114 FACT AGAINST FICTION. 



liancl-feecl in tlie straw wlien tlie stack holds but 

 little corn, and then the intending thief will Avatch 

 the keeper go away. Eonnd the stack he will set 

 snares, — nooses of horsehair or of wire in the 

 pheasants' runs, or even small steel traps, — and 

 then, hiding again in the bushes within ear-shot, 

 he is ready at the first fluttering wing in any of 

 tlie snares to creep out and 2:)ossess himself of the 

 bird. Another plan at the stacks which thieves 

 sometimes resort to is, to lay fish-hooks on short 

 lines, or horse-hair baited with a pea or bean, at 

 times with a raisin, vulgarly called by this class 

 of men a ^^fig"; but the latter is by no means a 

 successful bait, for not one pheasant in a hundred 

 will eat it. To get a pheasant to eat a raisin is 

 to establish in the bird an artificial appetite, and 

 that, after all, is but a waste of time. 



Hooks with short lines, the fish-hook baited 

 with an acorn, will take a wild duck at some 

 shallow feeding-j^lace, but if there are other wild 

 ducks feeding there, when one is caught by 

 swalloAving the hook, the fluttering of the duck 

 so caught will scare the fowl away from that 

 identical spot for man}' months to come. 



Neither wild ducks nor pheasants, hares nor 



