him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img224.jpg" width="400" height="304" alt="Each branch of the oak" title="" />
+<span class="caption">each branch of the oak had its loopers.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 298px;">
+<img src="images/img225.jpg" width="298" height="300" alt="The toad" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&ldquo;will you hear an amphibian?&rdquo; said the toad.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Froggin is at least worth eating,&rdquo; said the grass-snake. He lay with
+all his four-foot length displayed in graceful sinuous curves, and was
+listened to in silence. Nothing loves a snake, however harmless. &ldquo;With me,
+as with the caterpillars, it is mostly bluff. I can swing back my head,
+and flatten the nape of my neck, as well as any deadly adder. I can also
+strike, but there is no poison behind the blow. My only weapon of offence
+is smell, a sickening musty smell, that makes the enemy<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 221]</span> loose his hold.
+Once I am halfway down a hole, I&#8217;m safe. I set my ratchet scales against
+the sides, and nothing can dislodge me. Only a jerk is dangerous, and that
+must be accomplished before I am fairly fixed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am armour-clad,&rdquo; said the stag-beetle. &ldquo;Could there be better method
+of defence? Look at the sliding joints of my breastplate. Human skill has
+copied it, but never has surpassed it. My horns look formidable, but for
+offence are useless. They are far from my eyes, and move but slowly. Give
+me time, and I can crush a tender twig between them, and suck its juices.
+That is all the purpose they serve me, yet they look like branching
+antlers, and that also is something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img226.jpg" width="500" height="202" alt="The grass-snake" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&ldquo;froggin is at least worth eating,&rdquo;<br /> said the grass-snake.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img227.jpg" width="400" height="244" alt="The stag-beetle" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&ldquo;i am armour-clad,&rdquo; said the stag-beetle.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 222]</span>&ldquo;I have heard you all,&rdquo; said the hedgehog. &ldquo;I have heard the flier&#8217;s point
+of view from the bat, the gymnast&#8217;s point of view from the squirrel, the
+swimmer&#8217;s point of view from the water-rat, and the assassin&#8217;s point of
+view from the stoat.&rdquo; For a moment he coiled himself up with a snap, but
+the stoat made no remark, so he slowly uncoiled himself, and resumed. &ldquo;Yet
+I maintain my original contention, there is nothing like spines. &lsquo;The
+fox&#8217;s tricks are many; one is enough for the urchin.&rsquo; What is the one
+unfailing, all-sufficing trick? The proper and judicious use of spines.
+All of you would use spines if you could. Most of you do. Think of the
+bramble-thickets, think of the furze, the last resort of valiant stoat
+and viper, think of the holly, where the sparrows roost.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Spines are the proved asylum of the spineless. Nature has flung them
+broadcast. She starts low down among the plants, thorn and thistle,
+gorse and cactus. Then she turns to the sea-urchins and caterpillars and
+beetles, then she fashions the globe-fish and thorny devil-lizard, then
+she comes to the birds&mdash;spikes are their only weapons&mdash;lastly, in me and
+mine, she reaches the fulness of perfection.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Think of the purposes spines serve me. Which of you defies the fox or
+terrier in the open? I leave the fliers out&mdash;running away is not defence.
+To me a fight is child&#8217;s play. The more inquisitive my foe, the tighter<span class='pagenum'>[Pg 223]</span>
+do I clinch myself together. They get more harm than I do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The last few words were spoken from within. The stoat approached gingerly,
+and turned the hedgehog over, seeking for a place to jump at. The bat
+wheeled across him, and swerved at the suspicion of those rigid spears.
