The rabbit-warren was, however, to make up for all other losses: a furrier had engaged to take as many silver sprigs from him as he pleased, at sixteen shillings a dozen, provided he should send them properly dressed, and in time to be shipped for China, where these silver grey rabbit skins sold to the best advantage. As winter came on, it was necessary to supply the warren with winter food: and Marvel was much astonished at the multitude of unforeseen expenses into which his rabbits led him. The banks of the warren wanted repair, and the warrener’s house was not habitable in bad weather: these appeared but slight circumstances when Marvel made the purchase; but, alas! he had reason to change his opinion in the course of a few months. The first week in November, there was a heavy fall of snow; and the warren walls should have been immediately cleared of snow, to have kept the rabbits within their bounds: but Marvel happened this week to be on a visit in Yorkshire, and he was _obliged_ to leave the care of the warren entirely to the warrener, who was _obliged_ to quit his house during the snow, and to take shelter with a neighbour: he neglected to clear the walls; and Marvel upon his return home, found that his silver sprigs had strayed into a neighbouring warren. The second week in November is the time when the rabbits are usually killed, as the skins are then in full prime: it was in vain that Marvel raised a hue and cry after his silver sprigs; a fortnight passed away before one-third of them could be recovered. The season was lost, and the furrier sued him for breach of contract; and what was worse, Goodenough laughed at his misfortunes. The next year he expected to retrieve his loss: he repaired the warrener’s house, new faced the banks, and capped them with furze; but the common grey rabbit had been introduced into the warren, by the stragglers of the preceding year; and as these grey rabbits are of a much more hardy race than the silver sprigs, they soon obtained and kept possession of the land. Marvel now pronounced rabbits to be the most useless and vexatious animals upon earth; and, in one quarter of an hour, thoroughly convinced himself that tillage was far more profitable than rabbits. He ploughed up his warren, and sowed it with corn; but, unluckily, his attention had been so much taken up by the fishery, the decoy, the geese, the thistles, and the hopes of the heronry, that he totally forgot his intention of making the best of all possible ditches round his plantation. When he went to visit this plantation, he beheld a miserable spectacle: the rabbits which had strayed beyond their bounds during the great snow, and those which had been hunted from their burrows, when the warren was ploughed up, had all taken shelter in this spot; and these refugees supported themselves, for some months, upon the bark and roots of the finest young trees.