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Title: "Wee Tim'rous Beasties": Studies of Animal life and Character

Author: Douglas English

Release date: July 24, 2007 [eBook #22129]

Language: English

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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.

“WEE TIM’ROUS BEASTIES”

the black rat sat back on his haunches,
pricked up his ears, and listened.

“WEE TIM’ROUS BEASTIES”

STUDIES OF ANIMAL LIFE AND
CHARACTER

BY

DOUGLAS ENGLISH
FELLOW OF THE ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN
AUTHOR OF “PHOTOGRAPHY FOR NATURALISTS”

SECOND EDITION

WITH ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
HIS PHOTOGRAPHS OF LIVING CREATURES

LONDON
S. H. BOUSFIELD & CO., Ltd.
12, PORTUGAL STREET, W.C.

To
MY DEAR CHILDREN
BRYAN AND WINNIE

PREFACE
For permission to include in this volume
“The Awakening of the Dormouse,” “The
Purple Emperor,” “The Harvest Mouse,”
and “The Trivial Fortunes of Molge,” I
have to thank the Editor of the Girl’s
Realm, and for “The Story of a Field
Vole,” and “The Passing of the Black Rat,”
I am indebted to the courtesy of the Editor
of Pearson’s Magazine.

DOUGLAS
ENGLISH.

Hawley,
Dartford,
September, 1903.

CONTENTS
Mus Ridiculus 1
The Story of a Field Vole 28
The Apology of the House Sparrow 48
The Awakening of the Dormouse 66
The Purple Emperor 88
The Harvest Mouse 118
The Trivial Fortunes of Molge 142
The Passing of the Black Rat 171
The Fox’s Tricks are many; One is Enough for the Urchin 192

“WEE TIM’ROUS BEASTIES”

MUS RIDICULUS
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 “Wee sleekit, cowrin’, tim’rous beastie” 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.
The scene rose vividly before him—the moon shining grimly overhead, and the
mouse-folk stealing from the half-threshed stack across two fields into the farmstead.
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.
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—and all within two fields.

mus ridiculus!

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.
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—he was used to close
quarters—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.
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’s aim. But, when once it is firmly
jammed, it is liable to congestion, and this is what awoke the mouse.
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.
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.
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.

it was only a cockroach, however.

Body, head, and feet alike, were sleek and resplendent before he caught a glimpse of
his disreputable tail. 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’s remedy. Taking the stripped portion in his fore-
paws—for, to his astonishment, he found that he could not move it otherwise—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.
He felt sleek enough to squeeze through anything—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 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—he would work that clear of the wood in no time, and so gain
freedom.
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.
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—jammed 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.
This time it was a harder task, for his mouth
was parched and tender, and his fingers
he tried each bar separately.
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.
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’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.
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.
Nature intervened at length, and lulled him into a semi-conscious, dream-bound
indifference.

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 yourself the
basement of a wheat-stack, occupied by a flourishing mouse colony—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—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.

the harvest mouse, that liliputian rustic.

In the presence of the latter he had always felt 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.
And what wild scampers those were! For free, unimpeded, safe racing, there is
nothing to touch the rat tunnels of a wheat-stack.
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’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.

It was a bluebottle that roused him. It floundered heavily against the bars, crawled
through, and brushed 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.

and left a bewildered kitten at the top.

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 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’s-breadth of his nose. It was his first sight of a terrier, and he realized that to
break cover was certain death.
Death, indeed, was very busy outside. Every minute a dog’s yelp, the shout of its
master, and the dull thud of a bludgeon, told plainly enough the tale of some unhappy
rodent’s dash for freedom.
And so the sun went down blood-red.

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.

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.

“‘The mouse behind the mouldering wainscot shriek’d.’”
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.
“Squeaked, surely?” The correction came in a soft, woman’s voice.
“No, shrieked; I am certain of it.”
“Squeaked, I think; a mouse doesn’t shriek.”

he rushed off to tell her before he should forget it.

“Ah, but this mouse had a poetic licence.”
“Look it up.”
“I will.”
The book was taken from within two inches of where he sat.

“‘Shrieked’ it is.”
It amused him vastly, for he had never shrieked in his life.
“Do you like mice?” It was the first voice speaking again.
“Hate them—smelly little things.”

she was a veritable queen among mice.

“Do you remember that thing of Suckling’s?—

“‘Her feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice, ran in and out,
As if they feared the light.’

“Pretty, rather, I think.”
“What’s pretty?”
“Oh, I don’t know—your feet, I suppose.”

he had fought five suitors to win her.

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.
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.
He found her in the midst of tiny wisps of paper, thread, and wool, that had been her
chief concern for three days past.
“Did you ever shriek?” he cried.
“No,” she replied; “but I shall do if you can’t be less clumsy.”
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.

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 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.

first she would sit upon the spring-door.

Under her guidance he learnt every nook and corner of the rambling house, the
swiftest ways from garret to 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.

then with flattened body she would
steal beneath it.

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.
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.

He, too, had been in the cat’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.
The moment the cat’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.
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.
He owed his rescue to a human hand, and the hand 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.

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—and then?

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.

was in the act of pushing her into shelter.

