REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 97 



it out as a misfortune of no moment, but to tell me of 

 it in a breathless state of anxiety for their destruc- 

 tion, and that he was to pursue all the lesser vermin, 

 winged and fourfooted, with an unrelenting hate; 

 while, at the same time, he transferred whatever love 

 he bore to his wife and children, to the vixen fox, her 

 cubs, the pheasant, the partridge, and the hare. Rab- 

 bits for the present were to be tolerated to a certain 

 extent, and, therefore, he was to let his gun off at 

 nothing but the lesser vermin. Then came a host of 

 steel traps of various sizes, the use of which I taught 

 him. The false nest with the e2:":-shells from the 

 kitchen, the unbroken side of the eo;o;. shell turned 

 uppermost, and three or four put in a nest against 

 the but of a tree ; a small trap set about four inches 

 from it, with twigs on either side the nest, to guide 

 the vermin over the trap, was the first snare in re- 

 quisition. Winged vermin never pitch at once on the 

 nest, the eggs of which they intend to suck, but alight 

 on the ground a yard from it, and then walk or hop 

 up ; a few thorny twigs to fence either side the nest, 

 and to leave open no other passage than that over the 

 trap, insures a capture. When this trap is used 

 among a large head of pheasants, it should be set on 

 broad pollard trees, or stumps of trees, natural or 

 artificial, or on wattled hedges made capable of hold- 

 ing it ; for, if on the ground, young hen pheasants 

 will sometimes get caught in an inclination to lay to 

 the eggs. In these egg-traps I have taken the honey- 

 buzzard hawk, magpies, jays, and carrion crows ; and 

 rooks, who more or less are guilty of sucking eggs, 

 very frecpiently get into them, — occasionally a stoat, 

 and once an old vixen marten-cat. In a fox-hunting 

 country, the smallest rat-trap should be the engine, 



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