On all the high-lying corn lands now, harvest has begun; and the fields in the valley are fast taking on that deep tinge of gipsy-gold which is the sign of full maturity. Scarce had the shrill note of the mowing-machine stilled in the meadows, when the deeper voice of the reaper-and-binder began on the hill. All day long I sat in this cool quiet nook of a study, and the steady jarring sound came over to me from the hillside, filling the little room. I saw the machine with its pair of grey horses, waiting at the field-gate, while the scythe-men cut a way for it into the amber wall of the grain. Steadily hour after hour it worked round the field, until at last, looking forth towards noon, I saw that only a small triangular piece remained uncut in the middle of the field. Now there were a score or so of the farm folk waiting hard by, each armed with a cudgel; and with them seemingly every dog in the village. As the machine went round, every time making the patch of standing corn smaller, I could see rabbits bolting in all directions from the diminishing cover; and there uprose continually a hubbub of voices from dogs and men. Towards the end, the stubble became alive with the little dark scurrying forms, fleeing to the surrounding fields, the most of them escaping harmlessly for want of pursuers. But even then, as I afterwards learned, some eight or nine dozen were killed. I have always kept away from these harvest battues, as indeed from all scenes of sport and congregations of sportsmen. I am willing enough to profit by these activities, and receive and enjoy my full share of the furred and feathered spoil admittedly without one humanitarian qualm. But this much confessed, I would gladly welcome the day when everywhere, save in the rabbit warrens, the sound of the sporting gun should cease throughout this southern land. Rabbits must be kept down to the end of time; but, for the creatures that require preservation, too great a price is paid, and paid by the wrong class. It is not the owner of game-preserves who bears the main cost of his thunderous pleasuring. It is the lover of wild life, who sees the hawks and owls and small deer of the woodlands growing scarcer with every year; and the children who, in the springtime, are cheated out of their right to wander through the primrose glades.