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 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’s hold. Finally, the stable itself was the training-ground for the household kittens.
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 realize their
position, a terrier was
amongst them,
dealing out scientific
murder. Fortunately,
their stable relations.
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’s mouth.
His final recollection
was of five and
twenty small corpses
laid out in a neat row
upon the stable floor.
Perhaps half a dozen
of his companions
had escaped by
burrowing in the
corn.
a clamber along a half-inch ledge.

a frantic scramble landed them
over the edge of the bin.

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—and
shrieked.

THE STORY OF A FIELD VOLE
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.
Under such circumstances it is difficult to retain one’s individuality, let alone one’s
impressions. Moreover some little time had elapsed before he really saw his
companions. Not that he was long actually blind,—that is the prerogative of the
carnivora, but his career commenced some feet below the surface of the earth, at the
termination of a long winding burrow, and a full fortnight had elapsed before he
eluded his mother’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.
His first sensation was one of
extreme cold, for his fur was at
this time little better than down;
Nature’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.
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
his first sensation was
had reached the mature age of
one of extreme cold.
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.
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.
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—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.
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 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’s training to reduce a nut.

nibbling, to begin with, at the pointed end.

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.

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.

ready, at the first scent of danger,
to glide back to cover.

Now and again a different sound would reach the hollow—the dragging tail swish of
the water-vole, or 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.
Once such a sound stopped abruptly and close at hand; a faint fœtid 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.
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 “something” was whirling in their midst. Wild confusion followed. The whole
interior of the nest seemed occupied by a swift-circling, curling, sinuous form.

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 adjoining grass-tuft. He was sick,
and dizzy, and bruised all over.
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.
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.
Terror-stricken as he was, he could hardly help admiring the easy supple swagger of
the creature’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.
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.
Very cautiously he retraced his steps to the familiar 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.

he still paused irresolute.

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, 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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’s hind foot, it was rigid and cold. Then the truth
burst upon him. He had nothing to fear—the owner of the foot was dead.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.

he tried to pick up his position.

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 squeaks as the two
bunchy velvet balls rolled over one another out of sight.
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.

vole-like this latter was,
yet he was no ordinary vole.

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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
a wood-mouse of high degree.

so, when the stranger leapt
lightly into the undergrowth.

Of this there could be but one solution. The nuts 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.

he humbly tried to follow.

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.
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.

she paused, and he saw her sniff suspiciously.

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. 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.

she swung round,
and he was discovered.

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.
His cause, moreover, was a bad one. Was he not 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.
He had only really felt one bite. A pair of razor teeth had nipped his spine, and—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.

THE APOLOGY OF THE HOUSE SPARROW
[Note.—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.]
“I was the odd egg, for one thing,” said the sparrow. He was speaking with his mouth
full, as usual.

he was speaking with his mouth full, as usual.

“What on earth do you mean by that?” I replied.
He laughed offensively. “Do you know anything about sparrows?” he sneered.
I confessed I did not know much.
“I never knew any one write about them who did,” he went on. “What was I saying
when you interrupted me?”
“You said you were the odd egg,” I replied. “What is an odd egg?”
“Do you know what a clutch is?” His intonation was insolence itself.
“A clutch,” said I, “is, I believe, a sitting of eggs destined to be simultaneously
hatched.”

“Perhaps you may have noticed,” said he, “that in our family”—his every feather
bristled with importance, and the white bars on his wings were beautifully displayed
—“we do not confine ourselves to a single monotonous pattern of egg.”
“A string of variegated sparrows’ eggs was one of my earliest treasures,” said I.
“Well, then, if you know that much, and don’t know what the odd egg is, you must be
a fool,” said he.
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.
“Any one,” he went on, with bland condescension, “who has seen a few clutches of
sparrows’ eggs, and has not noticed that there is an odd egg in each clutch, must be an
uncommonly poor observer.”
“It is not in the books,” I ventured to protest.
“Books!” he screamed, “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—that—that——”

there is an odd egg in each clutch.

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 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.
“Have you any clutches by you?” he said at
last.
I had, and fetched them.
“Now,” said he, “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.”
I had to admit that it seemed true.
“True,” said he, “of course it’s true. Didn’t I
tell you that I was the odd egg myself?” it was a full minute before

he broke the silence.
“Well, one of you had to be the odd egg, I
suppose?”
“Wrong again,” said he. “What you don’t seem to realize is, that the odd egg is nearly
always addled; in my case it wasn’t.”
“Then, in your case,” said I, “there was one more mouth to feed than your parents
expected. How did they take it?”
“Mother kept it quiet as long as she could,” said he.
“And father?”
“Father didn’t find out for a day or two, and when he did, he pushed one of my
brothers over the side of the nest—he did holler for his life!”
The little beast was actually chuckling at the recollection.
“He hung head downwards by one leg, and wouldn’t let go till father dug his beak into
him.”
“Brutal,” I murmured.
“Brutal! not a bit of it. You can’t feed more than a certain number of nestlings; besides
which, there wouldn’t be room in the nest. As it was, I fell out before I could fly.”
“What happened then?”
“Why, the old folks came and fed me, and helped me back again the shortest way up
the bark. Brutal, wasn’t it? A martin wouldn’t do that.”

