GAME NOTES AND FOLK-LORE. 227 



much noise would cause them to rise, but 

 this peculiar tap, tapping merely makes 

 them run. In pheasant- shooting, when the 

 keepers wish the pheasants to avoid certain 

 exits from the covers, and to direct them 

 towards points where sportsmen are placed, 

 they set men with two sticks to knock to- 

 gether in the same way, and at this noise 

 the birds turn back, and run in the direction 

 required. 



Driven before the poacher's tap, tap, the 

 pheasants presently come to the artificial 

 hedge, and creeping without hesitation 

 through the holes left for them, are noosed 

 by the wires. When the poachers come up 

 they put the captured birds alive in a bag, 

 and then go to the other end of the cover 

 and repeat the process, and so catch all in 

 the copse ; first, the birds are driven into 

 the wires from one end of the copse and 

 then from the other. Poachers also look 



