126- Studies in Rat Catching, [ch. vii. 



animals pay but little attention to a whistle, 

 for in one shape or another they are con- 

 stantly hearing it from their feathered com- 

 panions. 



But to go back to our netting. An hour 

 over, we pick up the ferrets as they come 

 out and bag them, and then I go off to some 

 fresh holes and spread the nets again, and we 

 repeat the same performance ; and during the 

 day we kill, without any digging or hard 

 work, about twenty-two couple of rabbits. 

 In the above account I have written of a 

 day's sport that took place in a fir plantation 

 in a little village in Norfolk, where it would 

 have been madness to work the ferrets 

 without muzzling them, for they would have 

 been sure to kill some rabbits in the holes 

 and then have laid up ; but I should mention 

 that I have killed many rabbits in the same 

 way on the Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire, 

 and I was much astonished when I first got 