“Which reminds me,” said I, “that you were not born in a martin’s-nest. Are trees the
fashionable quarter just now?”
“They’ve come in more since thatched roofs went out,” said the sparrow. “It’s tree or
martins’-nests nowadays.”
“You do really drive away the martins, I suppose?”
“Yes,” he sniggered; “poor, dear little martins! Look here,” said he, and his voice
changed from a snigger to vicious earnest. “We sparrows are just about sick of being
accused of bullying martins. White of Selborne started it, but he didn’t know what it
would lead to. Would you like to know the truth of the matter?”
It was one of the things I did want to hear, and I nodded assent.
“The disappearance of martins is a loss really of national importance,” he began, in a
sickly whine. “It is a shame to see how the pretty house martins are decreasing in this
country at the hand of the sparrows,” he continued. “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.”
He was obviously quoting from the pro-martin authorities, and I stopped him.
“I have heard all that before,” said I.
“There’s a fair amount of it about, pages and pages,” said he; “there’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?”
“I think it is untrue,” I promptly replied.
“It is untrue,” said he; “but it isn’t far away from truth, for all that. Many a dead
sparrow has been found in a martin’s-nest, and many a time the entrance was too
small for a sparrow to have got out of; but, still, it wouldn’t take a healthy sparrow
long to break up a martin’s-nest.”
“What has happened then?” said I.

one part of white arsenic to fifteen parts of
corn-meal, is the usual recipe.

“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 saw a friend of ours writhing
about in the feeding-ground, we should give that feeding-ground a wide berth.”
“I see,” said I; “but what about the entrance being plastered up?”
“It is never quite plastered up,” said he; “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’s just about the whole truth of the matter.”
“But why on earth,” I protested, “can’t you build a proper nest for yourself?”
“I don’t know why it is,” said he, “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’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, ‘How charming! so different to those
dirty, vulgar sparrows!’ 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’ 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. ‘Dear me!’ he says, ‘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’t mind my coming in at once. I’ve got to make
my family arrangements for the season.’ ‘Not quite,’ says the sparrow. ‘If it hadn’t
been for me, this nest would have been down in the last gale. I’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.’”
“That is all very well,” said I; “but it seems to me that there ought to be room for both
of you.”
“Well, there isn’t,” said he, “and Nature has worked it out that there shan’t be, and if
you write a thousand letters to the Field, you won’t alter that.”
“Suppose the martins got the pull over the sparrows, do you think it would be better
for things in general?”
“You mean better for yourself,” said the sparrow, sharply.
On reflection, I came to the conclusion that that was just what I did mean.
“I don’t believe an increase of insect-eating birds would do you much good,” he went
on. “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’t enough
insects to fertilize them?”
I felt it was time to shift my ground. “Let us get back to your early history,” said I.
“What was the nest like?”
“It was in a hole of a tree-stump,” said he. “A silly sort of place, I think, not ten feet
from the ground. Now I always build as high as I can—just underneath the rooks’-
nests, in fact. You’re safe from boys; they don’t shoot your nest to bits for fear of
shooting the rooks’-nests too; and there’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’ fancy. Of course the
nest was distinct from the casing. That was the usual straw. I think it is the casing of
sparrows’-nests that you humans object to as untidy.”
“We chiefly object to the portion which stops up the water-pipes,” said I. “What did
you have to eat?”

“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.”

it was in a hole of a tree-stump.

“You can get corn all the year round?”
“Oh! easily enough. In the fields, when it is growing; round the wheat-stacks later, or
among the poultry—people don’t shoot into the middle of the poultry—anywhere, in
fact.”
“And you really like corn better than anything?”
“There is nothing quite so nice in the world,” said the sparrow, “as fresh, young corn
in the ear, which you can just squeeze the juice out of and then drop.”
“And are you aware of the amount of damage which you do to the poor, struggling
farmer?” said I, assuming a judicial severity which I was far from feeling.
The flippancy was infectious.

“A recent estimate places it at £770,094 per annum,” said the sparrow. “Just think of
that!”
“In this country alone,” said I. “You seem to forget America, Australia, South Africa,
and all the other places to which you have been unhappily introduced as an
insecticide.”
“You seem to forget,” he retorted, “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—and that’s here.”
“I don’t think any one has suggested that you should be exterminated,” said I.
“‘To lessen their numbers in our country, every possible means must be had recourse
to.’ There’s a pretty piece of grammar for you.”
He was obviously quoting again.
“You couldn’t exterminate me if you tried, and, therefore, you very properly don’t
suggest it. I have been called the Avian Rat, and I am 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.”
“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?”
“The end of it will be that you will preserve our enemies instead of shooting them at
sight.”
“Meaning?”
“Hawks, owls, weasels, and so on.”
“But hawks would never come near the towns?”
“We aren’t in town the whole year round. Even the cockneyest of sparrows has his
month or two in the cornfields. I don’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.”
“What about the pheasants?” said I.

“There would be fewer pheasants,” said the sparrow; “and, if you only knew it, they
would taste better, if there were.”

you have been shot at.

“Sparrow,” said I, “to speak disrespectfully of the battue places you at once outside
the pale. You are an Avian Rat. You do 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, 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 Field, and yet—and yet—an inscrutable Providence has decreed that
you shall survive, increase, and multiply. What good do you do?”

trapped.

“Have you ever heard me sing?” said the sparrow.
“Sing!” I cried; “that sempiternal twitter, that intolerable chirrup that destroys the best
and latest hours of sleep! Do you call that singing?”
“What bird would you prefer?” he blandly inquired.
I considered for a moment. The grim possibility of ten thousand nightingales
yodelling in chorus, of ten thousand skylarks, or of ten thousand cuckoos, determined
my answer.
“I cannot think of one,” said I. “But this is no merit on your part, it is merely a
qualification of evil.”

netted.

