the stream to hunt for them; but they were too wary to be often caught."

I do not think that the owner of the garden knew very much about the
characters either of the cat or water-vole.

Every one who is practically acquainted with cats knows that it is next
to impossible to point out an object to a cat as we can to a dog. She
looks at your finger, but can never direct her gaze to the object at
which you are pointing. In fact, I believe that pussy's eyes are not
made for detecting objects at a distance.

If we throw a piece of biscuit to a dog, and he does not see where it
has fallen, we can direct him by means of voice and finger. But, if a
piece of meat should fall only a foot or two from a cat, all the
pointing in the world will not enable her to discover it, and it is
necessary to pick her up and put her nose close to the meat before she
can find it.

So, even, if a water-vole should be seen by the master, the attention of
the cat could not be directed to it, her instinct teaching her to take
prey in quite a different manner.

The dogs, supposing that they happened to be of the right breed, would
have a better chance of securing the robber, providing that they
intercepted its retreat to the water. But if the water-vole should
succeed in gaining its burrow, or in plunging into the stream, I doubt
whether any dog would be able to catch it.

Moreover, the water-vole is so clever in tunnelling, that when it drives
its burrows into cultivated ground, it almost invariably conceals the