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52 rare. I doubt whether they ever killed many brown hares, even when they were numerous. The worst enemies of the hare are sheepdogs and half-wild cats. There is no more destructive animal to game than your house cat which has abandoned civilised habits and become a proscribed outlaw. You will not see her during the day, unless by accident. She is cunning enough to lie up in a big rabbit earth all day long. It is in the small hours of the night that she plays havoc with young leverets and other game. Sheepdogs are often self-willed and love to run down half-grown leverets. But two-footed poachers are the most dangerous enemies that the hare has to face. The desire to kill something exists in the mind of the civilised man no less than in that of the savage.

The first Napoleon inherited in its crudest form the craving to destroy life. Although he was an indifferent shot, he used to shoot out of his window at the tame storks and swans which the Empress kept as pets, solely because he wanted to kill something.

Another substantial incitement to persecution may be found in the fact that game of any kind always commands a certain monetary consideration. 'They have a proverb among them in Suffolk,' says Willughby: 'A Curlew, be she white, or black, she carries twelve pence on her back.'