TRAPPING, SNARING, NETTING, &c. 127 



the word as if synonymous with the snare or springe 

 with which woodcocks and snipe are taken. 



Now is the woodcock near the gin. 



Twelfth Night, Act ii. sc. 5. 



and again : 



So strives the woodcock with the gin. 



Henry VI. part 3, Act i. sc. 4. 



Izaak Walton in the first chapter of his ' Complete 

 Angler,' 1653, alludes to 'the pleasure it is sometimes 

 with gins to betray the very vermin of the earth.' In 

 this particular sense of ' trap ' or ' snare,' the word is 

 really Scandinavian, the Icelandic gimia meaning 

 to dupe or deceive. The Middle English ' gin,' as 

 remarked by Professor Skeat, was employed in a 

 wider sense than that now used, and was in many 

 cases certainly a contraction of the French engifi (Lat. 

 ingenium\ a contrivance or piece of ingenuity. 



At the present day, as every reader knows, it is 

 commonly restricted to an iron trap having two rows 

 of teeth set in such a manner that the teeth are forced 

 together by a spring when the animal to be captured 

 treads upon a small iron plate which is concealed 

 by having some soil loosely sprinkled over it.^ 



' Of the cruelty inflicted by these traps we shall have some- 

 thing to say anon (p. 131). It would have been well indeed 

 had the Ground (iame Act entirely prohibited the use of them.. 



