Presently a fox came stealthily along the path. Now the cunning of the fox is proverbial, and neither of us thought that he would pass between us without detecting our presence. Yet, he did so, passing so close, that we could have touched him with a stick. Shortly afterwards, a cow came along the same path, walking almost as noiselessly as the fox had done. It is a remarkable fact that domesticated animals, when allowed to wander at liberty in the New Forest, soon revert to the habits of their wild ancestors. As the cow came along the path, neither of us could conjecture the owner of the stealthy footstep. We feared lest it might be that of poachers, in which case things would have gone hard with us, the poachers of the New Forest being a truculent and dangerous set of men, always provided with firearms and bludgeons, having scarcely the very slightest regard for the law, and almost out of reach of the police. They would certainly have considered us as spies upon them, and as certainly would have attacked and half, if not quite killed us, we being unarmed. But to our amusement as well as relief, the step was only that of a solitary cow, the animal lifting each foot high from the ground before she made her step, and putting it down as cautiously as she had raised it. Then, a barn owl came drifting silently between us, looking in the dusk as large and white as if it had been the snowy owl itself. Yet, neither the fox, nor the cow, nor the owl detected us, although passing within a few feet of us. In the daytime the observer, however careful he may be, is always liable to detection by a stray magpie or crow. The bird comes flying along overhead, its keen eyes directed downwards, on the look-out for the eggs of other birds. At first he may not notice the motionless and silent observer, but sooner or later he is sure to do so. If it were not exasperating to have all one’s precautions frustrated, the shriek of terrified astonishment with which the bird announces the unexpected presence of a human being would be exceedingly ludicrous. As it is, a feeling of wrath rather prevails over that of amusement, for at least an hour will elapse before the startled animals will have recovered from the magpie’s alarm cry. Supposing that we are stationed on the banks of the brook on a fine summer evening, while the long twilight endures, and have been fortunate enough to escape the notice of the magpie or other feathered spy, we may have the opportunity of watching the heron capture its prey. The stroke of the beak is like lightning, and in a moment the bird is holding a fish transversely in its beak. The long, narrow bill scarcely seems capable of retaining the slippery prey; but if a heron’s beak be examined carefully, it will be seen to possess a number of slight serrations upon the edges, which enable it to take a firm grasp of the fish.