Part 29

Though hibernating hedgehogs will remain above ground all the winter, in the hollows where leaves to cover them have accumulated, most retire to the rabbit-burrows. They are seldom found when ferreting operations are going forward, because the ferrets do not care to have dealings with them--though when hedgehogs are skinned or opened, ferrets relish their flesh as food. Keepers do not care to carry hedgehogs home, on account of the many unpleasant things that they distribute between himself and his ferrets. It is true that gipsies and others eat hedgehogs, and this is the time when they are in season for those who appreciate them, being at their fattest, as are all creatures about to retire for the winter. Gipsies caught trespassing at this time of year are always ready with the excuse that they are searching merely for hedgehogs--even if dogs and nets and ferrets happen to be in their possession. That they prefer hedgehog to rabbit is a tale for a grandmother. Yet they know well how to make a tasty dish of hedgehog. They burn off the bristles, split the prickly beast down his back, and broil him on a forked stick over a fire of wood. That is the quickest and cleanest way of cooking out of doors; and, for those who appreciate things grilled, the best. But for those whose taste is toward cooking with all the natural juices conserved, the elephant's-foot process is recommended. Take not merely your hedgehog's feet, but his whole body, "prickliwigs" and all, and encase in a jacket of clay, and bury in hot ashes. Before serving, peel off the clay and the prickles at the same time. Of hedgehog also may be made a stew of savoury brown. So that the stew's beginning may be in keeping with the traditions of the immortal cooks, take an onion stuck with cloves, then, having browned your neatly jointed hedgehog in a frying-pan, by means of a few ounces of butter (together with the clove-stuck onion), immerse it in good stock, to which add a few chopped truffles, and any other such appetising things you can lay hands on--a glass or so of champagne or other good white wine will not be amiss, while a squeeze of lemon-juice is held to effect a decided improvement. By simmering, reduce the liquid contents of the cooking-pan by one-half: and serve hot, garnished with little sippets of toast. Should you tire of hedgehog cooked in these ways, any of the numerous rabbit recipes may be applied. It is to be presumed that most people would soon have enough of the hedgehog dishes.

WINTER

Rustic Wit

Countrymen often display a dry humour all their own. At a shooting party we fell in with a beater, into whose charge one of the guns had given a well-filled cartridge-bag. Every now and again we noticed that the beater thrust his hand into the bag, and regarded the cartridges which he pulled out with a puzzled look. We inquired the reason, and it transpired that some of the cartridges were loaded with No. 5 shot, and some with No. 5-1/2, and that the beater had been asked to sort them by their owner, a gun of indifferent merits. He said, in continuation of his story: "He did tell I he can't get on nohow wi' sich mixed tackle. I reckon if there weren't no shots in 'em at all 'twouldn't make ne'er a marsel o' difference."

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The Oak City

Every oak-tree teems with life. Of insects alone five hundred species look mainly to the oak for support. When the tree grows to the age of fruitfulness--when sixty or seventy years have passed over its head--then its population is increased tenfold. Here is a reason for the incredible supplies of fruit--the great majority of the acorns go to support the pensioners, and thousands must be sown if one is to have a chance to develop into a seedling. Squirrels come to feast and hide the acorns as they hide nuts; the dormice come; human children come with sacks for the sake of the pigs at home; pheasants feast on the ground; rooks, more wary, amid the branches; hungry jays warn hungry wood-pigeons when the keeper approaches. To the animals, birds, and insects are added the parasite plants, fungi flourishing where a broken branch rots, lichens covering the bark, on the topmost bough the mistletoe.

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Acorns

Were it not for the oaks there would be scanty winter faring and feasting for many wild creatures. When acorns and hazel-nuts are scarce, and full beech-masts are not plentiful, birds and beasts have an unusually hard struggle to tide over the winter, even should it be mild, as a paucity of nuts is supposed to foretell. Different creatures like their nut food in different conditions and at different times. The rooks in their greed pull the acorns from their cups where they grow, others do not relish them in their fresh green state, and wait until they are ripe and mellow. Pheasants, who are very partial to acorns in autumn and winter, when more delicate faring is not available, prefer to eat them just as they begin to sprout. Like corn and other seeds, acorns when sprouting possess a peculiarly attractive sweetness. Some of the trees seem to produce fruit of extra sweetness or extra fine flavour--at least, the gamekeeper finds that his pheasants seem to prefer to feed beneath certain trees. Perhaps it is that those trees which are most sun-drenched produce the sweetest acorns, just as the most exposed hazel-nuts on the topmost twigs are so much better than the pale ones of the lowest branches.

