It is difficult to imagine a wild creature making a harder struggle for existence than a hare in West Penwith. From beginning to end its life is one of persecution. As a leveret it can hardly escape falling a victim to the stoat, carrion crow, or magpie; or, when full grown, becoming the prey of the polecat or the fox. If it be objected that puss has to run the gauntlet of these enemies elsewhere, it may be answered that in few parts of England is vermin so abundant. This is only in a measure due to the many strongholds which this wild country affords. In the Land’s End district game is not preserved, and the absence of the gamekeeper and his traps accounts for the prevalence of predatory creatures, furred and feathered. It is curious too, to note how interest in the hare and the protection afforded it, have declined before the popularity of fox-hunting. Time was when it was highly esteemed as a beast of the chase, and when money was freely spent on the destruction of its enemies, though to a much less extent than is now lavished on poultry-funds for the perservation of the fox. In those days, as parish registers attest, the churchwardens paid with an easy conscience five shillings for a fox, a shilling for an otter, a shilling for a grey or badger, twopence for a fitcher or marten, and a penny for a hedgebore or kite. Whether the register of Buryan Church contains entries referring to the payments of these fees, I do not know; but there is evidence that in this, the largest parish of the Land’s End district, the hare formerly flourished, its pursuit forming the chief diversion of the local gentry. Of these, Squire Levelis of Trewoofe was, perhaps, the most enthusiastic sportsman, and it is related of him in an old Cornish romance, that one day after a very arduous chase, at the moment his hounds were on the point of running into a hare, the astonished Squire suddenly found himself confronted, on the spot where the scent failed, by a witch. The belief that witches at times assumed the shape of a hare lingered in West Cornwall at least as late as the early part of the last century, for it is related of Sir Rose Price that on his entering a cottage into which his hounds had driven their quarry, he found to his astonishment not a hare but a haggard old woman, whose torn hands and face removed all doubt as to what he had been in pursuit of. This occurred at Kerrow in the parish of Zennor. Squire Levelis’ uncanny adventure took place in the Lamorna valley; and within the memory of those still living, this wild “bottom” has resounded with the merry music of “hare-hounds.” No pack of harriers exists in West Penwith to-day, but the greyhound is very much in evidence; and all things considered, the latter state of poor puss is far worse than the first. What with “long dogs,” foxes, vermin, snares, and cheap guns, this most timid of creatures lives in a state of perpetual apprehension. Nevertheless, it makes a stubborn struggle for existence on the lone upland wastes, where it enjoys partial immunity from its natural four-footed enemies, which, for the most part, harbour in the wild overgrown valleys that tin-streaming has rendered worthless for agricultural purposes. It says something for the keenness of the miner and the crofter that they should search miles and miles of bleak moorland on the remote chance of finding a hare which will, if found, in all probability run their dogs to a standstill. Small wonder that to these men the few surviving hares should seem to bear a charmed life, and that those remarkable for stamina and endurance and recognisable by some slight distinguishing mark, should be as well known as a bob-tailed fox to the members of a hunt.

St Buryan Church.             

Of such none was more famous than the little Jack of Bartinney, whose life history was typical of that of his race. His first home was amidst a clump of rushes bordering a lonely pool on the high ground between two of the Cornish heights. Even when maternal instinct is strongest, fear of detection kept doe and leveret apart during the day; but she never failed to suckle him at nightfall and before sunrise, on her way back from the feeding-ground on the lowland. From dawn to dusk the leveret lay in the snuggest of couches in the trough between the hills, and when not asleep would watch the reeds waving over the shallows, or the moor-hen, whose nest was on the opposite bank, swim on the open water. One morning he saw her issue from the reed-bed with four fluffy little red-billed creatures following in her wake. This novel sight aroused his curiosity, and when the moor-hen and her brood skirted the little bay near him, he jumped out of the nest and ran to the edge of the water. At that instant a raven flying overhead, on the look-out for food for its young in Bosigran Cliffs, espied him, and the next minute the ominous shadow of the marauder darkened the bright grassy margin, scaring the leveret and making him flee for his life. Quick as the moor-hen and her chicks had dived, before the depredator could transfix him with its powerful beak, he made for the thickest of the rushes, squatted and, though the raven made careful search, escaped. This was the one fright of the happy days spent by the side of the pool. There he got to know the varied voices of nature—the carol of the lark, the scream of the gull, the hum of the insects, the murmur of the wind, and the music of the ripple in the reed-bed; the chief sounds that broke the silence of the upland. From below came faintly at times the bark of the dog, the crowing of the cock, and at night the yelp of the fox, the snarl of the badger, the whurring of the night-jar, and the song of the sedge-warbler. Once he heard, from the direction of the Land’s End cliffs, that mysterious roaring of the sea, which when the farmers hear they say “G’envor is callin’.” His growth was very rapid, and when a month old, a spirit of restlessness and a desire to roam possessed him, and thrice he accompanied the doe in her night rounds and got a knowledge of the lay of the country.

One day at dusk he left the nest and the narrow grassy green amidst the rushes where he had gambolled, and made his way down to the tableland alone. He soon learnt that the country over which he roamed was full of enemies, finding to his surprise that even the rabbits were unfriendly to him. His first form was on a pile of earth in the middle of a field from which the hay had recently been carried. Wild growth luxuriated there, and before he abandoned the heap it was gay with the golden corymbs of the harvest-flower. Thence he could hear the voices of the hoers in the turnip-fields, the rumble of wheels in the near lane, and morning and evening Shep’s bark as he drove the cows to the milking-shed. Lying there all day, his long black-tipped ears flat on his back, and his dark, hazel-rimmed eyes that never wholly closed watchful of every movement in the life around him, the hare was a timorous spy on the ongoings of the farm where he was an unknown guest. For nearly two months he occupied the form undisturbed, but when the clover had grown again bullocks were turned into the pasture to graze, and one morning a lurcher dog that accompanied the farmer on his round, found him in his seat and pursued him so closely across three fields that he would not have escaped its jaws but for the wiles he instinctively used. He did not return to the seat for some days and then, detecting that the stale scent of a dog tainted the ragwort, he abandoned the field altogether, and resorted to another form he had but rarely used in the valley below Sancreed Beacon. It was made amongst withering bracken on a mound skirting a small stream, and dawn always found him sitting in it. To baffle any enemy that might follow his trail, he would run past his form, keeping some twenty feet wide of it, and then double on his foil. When opposite his seat he made a sidelong spring, and then another which took him across the stream to the mound. His eyes, ears, and nostrils satisfying him that no enemy shadowed him, he crept under the arch formed by the drooping fronds and lay concealed until evening. He never failed to take these precautions, and he soon had proof of their necessity. Once, shortly after he was esconced, he heard a slight rustling in some brambles on the opposite bank a little way down stream. Presently a long-bodied creature with dark fur emerged from it. Though short of leg its agility was remarkable, and with its nose to the ground it was evidently in quest of some victim’s trail. It was a polecat, which, on hitting the scent of the hare at the spot whence he had taken his second spring, became terribly excited. As if familiar with the wiles of its favourite prey, the blood-thirsty creature began at once to quarter the ground in its attempt to discover the track. At length in making a wide cast it hit the line, but followed it in a direction contrary to that of the hare and, running heel, disappeared with long bounds through the gap where the Jack had passed less than half an hour before. Soon afterwards the light crept down the hillside, and the hare knew that the chattering, archbacked fiend would not return, that the danger was past. During the time he watched his enemy he never stirred, and had the polecat discovered him he could not have escaped, so helpless ............