A MOST heartfelt letter to Hear All Sides the other day from John Cumberland, of Rushyford, near Bishop Auckland.

Still haunted by shooting two hares 35 years ago, he expressed his regret for the “deplorable act.” “I wish I could turn the clock back,” he wrote. “I would have shot them, but with my camera, so I could wonder at their beauty.”

Yes, of course. Hares are beautiful – and uncommon. It is always upsetting to see one dead on the road, the long legs and ears usually distinguishing it from a rabbit. Hares should be protected. Would they breed like, er, rabbits and become serious pests? I don’t know, but shooting could then be allowed if they did.

Meanwhile Mr Cumberland reveals he has put aside his gun even for pests. If he took it up again, “my pigeons would be of the clay type”.

In rejecting destruction he follows in at least one pair of notable footsteps.

As a young man Richard Jefferies (1848- 87), the son of a Wiltshire farmer, was rarely seen without a gun. But then, in his own words, this happened: “There was a pheasant quietly questing about. I aimed at the head.

“I felt the trigger and the slightest pressure would have been fatal; but in the act I hesitated, dropped the barrel and watched the beautiful bird. That watching so often stayed the shot that it grew to be a habit, the mere simple pleasure of seeing birds and animals, when they were unconscious they were observed, being too great to be spoiled by the discharge.”

Jefferies became, in my estimation, Britain’s greatest nature writer. What elevates him above the rest is that he goes beyond observing and describing his subjects and their habits.

The word ‘holistic’ could have been coined to cover his relationship with nature. He wasn’t an onlooker, a human being recording, even marvelling at, lesser species. To Jefferies we were all one.

Take this: “Looking down upon the earth, as the sun does, how can words depict the glowing wonder, the marvellous beauty, of all the plant, the insect, the animal life that presses upon the eye? It is impossible.

Would that it were possible for the heart and mind to enter into all the life that glows and teems upon the earth…Let me joy with all living creatures…”

This comes from a magnificent essay, Nature and Eternity, once read on BBC Radio 3. Jefferies believed that eternity is Now (the capital letter is important). Resting against a tumulus he felt the life, or spirit, of the man inside, dead for two thousand years. “I could understand and feel his existence the same as my own. This was quite natural.”

To Jefferies, the endurance of soul and spirit was “higher than immortality.”

But let’s leave him firmly on earth: “There is a slight rustle among the ferns… It is a rabbit who has peeped forth into the sunshine.”

It ventures within Jeffreries’ reach. “It is so easy to make friends with the children of Nature. Only be tender, quiet, considerate towards them and they will freely wander around. And they have such marvellous tales to tell. This common rabbit has an ancestry of almost unreachable antiquity.” It’s not just hares we should care for after all.