“I thought you would acknowledge that,” 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 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’s beaks.

avian rat, indeed! rather avian scavenger!

“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 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.

i felt ashamed.

“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.”
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.

THE AWAKENING OF THE DORMOUSE
He lay face downwards—two tiny fists tight-clenched against his cheeks, his feet
curled up to meet them, his tail swung gracefully across his eyes.
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.
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.

“what, awake?” shouted the squirrel.

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 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.
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.

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
splotches of violet and primrose, and, over all, hung the green shimmer of spring.
To the dormouse’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.
As his hearing sharpened, the old familiar sounds returned, the chirping of the titmice,
the starling’s discord, the sniggering of the robin, the squirrel’s bullying cough. How
he had hated the squirrel—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!
He looked up, and caught the squirrel’s eye.
“What, awake?” she shouted. “It’s not quite time for good little dormice. You wait till
it’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.”

(l) my lady shadowtail. (r) mother!

“Chuc!”
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.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” said the dormouse.
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.
“Have you any nuts?” said the dormouse. “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.”
“You’ll be asleep two hours before it’s dark,” said the squirrel, “and I haven’t any
nuts, or rather, I haven’t the least idea where I put them. Didn’t you make a store?”
“Only a small one—seeds, I think,” said the dormouse. “I was very drowsy when I
made it, and I daren’t hope that it is in good order.”
“Where is it?” said the squirrel.
“The second hazel on the left,” said the dormouse; “the third hollow from the top.”
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.

“There’s your store.”
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.
“Why didn’t you nibble the ends off?” said the squirrel. “You can’t expect seeds to be
seeds for ever. Oh, it’s your first hibernation, is it? Well, you’ll know better next time.
Here’s a nut for you.” She had held it concealed in her palm, and produced it like a
conjuror.
“She’s not such a bad sort, after all,” thought the dormouse, as he proceeded to
examine the nut.
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.
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.
Assuredly it was the very hardest nut in all the world. Twenty minutes’ hard work
produced a small round hole, ten minutes more enlarged it so that he could thrust his
lips inside. Then he sucked vigorously to secure the kernel, and secured instead a
mouthful of black dust.
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.
“Never mind, dormouse,” shouted the squirrel, “you will know a bad egg next time.
Try this.”
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.
“Eat it,” she shrieked; “eat it before the sun goes down. It’s going now.”
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.

The primroses had long yielded pride of place to the 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—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.
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.
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—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.
From heaven above came the skylark’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, 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.

it was the orange-tip.

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’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. “Shrewmouse!” he cried, “is it time?”
But the 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’s rabbit, he fondled his
harmless face in the most elaborate of toilets, then he took one nibble at the remnant
of the squirrel’s nut, and dropped off to sleep till the twilight.
before him lay the twilight world he loved.

“figure somewhat stout,” says the book.

It is time to describe him.
“Figure somewhat stout,” says the book, “a single pair of pre-molars in each jaw, first
toe of the fore-foot rudimentary, tail cylindrical,” etc. The dormouse was anything but
stout—six months’ fasting, save 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—he was alive.

his eyes? nor pen nor camera can present them.

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 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.
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 life, and
you will have the dormouse eye.
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.
The plume is a natural parachute, not so obvious, perhaps, as in the squirrel’s case,
but, weight for weight, of equal service.
His feet? Ten toes behind and eight before, sharp-pointed toes that grip the slenderest
twig, and catch the slightest foothold in the bark.
His ears? Small, say the books. Not small, but rather hidden in the deep surrounding
fur.

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, flitting
shadow might easily have baffled you. For, as he reached the surface of his nest, the
sun went down.

sharp-pointed toes that catch the
slightest foothold in the bark.

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 the herbage—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—white—gleaming, swift and silent as a moth.
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.

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
once more he felt the magic pulse of life
the root of a
within him.
it was the same
neighbouring hazel
soft fur that he
came a stealthy
had nestled in
procession of five bank voles. Each, as it gained the entrance,
last year.
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.
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.
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, 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.

he waited for her as long as he dared.

And mother? Mother had lost some of her spring, but she had developed
judiciousness, and a fine eye for country. It was this latter which, to her son’s
amazement, usually kept her two bushes ahead. It was this which made him miss her
as the day broke.
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.
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.
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.
It was late autumn. His wife had already felt the coming of winter, and retired to her
six months’ sleep. He himself had sealed her in.

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
Christmas. He had rebuilt his own nest in the same old
hollow, for he knew that he could not hold out much
longer.
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.
The sun had scarcely set before he felt chilled and
uncomfortable. To warm himself he did three minutes’
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.
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 would take his nest, he could easily build
mother was climbing painfully up another. Most certainly she would not. He could help
to him. her to put some leaves into hers to-morrow. But that
night came the first frost.

but that night came the
first frost.