+The caterpillars betook themselves once more to feeding. The water-rat
+slipped quietly down the stream,&mdash;she still feared the stoat. The squirrel
+ran openly down his tree-trunk, and secretly up the far side of it. The
+fear of the stoat was on him too. So the moon rose, and, for most, the
+chance of sport that night passed away.</p>
+
+<p>The hedgehog remained coiled for an hour. Then he shambled away, well
+satisfied. First he eat two pheasant eggs, then a belated frog, and then a
+nestling blackbird. As the sun mounted the eastern sky he once more sought
+the pile of leaves that lay against the hen-house.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">THE END</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="small">PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 95%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg 224]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
+<img src="images/img230.png" width="700" height="218" alt="The Girl&#39;s Realm" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>The Organ of the Girl of To-Day.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 20%;" />
+
+<p>THE GIRL&#8217;S REALM is the only magazine that supplies the needs of the Girl
+of To-Day.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is,&rdquo; says the <em>Pall Mall Gazette</em>, &ldquo;full of good, healthy reading,
+such as will stimulate girlish enthusiasm of all kinds.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Girls in Society, in business, at school; girl artists, girl musicians,
+invalid girls, studious girls, sporting girls, girls with hobbies, all say
+&ldquo;There is no magazine for girls but <span class="smcap">The Girl&#8217;s Realm</span>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="u">THE GIRL&#8217;S REALM does not stand still&mdash;</p>
+<p>its Editor is always abreast of girlish interests. Whether it is a new
+career for girls, a new game, a new stitch in needlework, or a new hobby or
+fad, <span class="smcap">The Girl&#8217;s Realm</span> is sure to be the first magazine
+to deal with it.</p>
+
+<p>Then there are articles on Careers, on Celebrated Girls&#8217; Schools, New
+Plays for Girls, Music, Art, Needlework, Furnishing, Gardening, and
+Natural History, in addition to Splendid Serials and Short Stories by
+well-known writers. The Girl&#8217;s Realm Correspondence and Exchange, by which
+girls all over the world may correspond and exchange stamps, postcards,
+books, music, etc., with each other, has become famous among girls, while
+the Guild of Service and Good Fellowship, founded by the Bishop of London
+(which numbers over 2,200 Girl Members), has proved a boon to many lonely
+and unfortunate girls as well as to the Members.</p>
+
+<p class="small1"><strong>Westminster Gazette.</strong>&mdash;&ldquo;Those who know &lsquo;<span class="smcap">The Girl&#8217;s Realm</span>&rsquo; in its serial
+form know that the publication is capitally edited, and that the contents,
+while appealing specially to the particular class for whom the magazine is
+intended, contains much that interests all classes of readers. The fiction
+is good and wholesome, and many of the different articles and papers are
+of great practical value to girls. The illustrations have always been
+notable, and this year they are perhaps, more numerous and excellent than
+ever.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="small1"><strong>Glasgow Mail.</strong>&mdash;&ldquo;&lsquo;<span class="smcap">The Girl&#8217;s Realm</span>&rsquo; ... is an exceedingly well-balanced and
+varied publication, cleverly illustrated, smartly written, and carrying
+throughout the healthy happy tone which is doubly acceptable....&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="small1"><strong>Yorkshire Post.</strong>&mdash;&ldquo;&lsquo;<span class="smcap">The Girl&#8217;s Realm</span>&rsquo; is, without exception, the best of
+the magazines provided for girls, and especially girls whose education in
+good private schools refines their taste.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="small1"><strong>The Lady&#8217;s Pictorial.</strong>&mdash;&ldquo;&lsquo;<span class="smcap">The Girl&#8217;s Realm</span>&rsquo; ... is brimful of bright and
+varied matter, both literary and artistic, and, edited with excellent
+taste and discretion, maintains its reputation as an ideal magazine for
+our daughters.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="small1"><strong>The Spectator.</strong>&mdash;&ldquo;So much pains is taken with magazines in general, that we
+have seldom anything but praise to give, and praise is necessarily
+monotonous. It is only fair, however, to remark that &lsquo;<span class="smcap">The Girl&#8217;s Realm</span>&rsquo; is
+specially good. The list of contributors is nothing less than remarkable,
+and the contents are worthy of the list.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 20%;' />
+
+<p class="center"><strong>OF ALL NEWSAGENTS AND BOOKSTALLS.</strong></p>
+
+<p class="center"><strong><em>Monthly, Sixpence. Yearly Subscription, post free, 9s. 6d.<br />
+including Double Xmas Number</em></strong>.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's "Wee Tim'rous Beasties", by Douglas English
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+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
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