FOREST TITHES 
for killing stoats and weasels. A faggot-stack, also, 
I have known half pulled to pieces to get at a poor 
little mouse-killing weasel that had taken refuge there 
from its pursuers. 
Even that glorious insect-destroyer, the great green 
dragon-fly, that helps to clear country lanes of such 
winged pests as hornets, wasps, and the ferocious 
stoat-flies ' stouts ' has evil properties attributed to 
it by the rustics. I have seen country children and, 
indeed, grown-up people show far more fear at the 
sight of that swift-winged beauty than they would at 
hornets or a wasps' nest. ' Them 'ere things is adder- 
spears, an' it ain't safe tu meddle wi' 'em.' This super- 
stitious belief, in fact, saves the grand insect from 
being killed. It is a very rare thing to see a dragon- 
fly captured in country places. The farmers' lads 
also call the great dragon-fly the hoss-stinger. Just 
a word of advice to those who have delicate fingers : 
this fine fly, if held incautiously, can and will bite 
pretty severely. So will the very large and handsome 
garden spiders which weave their wonderfully geo- 
metrical webs, suspended from twigs and lashed to 
branches, in the latter part of the autumn. A colony 
of very fine ones have located themselves in some 
box-trees close to my back door. The number of 
insects they capture in their nets is something wonder- 
