94 THE CARRION CROW. 
jays, crows, and magpies, which had all large 
families to maintain and bring up in the immediate 
neighbourhood. 
Keepers may boast of their prowess in setting 
traps (and, in testimony of their success, they may 
nail up the mutilated bodies of carrion crows against 
the kennel wall); but I am of opinion, that, if the 
squire could ever get to know the real number of 
pheasants and hares, which have been killed or mu- 
tilated in those traps, he would soon perceive that 
he had been duped by the gamekeeper ; and that 
henceforth he would forbid him to enter the covers 
in the breeding season, for the purpose of destroying 
the carrion crows. The frequent discharge, too, of 
the keeper’s gun, though it may now and then kill or 
wound a carrion crow, still will infallibly drive away 
the game in the end, and oblige it to seek some more 
favoured and sequestered spot. As to the setting of 
poison, —a practice socommon with these worthless 
destroyers of crows, hawks, magpies, jays,and ravens, 
which they are pleased to style feathered vermin, — 
it isa well known fact that foxes, ducks, dogs, hogs, 
and pheasants are all liable to fall a prey to the nox- 
ious bait. Often has the disappointed vulpine sports- 
man to mark down a blank day in his calendar, on ac- 
count of his quarry having supped upon what was laid 
to kill the carrion crow ; and I have reason to believe 
that the fox sometimes loses his life, by feeding on 
carrion crows which have died by poison. 
If we were to sum up, on one side, the probable 
number of pheasants and partridges destroyed during 
one season by the carrion crow; and, on the other, 
