CREATURES OF THE NIGHT
By the same Author.
IANTO THE FISHERMAN
AND OTHER SKETCHES OF COUNTRY LIFE.
Illustrated with Photogravures. Large Crown 8vo.
The Times.—“The quality which perhaps most gives its individuality to the book is distinctive of Celtic genius.... The characters ... are touched with a reality that implies genuine literary skill.”
The Standard.—“Mr Rees has taken a place which is all his own in the great succession of writers who have made Nature their theme.”
The Guardian.—“We can remember nothing in recent books on natural history which can compare with the first part of this book ... surprising insight into the life of field, and moor, and river.”
The Outlook.—“This book—we speak in deliberate superlative—is the best essay in what may be called natural history biography that we have ever read.”
CREATURES OF THE NIGHT
A BOOK OF WILD LIFE IN WESTERN BRITAIN
BY ALFRED W. REES
AUTHOR OF “IANTO THE FISHERMAN”
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1905
PREFACE.
The Editors of The Standard have kindly permitted me to republish the contents of this book, and I tender them my thanks.
The original form of these Studies of animal life has been extensively altered, and, in some instances, the titles have been changed.
I am again greatly indebted to my brother, R. Wilkins Rees. His wide and accurate knowledge has been constantly at my disposal, and in the preparation of these Studies he has given me much indispensable advice and assistance.
Similarity in the habits of some of the animals described has made a slight similarity of treatment unavoidable in certain chapters.
I may also remark that, in unfrequented districts where beasts and birds of prey are not destroyed by gamekeepers, the hare is as much a creature of the night as is the badger or the fox.
ALFRED W. REES.
CONTENTS.
FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
From Drawings by
Florence H. Laverock.
THE OTTER.
I.
THE HOLT AMONG THE ALDERS.
I first saw Lutra, the otter-cub, while I was fishing late one summer night. Slow-moving clouds, breaking into fantastic shapes and spreading out great, threatening arms into the dark, ascended from the horizon and sailed northward under the moon and stars. Ever and anon, low down in the sky, Venus, like a clear-cut diamond suspended from one of its many twinkling points, glittered between the fringes of the clouds, or the white moon diffused soft light among the wreathing vapours that twisted and rolled athwart the heavens. In the shelter of the pines on the margin of the river, a ringdove, awakened by a bickering mate, fluttered from bough to bough; and his angry, muffled coo of defiance marred the stillness of the night. The gurgling call of a moorhen, mingling with the ripple of the stream over the ford, came from the reeds at a distant bend of the river. Nearer, the river, with varying cadence, rose and fell in uneven current over a rocky shelf, and then came on to murmur around me while I waded towards the edge of a deep, forbidding pool. In the smooth back-wash beyond the black cup of the pool a mass of gathered foam gleamed weirdly in the dark; and, further away, broad tangles of river-weed, dotted with the pale petals of countless flowers, floated on the shallow trout-reach extending from the village gardens to the cornfields below the old, grey church.