THE PURPLE EMPEROR
Down by the brookside the Sallow drooped her sunburnt leaves despondently. Things
were at their dullest.
Three months ago she had been a tree of importance. Her dark, slender branches had
formed a fashionable rendez-vous. Each evening she had seen her golden catkins
studded with opals—the eyes of soft, furry, blundering moths. Each day the bees had
thronged to pay court to her.
Then came Palm Sunday. Her catkins were stripped from her, worn for a few hours in
yokels’ hats, and flung aside. The moths came no more; the bees forsook her for the
bluebells.
But the kingfishers cared nothing for her appearance. They nested, as usual, deep in
the bank below, in a hollow formed by her roots.
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.
By the time the nestlings were fledged, the sallow wore its summer mantle, a down-
lined cloak of green.
The interesting event had been a diversion. Now there seemed nothing to look forward
to.
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.
The brook was not what it had been. Its waters were being drawn away to thirsty
London, and herein lay the sallow’s chief vexation.
This year her upper boughs had never flowered. Summer arrived, and she had hoped
against hope. They had never even put forth leaves.
To be prematurely bald is disheartening. This baldness was so premature as to be
serious. It was the first warning of decay.

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.
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 imperial
nursery. So she came with unerring instinct to the brook.
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.
The sallow humbly drooped her leaves as one who receives royalty.

a small, green-yellow, translucent
cone.

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.
For the rest of the day the sallow held her head high.

There were fourteen eggs in all. Six reached maturity, but we are only concerned with
one of them. Outwardly he was much like the others. A day’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.
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.

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’s end he lost his appetite. His body was now
of a decided green—green with the finest powdering of yellow. About his waist the
yellow fused into a crescent. Nine of him would have measured an inch.
On the eighth day he ceased feeding altogether. He 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.
During his abstinence he had grown two horns. They branched straight out before
him, bristling with short spines, a full third of his length.
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?
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—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.
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,—the little Emperor was quite 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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

(l) growing more slug-like every day. (r) for all his rainbow tints, nature had decreed that he should
live invisible.

Birds passed him by unnoticed. Once, and once only, the ichneumon marked him
down.
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.
Before she could establish herself, a vicious back-sweep of his horns dislodged her.
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 pupæ 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.
The little Emperor was fat and well-liking—an ideal créche for young ichneumons;
but the little Emperor was very wide-awake.
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 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.
At sundown she withdrew discomfited; the little Emperor’s horns had served him
well.

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.
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 head
downwards. For three days he hung thus motionless, yet within him there was a lively
motion.
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—life within life, being within being.

the crowded segments of his body
recalled the pile of velvet.

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.
On the colour and form combined

fourth their skilful mimicry.

day this
shell
split
cleanly
at the
tail, and,
from the
opening,
the hind
part of
the
on the chrysalis head
chrysali
were two short-
s
pointed horns.
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 point
d’appui.
its form the form of the sallow-leaf.
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—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.
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 it. It jerked lightly from leaf to leaf, until it reached the ground.
The second change was accomplished.
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.
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.

he chose the loftiest branch
of the loftiest oak in the forest.

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
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.
Still he had no choice in the matter; his time had come, and he must make the best of
it.

whites.

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.
There is no room for wing expanse inside a chrysalis. Material for wings was lying
ready on his shoulders, it was moisture laden, packed in crumpled folds, and lifeless.

brimstones.

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.
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.
By sundown the great change of all was over. The Emperor, no longer little, was fit to
mount his throne. Westward, as if in sympathy, the sky was flooded with imperial
purple.

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.

peacocks.

It was a brilliant gathering that greeted the Emperor. Every colour, every form was
there. Whites and 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.

hairstreaks.

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.
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.

admirals.

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.

skippers.

the white and admirable sibylla.

Once, and once only, did he deign to touch the 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’ 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’s straw hat. Had the hat covered the flint 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.

she sat on an oak pinnacle
outlined against the sky.

the emperor alighted within a foot of her, ... as he opened
his wings to show their beauty.

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’s-breadth off the flint, and, in a moment, the Emperor was fifty feet above
him.
It had been a near thing. Higher he soared, and 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.

she turned her
back on him.

the emperor once more settled
on a neighbouring leaf.

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. 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.

the emperor crept along the leaves a little closer.

he showed her the broad,
white ribbon that he also wore.

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’s presence. 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.
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, 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.

he even uncurled his saffron proboscis, and toasted her in
the sap of the oak-leaf.

THE HARVEST MOUSE
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.
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.
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 their hands with glee, for they found
that his upper incisors were abnormal.
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—Sorex Minutus. The
lesser shrew. The smallest British quadruped.

then a liliputian shrewmouse turned up.

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.

He can afford to be superior, for he has yet another unique
distinction left, and that is not likely to be taken from him.
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.
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.
He is so proud of it that he cleans it continually. Other
he, and he only, has a
mice clean their tails at odd times—only when they really
prehensile tail.
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 his hind legs and combs it with his teeth. It
is quite worth it.

the harvest mouse sat on the top of a
stalk and nibbled his supper.

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 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,—a sand-stained green like that of
shallow sea. Yet there was cover enough for him. In a week’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.
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 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 of the
the wood-mouse.
cornfield, he alone could thread the avenues in
perfect silence.

(l) in the first budding and ripening of the wheat
he tasted the true joy of living.
(r) sometimes waiting for the wind to sway the corn and help him.

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.
The rat’s approach was a blundering four-footed crescendo, clear to mouse-ears as is
the ringing of a horse’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.
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 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.

as dainty a little harvest mouse
as ever crossed a cornfield.

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 of making him jump, and involuntary jumping is always
unpleasant.
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.

her front was of the purest white, and twisted in a
dainty curve to match her features.

Her coat was of the softest fawn-chestnut; sharply contrasted with her pure white
front, and twisted in a 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.

her eyes were small,
but they were very gentle.

