rrel, taking her eggs. Will her failure in this
case cause her to lose faith in the protective influence of the shadow
of a human dwelling? I hope not. I have known the turtle dove to make
a similar move, occupying an old robin's nest near my neighbor's
cottage. The timid rabbit will sometimes come up from the bushy fields
and excavate a place for her nest in the lawn a few feet from the
house. All such things look like acts of judgment, though they may be
only the result of a greater fear overcoming a lesser fear.

It is in the preservation of their lives and of their young that the
wild creatures come the nearest to showing what we call sense or
reason. The boys tell me that a rabbit that has been driven from her
hole a couple of times by a ferret will not again run into it when
pursued. The tragedy of a rabbit pursued by a mink or a weasel may
often be read upon our winter snows. The rabbit does not take to her
hole; it would be fatal. And yet, though capable of far greater speed,
so far as I have observed, she does not escape the mink; he very soon
pulls her down. It would look as though a fatal paralysis, the
paralysis of utter fear, fell upon the poor creature as soon as she
found herself hunted by this subtle, bloodthirsty enemy. I have seen
upon the snow where her jumps had become shorter and shorter, with
tufts of fur marking each stride, till the bloodstains, and then her
half-devoured body, told the whole tragic story.

There is probably nothing in human experience, at this age of the
world, that is like the helpless terror that seizes the rabbits as it
does other of our lesser wild creatures, when pursued by any of the
weasel tribe. They seem instantly to be under some fatal spell which
binds their feet and destroys their will power. It would seem as if a
certain phase of nature from which we get our notions of fate and
cruelty had taken form in the weasel.

The rabbit, when pursued by the fox or by the dog, quickly takes to
hole. Hence, perhaps, the wit of the fox that a hunter told me about.
The story was all written upon the snow. A mink was hunting a rabbit,
and the fox, happening along, evidently took in the situation at a
glance. He secreted himself behind a tree or a rock, and, as the
rabbit came along, swept her from her course like a charge of shot
fired at close range, hurling her several feet over the snow, and then
seizing her and carrying her to his den up the mountain-side.

It would be int