PL VER-NE TTING. 1 8 5 



Geese, Curlew, and Plover on alighting always 

 choose bare open ground. This no doubt they 

 consider safe from hidden enemies, and so ignore 

 danger under foot. 



At one fall of the net sixty to eighty Plover is a 

 good sweep, and a hundred to a hundred and fifty 

 have often, to my knowledge, been captured at 

 once. The more simply a net is constructed, the 

 better it works ; all hinges, springs, and elastic 

 straps are failures, however cleverly conceived. 



I will now describe the whole apparatus, and the 

 method of using it, premising only that experience 

 is the best master, and the fowler will from time to 

 time discover wrinkles that practice in the field will 

 alone supply. 



INSTRUCTIONS FOR SETTING THE NET. 



The net is laid flat on the ground ready for action 

 (see full-page Plate, fig. i). When pulled it lies as 

 shown on the same plate (fig. 2). The page is not 

 large enough to show the poles, which are hurled 

 twenty paces distant. To set the net, sink the two 

 large shoe-pegs (fig. 3), their tops level with the 

 ground, sixteen yards apart (taking care to have the 

 wind fair between them and their hollows facing it). 

 Against these pegs lay the poles ; the foot of each 

 pole, which should be bluntly pointed, in the half- 

 inch deep hollow of either peg, both poles straight 

 towards the wind. Clear away or stamp down the 

 earth a foot or so in front of the hollows in the 

 pegs, so that the pole ends may butt well against 