Far into the evening he pressed his suit. When the inevitable rival mouse appeared,
half the sun’s disk was already masked by the hedgerow. Ungainly, straggling
shadows spread across the field, dark bars across a lurid crimson ground. Never was
finer mise-en-scène for such a conflict. They fought on the very summits of the stalks,
and the sun just managed to see the finish.

never was finer mise-en-scène
for such a conflict.

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.
Nine cornstalks formed the scaffolding. Six inches 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’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.

frivolling.

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.
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.
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.
Perhaps they realized that prey on the surface is
the owl’s ideal. It is also the hawk’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’s great
chance comes when the corn is “stitched” in
shocks of ten. Then he quarters the stubble, and
nothing clear of shelter escapes him.
for an hour they enjoyed the novel
So the summer had passed—the perfect summer
sensation.
that comes once in a century. Day after day the
sun had 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.
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 his burrow, for, as I have
said before, the nest was only a
nursery.

then the long-drawn wail of the brown owl drove them

below in haste.

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, crescendo and diminuendo. The harvest
mouse was in the very centre of a square field.
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—a small man sat
upon the leading horse; but there was something behind these.

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
he climbed between
giant’s grasp to feed its in five minutes he was up

two towering stalks.
ravenous cutters. Round aloft once more.
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 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.

the mouse crept two grains higher
when he saw him.

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 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.
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—the most
courageous eye in all the world. Something was very wrong indeed with the stoat—he
never even bared his teeth.
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.
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.
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 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.

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.

berus the adder made a flattened spiral of his coils.

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 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.
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.
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.

the harvest mouse’s nest.

And the harvest mice? The mother-mouse dashed to her nest as she saw it falling, and
a wheel of the 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 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—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.
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.
For an hour he waited within the sheaf, dubious and uncertain. Then he stole from his
shelter. Within five 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.
The field was flooded with moonlight. On all sides resounded the ominous hum of
beetles’ 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.
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.
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.
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 steep, and then scrambled
lightly down to earth. A perpendicular descent was nothing to him.
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.

THE TRIVIAL FORTUNES OF MOLGE
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.
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.

He was straight, but unlovely—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.
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.
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.
Its use he learnt by grim experience. When first he moved it, it drove him headlong
into inky darkness. 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.
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’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.
In a week’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 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—froggy’s come behind, he wants
them to swim with—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.
It
was
the
char
m of
a
free-
swim
ming
his sucker had taken the exist his gills were longer and more

semblance of a mouth. ence feathery.

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 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—Cyclops is her first cousin—and the taste, once acquired,
never left him.
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—his right hind leg—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.
He stayed there for a succession of days, getting hungrier and hungrier, for it was only
the smallest fry 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’ 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 breathed the air.
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, he stayed there for a succession of

for all practical purposes, useless; his lungs, ready days.

but unpractised. The necessity of air-breathing was
forced on him at a moment’s notice.
Small wonder that he commenced by overdoing 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.
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—it was as if the swimming instinct had left him
—he commenced to crawl 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. “A’ dug the spade a fut deep and turned he up,
the poisonous effet, a’ soon stamped on he!” Sometimes it is the housemaid. “Please
m’m there’s lizards in the cellar, I dursn’t go near.” Sometimes a halfpenny head-line.
“Can Life be Indefinitely Prolonged? Startling Discovery in a Lump of Coal.” But,
wherever he may have got to, I can assure you of this, that for three whole years he
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.

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.
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.

he glided into the water slowly.

He glided into the water slowly, and, as it were, ashamed. But he need not have been.
In three years’ 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 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.

his old skin hung before him.

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’s turn, for this he had to squeeze himself between the weed-stalks.
Lastly, he cleared his legs and tail.
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.

the tadpoles were lazily browsing on the starwort.

Even these beauties paled before his tail—a ribbon whose jet black centre shaded into
violet, and whose edges were flushed with crimson.

the very sticklebacks fought shy of him.

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
æsthetic sense, and he left his weed-shelter in ravenous haste.

He had not far to go—a swim of ten yards, and he was among the tadpoles.
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’ 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—he had a nest to
guard and would have charged a pike—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.
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 legs also were hopeless. A
change of diet was imperative, and, in seeking for this, he came into collision with the
water-spider.

he bristled defiance from a safe distance.

scattered in flashing, rainbow-tinted disarray.

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’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’s leap from its bubble, the glint of its shears as they
met in the wretched creature’s neck, the ghastly quivering tremor of the case. Then the
fierce eight-legged efforts to extract the victim, and finally the awful cunning that
seemed intelligent of Nature’s devices, and pulled it out, as any angler would, tail
foremost.
the water-spider lived by himself
in a bubble of his own making.

when the newt first saw him he
was devouring a caddis-worm.

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’s scheme,
and bit for freedom. The spider lost a foot, but left its mark, and the spider’s hairy foot
was not worth eating.

snatched an infant dragon-fly from the jaws of the water-
scorpion.

In his next robbery he was more judicious. He 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.
the water-boatman was difficult to do justice to.

it was a case of mutual attraction.

Probably it was a case of mutual attraction. He swung his tail and crest before her,
comeliest and most 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.

the giddy vortex of newt society.

For newts they made an excellent and well-matched pair. Of course they had their
disagreements. Newts are by nature fickle and inconstant.

sometimes they traversed the middle deeps.

