It rises steep; then a broad green ledge; and after that, still steeper, the face of a long-deserted sand-pit, where high up a rabbit sits at the mouth of his hole, within range, but certain to escape even if hit, and therefore safe.  On the turf below is a round black spot, still showing, though a twelvemonth has gone by since we landed with half a dozen perch, lit a fire and cooked the fishes.  For Molly never could ‘a-bear’ perch, because of the hardness of the scales, saying she would as soon ‘scrape a vlint;’ and they laughed to scorn our idea of skinning them as you do moorhens, whose ‘dowl’ no fingers can pick.

So we lit a fire and blew it up, lying on the soft short grass in a state of nature after a swim, there being none to see us but the glorious sun.  The skinned perch were sweeter than any I have tasted since.

‘Look!’ whispers Orion, suddenly.  The quill above the blue buoy nods as it lifts over the wavelets—­nods again, sinks a little, jerks up, and then goes down out of sight.  Orion feels the weight.  ’Two pounds, if he’s an ounce!’ he shouts:  soon after a splendid perch is in the boat, nearer three pounds perhaps than two.  Flop! whop! how he leaps up and down on the planks, soiled by the mud, dulling his broad back and barred sides on the grit and sand.

Roaming about like this with the gun, now on the water in the punt, and now on land, we gradually came to notice very closely the game we wished to shoot.  We saw, for instance, that the rabbit when feeding or moving freely, unless quickened by alarm, has a peculiar way of dwelling upon his path.  It almost resembles creeping; for both fore feet stop while the hinder come up—­one hinder foot slightly behind the other, and rather wide apart.

When a fall of snow presents a perfect impression of his passage, it appears as if the animal had walked slowly backwards.  This deceives many who at such times go out to pick up anything that comes in their way; for they trace the trail in the wrong direction.  The truth is, that when the rabbit pauses for the hinder feet to come up he again rests momentarily upon these before the two foremost are put forth, and so presses not only the paw proper but the whole first joint of the hind leg upon the snow.  A glance at the hind feet of a rabbit will show what I mean:  they will be found to display plain signs of friction against the ground.

The habit has given the creature considerable power of standing up on the hinder feet; he can not only sit on his haunches, but raise himself almost upright, and remain in that position to listen for some little time.  For the same reason he can bark the ash saplings higher up than would be imagined:  where he cannot reach, the mice climb up and nibble straight lines across the young pole, as if done with a single stroke from a saw that scraped away the rind but did not reach the wood.

In front of a large rabbit bury the grass will be found discoloured with sand at some distance from the mouth of the hole.  This is explained by particles adherent to the rabbits’ hind feet, and rubbing off against the grass blades.  Country people call this peculiar gait ‘sloppetting;’ and one result of it is that the rabbits wear away the grass where they are numerous almost as much as they eat it away.