UPON A DAY 213 



mouth of their holes ; an envelope fixed into a split 

 stick and stuck up at the end of the hedge will keep 

 the cock pheasants in, and spare the need of human 

 stops, as every keeper knows. 



The hearing of wild creatures is marvellously acute ; 

 and, of all possible noises, nothing alarms them half 

 so much as the sound of the human voice. This 

 particular sound travels a long way, and the wild 

 animal with its ear close to the ground has timely 

 warning of any coming danger. It is no exaggeration 

 to say that the voice of ordinary conversation will put 

 on the qui vive any creature within a radius of a 

 quarter of a mile, and much further even than this in 

 hilly districts. We have all seen, at some time or 

 other, an elderly sportsman's gesticulations as he 

 inveighs in early English against the wildness of the 

 " beastly birds," quite blind to the fact that his own 

 voice has long ago put up the heads of every par- 

 tridge on the place. 



Whether the sense of smell of birds is as acute as 

 that of mammals is a disputed point. There are 

 good grounds for supposing that it is comparatively 

 but little developed; and that the decoy-man who 

 carries a bit of burning turf when he visits his decoys 

 is the victim of a baseless superstition. 



.^Exn-^st^ 