The keeper welcomes a generous supply of acorns--provided that the trees which yield them grow in his woods, and not exclusively near the boundary of his beat. Wood-pigeons, as soon as they have cleared the beech-mast, their specially favoured food, will stuff their crops with acorns to the bursting-point--and so grow fat. Acorns also form an important item in the winter fare of rabbits and deer. It is true that they draw rats to the coverts, and even when the last acorn has gone it is not easy to clear the rats away completely. Whether or not there are plentiful acorns, the keeper is much indebted to the oak for food for pheasants, because they are so fond of the spangle-galls, to be found in plenty on the backs of the leaves, that they prefer them even to the maize which is freely scattered. All the galls of the oak, whether oak-apples, or bullet, artichoke, spangle, or root galls, are the outcome of eggs laid by the various gall-wasps, and the pheasants know that within the spangle-galls are the grubs, feeding on the galls' flesh. Left to themselves, the grubs will in due time reach the chrysalis stage of existence, to be hatched in June as winged insects, and to lay in turn the eggs which cause the pretty vermilion-spotted galls. So the wheel of life turns again and would turn for ever if unspoked by the pheasant's beak.

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Plump Rabbits

In mid-November rabbits are at their fattest. Grass has been green, sweet, lush, and growing; under the autumn sun, winter oats and wheat have sprung inches high, and rabbits have been enjoying rare feasts. The stoats, in turn, have found benefit in the autumn. It is on full-grown rabbits that they now depend chiefly for food. No longer can they feed on young birds; nor are small rabbits often to be met. Rats show fight when attacked, and stoats prefer to tackle game without power of resistance. Full-grown hares have too much staying power to be hunted down, and they are too fond of making for the open fields to be worth hunting. There are mice and field-voles, but the fat rabbits of the woods are the most obvious of possible meals. No hunt is more determined, ferocious, or relentless than when a stoat hounds a big rabbit to its death.

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The Stoat's Hunting

By scent alone the stoat runs down the rabbit chosen for its dinner. No matter how devious the rabbit's course, or how many other rabbits cross the trail, the one line of scent is followed to the end, and sooner or later the death-scream of the rabbit is inevitable. We have often seen the last act of the tragedy. One hunted rabbit made for the shelter of young underwood, cleverly twisting amid the jungle of fern, grass, and bramble, so that the leaping stoat could have been guided only by scent; the rabbit seemed to understand that the hollowness of the bottom of old wood offered few chances of dodging. At last the rabbit grew exhausted; and, at a loss to know where to run to shake off its pursuer, but a few yards behind, took to turning and twisting with redoubled energy, now rounding a leafy stump, then dashing into a clump of brambles, doubling, again rounding the stump, again flashing through the brambles--then sitting up for a second, listening to hear if the stoat were still following. The stoat, thus baulked again and again, grew ever more furious. Coming up on the hot scent to the leafy stump, round which the rabbit had slipped in the nick of time, it would dash in so furiously as to make the brown leaves rattle off, as a terrier leaps at a rabbit's seat from which the owner has just fled. The burning scent throws the pursuer into a frenzy. But the stoat, with a chatter of rage, lost little time in following on into the bramble clump; and the sight of man near by was not enough to turn it from its object. At last, in the brambles, it came upon the rabbit dead-beat--charged in a blind fury, sank its teeth into the head, worrying home the grip. Then, having disabled the rabbit, it retired a yard or two and charged again, retiring and charging at intervals, as if to gain fresh power for driving in the needle-sharp teeth.... At such a moment the keeper feels more than ever justified in shooting a stoat.

Waiting for the end of such a rabbit hunt, for a moment we lost sight of the chase; then felt certain we could hear the hoarse breathing of the captured rabbit in a thick spot, on the opposite side of the 20-foot ride near where we were standing. Yet we felt certain that neither stoat nor rabbit had crossed from our side. We waited, and sure enough the stoat caught the rabbit almost at our feet, where we had thought them to be. The mystery of the heavy breathing remained--the sound was exactly that of a rabbit being mauled by a ferret within a burrow. We crossed the ride, made search, and discovered a large hedgehog curled up in its nest. While the bloodthirsty business had been going forward six or seven yards away, the hedgehog had lain snugly wrapped in winter sleep--actually snoring!

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Mysteries of Scent

A stoat, if accidentally deprived of its power of scent, would soon come to starvation. All animals depend on scent not only for their food but for their protection, their power of recognition, and for nearly all the interests of their lives. The scent given off varies with occasion. In a state of rest it is modified. Thus a game-bird who has been on its nest for some time is in less danger of discovery than one that has just come to the nest, leaving a fresh trail. So the scent given off by foxes varies with their own condition--as, of course, with the weather. The greatest scent is left behind by the fox when he is warm with running; the least is given off at the beginning of a run, or at the end, when he is exhausted. The hunted fox well knows that his life may depend on the strength or weakness of his scent--this is made clear when he runs purposely through a herd of cattle or a flock of sheep.

