Natural history -- England -- Wiltshire; Wiltshire (England) -- Description and travel
To dig for him is hopeless in that catacomb of tunnels; there is nothing
for it but to send a man day after day to watch, and if possible to
seize him while passing along the upper ground from one bury to another.
In time thirst will drive him to wander; there is no water near this
dry, sandy, and rather elevated spot, and blood causes great thirst.
Then he will roam across the open, and by-and-by reach the hedges, where
in the ditch some water is sure to be found in winter, when ferreting is
carried on. So that, if a ferret has been lost some time, it is better
to look for him round the adjacent hedges than in the warren.
Long after leaving the bury it is as well to look to your footsteps,
because of solitary rabbit-holes hidden by the grass growing up round
and even over them. If the foot sinks unexpectedly into one of these, a
sprained ankle or even a broken bone may result. Most holes have sand
round the mouth, and may therefore be seen even in the dusk; but there
are others also used which have no sand at the mouth, the grass growing
at the very edge. Those that have sand have been excavated from
without, from above; those that have not, have been opened from below.
The rabbit has pushed his way up from an old bury, so that the sand he
dug fell down behind him into the larger bole.
The same thing may be seen in banks, though then the holes worked from
within are not so much concealed by grass. These holes are always very
much smaller than the others, some so small that one might doubt how a
rabbit could force his body through them. The reason why the other
tunnels appear so much larger is because the rabbit has no means of
`shoring' up his excavation with planks and timbers, and no `cage' with
which to haul up the sand he has moved; so that he must make the mouth
wider than is required for the passage of his body, in order to get the
stuff out behind him. He can really creep through a much smaller
aperture. At night especially, when walking near a bury situate in the
open field, beware of putting your foot into one of these holes, which
will cause an awkward fall if nothing worse. Some of the older holes,
now almost deserted, are, too, so hidden by nettles and coarse grass as
to be equally dangerous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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