9O Summer 



and the multiplication of poachers, rabbits never 

 were more plentiful than now. The creature seems to 

 benefit by being thinned out to the verge of extermi- 

 nation. However this be, it is certain that nothing 

 tends to disease more than overcrowding, which means 

 the fouling of the grass. His prolific quality enables 

 him to re-stock in a single season a covert which has 

 been trapped and wired even to apparent depopulation. 

 It thus happens that the only season when there is 

 any difficulty in getting him is in the wintry months 

 before seed-time. By then ferret, weather, and gun 

 have done their work, and the fields are bare and 

 without cover. But on fine days even then spaniel or 

 terrier will set him up from the withered grass at the 

 hedge-roots, or from the brushwood of a plantation. 



Undoubtedly, of all the forms of rabbit-shooting 

 the liveliest is that with ferrets, and even that is not 

 to be well done without a considerable knowledge of 

 their habits. It is said they bolt freely on moonlight 

 nights, and I knew an old poacher who on these did 

 all his work. He would slink away up the hillside 

 to the woods an hour or so after dusk with his little 

 dog Nellie, which he used exclusively as a watch, 

 her low growl telling him whenever anybody was by ; 

 and with a net on each bolt-hole and his white ferret 

 hard at work in the burrow, he would seat himself on 

 a log or stone patient and vigilant, and (like Mr. 

 Browning's Artemis) ' await in fitting silence the 

 event ' ! But, as a rule, rabbits never bolt well after 



