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. * * * * * 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. * * * * * The Stoat's Hunting