Deluges of rain, burning sun, or extreme cold obliterate fox-scent, but slight heat combined with moisture, as when the sun shines after a warm shower, is in favour of a strong and enduring trail. But there is little certainty in the matter; as Mr. Jorrocks truly said, "Nothing so queer as scent 'cept a woman." On a promising day hounds may be at fault when within a score of yards of a fox; but on a day so apparently hopeless that few sportsmen trouble to attend a meet, as when a thin crust of hard-frozen snow covers the ground, the scent may be red-hot. One day may yield a perfect scent; on the next, apparently with the same weather conditions, the scent is elusive, and the hounds no sooner give tongue than they fall silent. Much depends on the nature of the country, or of the substance on which the volatile scent particles fall. Crossing the meadows, the hounds speak the line with certain voice; but when they come to dry, crumbling fallow-fields, the chorus dies away into a few doubtful whimpers. The time of the day has its effect on scent; in midsummer the woods may have no perfume in particular at midday, but are filled with sweet smells in the evening. Every one knows how a warm autumnal shower brings out the savour of dead leaves and the smell of earth.

To the fox, as to the stoat, the sense of smelling is the most important of all. With his nose the fox discovers nearly all his food. If the sitting game-bird has flown to her nest, and herself gives off the least perceptible scent, the fox easily finds her by that strong scent given off by chipping eggs. By scent he picks up the young leverets, after quartering the ground to gather the greatest advantage of the wind. He scents young rabbits in the stop when a foot beneath the surface of the earth, and when he starts digging them out he goes directly to their nest. So a good ratting terrier will point through a couple of feet of soil to the exact spot where a rat is lying. We have sometimes thought that an invention to magnify scents would prove of great benefit to the gamekeeper. But there might be fatal effects if a keeper, scent-improver on nose, came suddenly on that mushroom of the fetid odour commonly known as the Stinkhorn.

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The Axe in the Coverts

One of the many thorns that pierce the keeper's side is driven home at the time of the cutting of the underwood. Once in every span of ten or twelve years this time must come. Now and again the felling of part of a covert before shooting improves matters from a sportsman's view--the beats are simplified, or are more easily commanded with the regulation number of from five to nine guns. But the keeper knows to his cost that more often than not cutting the underwood is ruination to sport. Birds and rabbits are alarmed by the sound of the woodman's chopping, and half the hares fly before the smoke of the greenwood fires. Many complications arise through wood-cutting, as when the shooting is in other than the landlord's hands. When he wishes to cut certain portions of his woods, and the cutting may interfere seriously with sport or the showing of game, unpleasantness must arise among all parties--landlord, gamekeepers, shooting men, and copse-workers. Those responsible for the shooting should find out as early as possible which parts are to be cut, and arrange in good time with the landlord to make it a condition of sale that no cutting takes place before a convenient date. When several acres of underwood are felled, and the wood is left lying in long rows called drifts, a good deal of inconvenience may arise, unless the underwood is worked up as cut down. On shooting days half the pheasants in the place may skulk in the drifts, whence it will be impossible to dislodge them by ordinary beating methods of the most energetic type. Besides, drifts provide a safe refuge for rabbits. They increase incredibly, and in the following year they will be by far too plentiful for the welfare of the young shoots that spring from the shorn stumps.

The Uses of Underwood

Thirty years ago the price of underwood as it stood growing, at twelve years old, was about twenty pounds an acre; but to-day five pounds an acre is considered a good price for first-class underwood, so hard has the industry been hit by substitutes for ash and hazel. Though we have known underwood to fetch only half a crown an acre, we have seldom seen it described by auctioneers as other than "prime and ripe." The most useful kind is hazel. All sorts of sticks and stakes for the garden are cut of hazel. Wattle-fences are made of it, neatly woven, and the "hethers" which bind the tops of live fences. Closely woven hazel hurdles form a splendid protection for sheep from wind and rain; they cost, to buy, about eight shillings a dozen, and the hurdler is paid about half that sum. Hazel is now largely used in making the crates in which the product of the Potteries is packed. The cleanest growths were formerly made into the hoops of barrels, and one might see thousands of bundles stacked in a clearing. But iron is killing the hoop-makers' industry. One use of hazel has been unaffected by time--the use to which the country blacksmith puts it, when he winds handles of the shoots for his chisels and wedges--being pliant, they allow his tools to adjust themselves to the blow of the hammer. And the hazel-wand remains the favourite divining-rod of the water-finders.