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.
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.
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.
It was the flood that parted them. For three days it had rained unceasingly on the
surface of the brook. 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.

sometimes they sunned
themselves on the surface.

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.

a roach snapped idly at him.

each lampern was anchored by its sucker
to a rounded pebble.

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 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
the new portion was
his tail, and was probably his salvation. Without a
stubby and colourless.
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’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.

THE PASSING OF THE BLACK RAT
[Note.—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.]
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.
Every rat knows the scratching of his relations; but the black rat had no relations.
Six weeks ago there had been at least two others of his kind in existence—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 duello, and position had not favoured him.
After a series of disastrous frontal attacks, he had 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 coup de grace. But the coup de grace never came.
There had been a diversion in the rear, and into the cause of that diversion he had not
troubled to inquire.
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.
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—the black rat does not coarsen
with age—then, one by one, with fearless inconsequence, the younger ones; lastly,
save two, his own contemporaries.

The scratching seemed to get louder. The black rat glided, like a shadow, towards it. It
sounded from the bottom of the door.

first the patriarch, white about the muzzle, grizzled all over, but still
of eminent distinction.

Three sides of the cellar—for a hundred years the cellar had been the rats’ stronghold
—were solid masonry. The fourth side was a wooden partition. At one corner of this
stood the door, close-fitted to its sill and frame, and shrouded in cobwebs, which, in
rats’ 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.
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.
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—a brick’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.
From the second hole the run passed into the masonry once more, zigzagged upwards
into the storeroom, and ended.
From the storeroom there were countless exists—down the gutter into the courtyard (a
short cut to the shambles), beneath the flooring to the scullery, and thence along the
drain-pipe to the great sewer, through the ventilator on to the roof—anywhere,
everywhere.

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.
Nothing but a rat could have heard that; it was certainly a rat, but who?
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—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.
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’s.

he stole forward until the points of his whiskers brushed lightly against
the door.

For the first few yards, between brickwork and wainscot, the run was clear enough;
but, as it turned upwards to the floor above, something seemed unfamiliar.
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.

he tried to steady himself by
nibbling at a stray corn-ear.

It drew closer and closer. It got upon his nerves. He tried to steady himself by nibbling
at a stray 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.
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.
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.

it was the most vulgar, ill-conditioned
beast he had ever set eyes on.

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!
The sight of it was enough, and he drove at it full tilt.
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—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
—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.
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.
They came very slowly at first—a dirty cohort of 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.
It was the watchman’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.
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.
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 watchman’s step had barely
ceased, before the hole at the base of the door was, for a moment, obscured.
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.
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.
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.

the position showed him at his best.

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. Then a
dozen more. The Hanoverian army was spreading its wings.
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.
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.
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 up to its blocked
extremity. There he braced his back against the concrete and waited.

He waited for three days, his muzzle grounded, his eyes peering into the darkness, his
every sense alert. He ate nothing, he drank nothing—to all appearance he never slept.
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.
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’
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.
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.

the farther one was cleaning itself.

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.
Five feet below lay the floor. Its surface glistened with shifting beads of light—light
from rats’ eyes.

He was between the devil and the deep sea—the floor was the sea, and the devil was
assuredly advancing towards him. Never before had he set eyes on such a beast—ten
inches from head to tail, brawny, misshapen, mangy, a veritable Caliban of rats.

a veritable caliban of rats.

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 ground, the black rat’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.
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.
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.
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.

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.
Yet he accounted for four of those below, which made five altogether.

“THE FOX’S TRICKS ARE MANY; ONE IS ENOUGH
FOR THE URCHIN”
(Old Greek Proverb).
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.
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.
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.
The effort was of short duration, yet, before the sun had sunk, the things that loved the
river had caught his message.

the water-rat came from a hole five feet above the river-
level.

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.
That is what brought them all out together.
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—a gently sloping tunnel which
led from nest to stream. But to-night it was very still. She padded quietly to the
water’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.
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—
perhaps the wood-peckers could tell you—but rain had certainly finished its
excavation. The entrance was some thirty feet above the ground—dank, noisome, and
forbidding; the end was near the roots.
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.
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—the noctule’s wing-spread measures a full foot; lastly, the
webbed curving triangle of feet and tail.

the noctules came from the hollow of the
old chestnut.

Each, as it blundered free, clung, for a space, head downwards to the bark, then
slacked the grip of its ten 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’s horny back is all he
knows of music.
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.
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’ 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.
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 him. Sometimes, when cover failed, he broke into a bow-legged run.

The squirrel came from high up in the beech tree—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’s “nest” to sportsmen; to speak of fox’s
“burrow” 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.
The mole’s uneasy, crimson-pointed muzzle came from a hole right on the water’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.
The grass-snake seemed to come up from the river bottom. His head suddenly parted
the water beneath the old pollard, and he swam slowly across the stream, craning his
neck before him. The pollard was inwardly rotten to the core—a snug retreat for
snakes, to which the only entrance was a water-way.
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.
The moths and caterpillars and beetles, came from everywhere—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.

It was the hedgehog who started it. The hedgehog has a keen sense of humour, and,
for that reason, he loves an argument.
“I will back my spines,” said he, “against any means of defence in the country.” 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. “Or any means of
offence,” he added.
This was too much.
“Spines!” sneered the stoat. “Spines might be some use if you had any pace behind
them. Where would they come in against a hare?”

it was the hedgehog who started it.

