232 NETTING RABBITS ^ 



or rabbits bolt into the net or nets, but the ferret pins one or more 

 rabbits and has to be dug out, the digger being guided by the string. 

 That is not sport of course not, our purpose is to capture the rabbits. 

 If sport be the object, the ferret is muzzled, the dog is duplicated, 

 and the ferreter with accomplices carry guns, nets being dispensed 

 with, or only partly used. 



Better for sporting purposes in respect of rabbits is the bolting 

 system by means of fuses, usually made of thick brown paper or 

 cardboard cut into strips ij ft. long and 2 in. wide, the strips 

 being soaked in a solution of saltpetre and cayenne pepper, dried, 

 lighted and placed in the hole rolled up. Rabbit fumes for bolt- 

 ing rabbits (Wm. Burgess & Co., Malvern Wells) cost 45. per gross. 

 The fuses are also used to make the rabbits lie out. At Weald Hall, 

 Brentford, after the use of these fuses, 6 guns shot 1,027 rabbits in 

 one day, and the next day 405 more. 



Netting rabbits by driving is a wholesale means of capture, and 

 is practised in coppice and wood-side where rabbits come out at night 

 to feed. The nets are made in lengths of 50, 100, and 150 yards, 

 and to hang from 2| to 5 ft. the colour being grey, green or tanned, 

 3 ft. netting being usually employed, and the stakes to hold it up 

 cost 6s. per dozen. The rabbits are allowed to breed and fatten 

 until late summer or autumn; then the netting is affixed after dark 

 alongside the wood-side or place of day harbouring, and rabbits 

 outlying are driven into the net. In the morning nothing is seen 

 but a beaten track and a goodly amount of down. In one instance 

 along a plantation-side, where at one time 200 rabbits were counted 

 in the dusk of the evening at the close of September, not one was to 

 be seen after the first week of October. 



Ground game are also kept down by sportsmen, dogs, foxes, 

 stoats, weasels, and birds of prey, but these hardly accord with 

 the requirements of cultivators where game-preserving is not 

 carried to an extreme, and on account of the depredations com- 

 mitted, growers of crops have been obliged to seek powers from 

 the legislature enabling them to take repressive measures. 



By the Ground Game Act of 1880 every occupier has a right to 

 kill, take and sell ground game, but not the right to shoot between 

 the expiration of first hour after sunset and the commencement 

 of the last hour before sunrise ; spring traps, except in rabbit 

 holes, and poison of any kind are prohibited. The Hares Pre- 

 servation Act, 1892, however, enacts that during the months of 

 March, April, May, June, and July it is unlawful to sell, or expose 

 for sale, hares or leverets. The close time (March to July inclusive) 

 simply aims at preventing the extinction of the hare by restricting 

 the cruel, wanton, and wasteful decimation during the breeding 

 season of a very desirable food-animal. Nevertheless, hares and 

 rabbits may be killed during close time, but not exposed for sale. 



Hares are coursed by greyhounds, but this has greatly fallen 



