FELLOW OF THE ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN AUTHOR OF “PHOTOGRAPHY FOR NATURALISTS” SECOND EDITION WITH ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS FROM HIS PHOTOGRAPHS OF LIVING CREATURES LONDON S. H. BOUSFIELD & CO., Ltd. 12, PORTUGAL STREET, W.C. To MY DEAR CHILDREN BRYAN AND WINNIE...

For permission to include in this volume “The Awakening of the Dormouse,” “The Purple Emperor,” “The Harvest Mouse,” and “The Trivial Fortunes of Molge,” I have to thank the Editor of the Girl’s Realm , and for “The Story of a Field Vole,” and “The Passing of the Black Rat,” I am indebted to the courtesy of the Editor of Pearson’s Magazine . DOUGLAS ENGLISH. Hawley, Dartford, September, 1903 .  ...

Mus ridiculus! The taunt had been flung at him by a stout field-vole, and, by reason of its novelty as well as of its intrinsic impertinence, had sunk deep into his memory. He had felt at the time that “Wee sleekit, cowrin’, tim’rous beastie” was but a poor rejoinder. But he knew no Latin and chose what was next in obscurity. Besides, he was a young mouse then, and breathless with excitement. The scene rose vividly before him—the moon shining grimly overhead, and the mouse-folk stealing from the

His earliest recollections were somewhat confused, nor is this to be wondered at, for he was one of eight, and in the same hole lived another family of seven, fifteen tiny creatures in all, of the same age and outwardly indistinguishable. Under such circumstances it is difficult to retain one’s individuality, let alone one’s impressions. Moreover some little time had elapsed before he really saw his companions. Not that he was long actually blind,—that is the prerogative of the carnivora, but hi

[ Note. —It would not be morally profitable to describe how I learnt Sparrowese. The language of the sparrow is the language of the gutter. I have Englishized it throughout.] “I was the odd egg, for one thing,” said the sparrow. He was speaking with his mouth full, as usual. “What on earth do you mean by that?” I replied. He laughed offensively. “Do you know anything about sparrows?” he sneered. I confessed I did not know much. “I never knew any one write about them who did,” he went on. “What w

He lay face downwards—two tiny fists tight-clenched against his cheeks, his feet curled up to meet them, his tail swung gracefully across his eyes. Nine weeks had he lain thus, self-entombed. Within the hollow of the old hazel-stump he had fashioned a rough sphere of honeysuckle bark; within this, again, a nest of feathery grass stems. He had put the roof on last of all. A winter sunbeam pierced the screen of woodbine, and, for a moment, shed the warmth of springtime on the nest. His whiskers ga

Down by the brookside the Sallow drooped her sunburnt leaves despondently. Things were at their dullest. Three months ago she had been a tree of importance. Her dark, slender branches had formed a fashionable rendez-vous . Each evening she had seen her golden catkins studded with opals—the eyes of soft, furry, blundering moths. Each day the bees had thronged to pay court to her. Then came Palm Sunday. Her catkins were stripped from her, worn for a few hours in yokels’ hats, and flung aside. The

Once upon a time, and not so very long ago either, the Harvest Mouse was the smallest of British beasties, absolutely the very smallest. Even the museum men, who look through microscopes, had to admit that. Then a Liliputian shrewmouse turned up. He was found stretched dead in the middle of the path, and the time, as any book that deals with shrewmice would tell you, was the autumn. He was so small that, had he not died in the path, he would assuredly not have been found at all. Now, because of

It was a bubble that launched him into a practical existence. They were rising by hundreds from the ooze that cloaked the bottom of the ditch. The sunshine called them up and scattered them into nothingness as they appeared. It was merely by chance that one, in its upward rush, hit his envelope of starwort; it was merely by chance that the envelope needed no greater stimulus to burst asunder. Yet he was arranged to take advantage of the smallest jar. Like any other newt, he had started life as a

[ Note. —The old English black rat, for some three hundred years predominant in this country, is now well-nigh extinct. He has been superseded, some think exterminated, by the brown Hanoverian rat, a more powerful and disreputable species, which made its appearance in the course of the eighteenth century.] The black rat sat back on his haunches, pricked up his ears, and listened. It was something different to the faint lapping wash of the sewer; different to the dull hum of the traffic. It was a

( Old Greek Proverb ). Rain, and rain, and rain. For three days in succession the sun had defaulted. Yet he had been doing his best behind the storm-clouds. That very morning he had forced one straggling beam well through. It had been completely thrown away, for every living thing was snugly tucked up under cover. Now, as his time was getting short, he made one last despairing effort. Westward, the sky was banked with purple nimbus, towering in gloomy magnificence aloft, but fined to nothingness

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