244 FACT AGAINST FICTIOK. 



I have in this way taken these birds when proof 

 against any other attraction. These traps are 

 dangerous to ducks as well, and small, shallow pools 

 of water, as much removed from the haunts of fowl 

 as possible, should be selected. 



There are more sure ways of destroying the 

 carrion crow and magpies than those by trapping ; 

 but as it involves the use of strychnine, I ever 

 set my face against it. It can be used by a 

 careful hand with apparent safety, by poisoning 

 a slightly broken egg and placing it on a pollard 

 tree or stump of a tree, or on an island where 

 nothing else but wings are likely to reach it ; 

 but under Jio circumstances do / advocate its use. 



There is also, I deeply regret to say, a 

 method of poisoning foxes, which will confine 

 the lamentable death by strychnine to the fox ; 

 for when the poison is put into the carcase of a 

 hoffse-rat. nothinir but a fox will eat it. Not 

 the vxiter-rat, but the house-vat; and, curiously 

 enough, a fox will ])refer a dead house-rat to a 

 rabbit ; and this latter fact or preference I have 

 ascertained in feeding litters of foxes when I 

 kept foxhounds. 



Poison should never he used in any case* 