“Spines would be awkward in the shallows,” 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.
“Spines!” squeaked the noctule from the safe height of a hundred feet. “Why load
yourself with spines? Why not fly like me?”
“Spines!” shouted the squirrel. “A pretty mess you’d make of it with spines up here.
Do you think every one spends their life grubbing after ground beetles?”
“Spines!” purred the moths. “We gave up spines at quite an early stage. Haven’t you
finished moulting, hedgehog?”
“Spines!” snapped the trout. “Give me a good set of fins.”
Now this was exactly what the hedgehog had foreseen. As I have said before, he had a
keen sense of humour.
“I am willing to hear you all,” said he.
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.

the noctule spoke first; he opened his mouth as
though he would eat the world.

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 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—
“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 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. I 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.”
Next spoke the stoat, the swash-buckler. He cleared his throat with a short, rasping
bark, glared round him, and began—
“I am the only flesh-eater among you all,” said he. The hedgehog’s smile broadened,
but he said nothing. “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.” (This from the stoat!) “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 am cunning as a fox. From my fur, when I
am dead, comes the imperial ermine. Would you pit yourself against me, hedgehog?”

next spoke the stoat, the swash-buckler.

“I would,” said the squirrel.

“I would,” 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. “The stoat is an amateur climber.” (“Wait till I get to your nursery!” snarled
the stoat.) “He has no idea of taking cover. A treed stoat against a human is doomed.
Look at his black-smudged tail—only a trifle better than a weasel’s. It reminds me of
my summer moult—but it’s worse; and, in the 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 my fur, when I am dead, comes the camel-hair brush.”
Next came the dormouse. “Sleep is the best defence of all,” he said. “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’s eating beetles.”
After him the wood-mouse. “Give me a good burrow underground,” said he. “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—they rot away. Earth-stored nuts, tight packed, are the
sweetest things I know.”
“What of summer?” said the hedgehog.
“Weight for weight,” said the mouse, “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.”

two fields away you can
see my fortresses.

“who talks of burrows,” said the mole.

“Who talks of burrows?” said the mole. “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 from the run; from it are a dozen exits
to the surrounding field. One tunnel only leads into the nest. 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.”

the mole-cricket turned up from nowhere in particular.

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.
“I am older than the mole,” he said, “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—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.”
“Burrowing,” said the hedgehog, “is a low form of defence. What says the water-rat?”
“I burrow, too,” said the water-rat. “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’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.”
“This is neither defence nor offence,” said the hedgehog.
“The only offensive thing I have is a pair of incisors,” said the water-rat. “They are
orange-yellow and very strong. As regards defence, I can do more in the water than
most.”

“not more than me,”
the young trout broke in.

“Not more than me,” 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. “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!”
“That is enough from any one of your years,” said the hedgehog. “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.”
The jack that lived in the deep below the pollard grinned, but said nothing. The jack
knew better, but he never says anything. But the gudgeon and the troutling were
terrified at the notion of bigger fishes, and made straight for the weeds.

but the gudgeon and troutling made straight for the
weeds.

“What think the caterpillars?” said the hedgehog.

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 spoke first.
He bent his head
backwards until it it was the lobster-moth-to-

touched his tail, folded be that spoke first.

the knee-joints of his
skinny legs, and began—
“It is all bluff,” said he, “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
most of them fling their heads back, play at being snakes. Some grow eyes upon them,
arch their necks, and play at being not real eyes, but markings which serve as such,
snakes. 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—”
“That is what we do,” cried the loopers. Each branch of the oak had its loopers,
feeding cheerfully, transforming themselves to twigs, and shamming death in quick
succession.
“Sometimes,” continued the lobster-moth-to-be, “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 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 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.”
“Will you hear an amphibian?” said the toad. He came from the centre of a grass-tuft,
and spoke with solemn deliberation. “Not one of you is more persecuted than I. From
time immemorial I have been the loadstone of credulity, and—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 toad’s death, the
jewel was believed to vanish. How many
have been ‘larned to be a toad’ 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 must
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.
not real eyes but markings which serve as
When my tail was absorbed into my body, I
such.
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.”

each branch of the oak had its loopers.

“will you hear an amphibian?” said the
toad.

“Froggin is at least worth eating,” 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. “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 loose his hold. Once I
am halfway down a hole, I’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.”
“I am armour-clad,” said the stag-beetle. “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.”

“froggin is at least worth eating,”
said the grass-snake.

“i am armour-clad,” said the stag-beetle.

“I have heard you all,” said the hedgehog. “I have heard the flier’s point of view from
the bat, the gymnast’s point of view from the squirrel, the swimmer’s point of view
from the water-rat, and the assassin’s point of view from the stoat.” For a moment he
coiled himself up with a snap, but the stoat made no remark, so he slowly uncoiled
himself, and resumed. “Yet I maintain my original contention, there is nothing like
spines. ‘The fox’s tricks are many; one is enough for the urchin.’ 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.
“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—spikes are their only weapons—
lastly, in me and mine, she reaches the fulness of perfection.
“Think of the purposes spines serve me. Which of you defies the fox or terrier in the
open? I leave the fliers out—running away is not defence. To me a fight is child’s
play. The more inquisitive my foe, the tighter do I clinch myself together. They get
more harm than I do.”
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,—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.

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.

THE END

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