Poachers and Poaching. 



county constable, and the gaol books all testify 

 to the same fact. 



The poacher's lads have grown up under their 

 father's tuition, and follow in his footsteps. 

 Even now they are inveterate poachers, and 

 have a special instinct for capturing field-mice 

 and squirrels. They take moles in their runs, 

 and preserve their skins. When a number of 

 these are collected they are sold to the 

 labourers' wives, who make them into vests. In 

 wheat-time the farmers employ the lads to keep 

 down sparrows and finches. Numbers of larks 

 are taken in nooses, and in spring lapwings' eggs 

 yield quite a rich harvest from the uplands and 

 ploughed fields. A shilling so earned is to the 

 young poacher riches indeed ; money so ac- 

 quired is looked upon differently from that 

 earned by steady-going labour on the field or 

 farm. In their season he gathers cresses and 

 blackberries, the embrow T ned nuts constituting 

 an autumn in themselves. Snipe and woodcock, 

 which come to the marshv meadows in severe 



J 



weather, are taken in " gins " and " springes." 

 Traps are laid for wild ducks in the runners 

 when the still mountain tarns are frozen over. 

 When our poacher's lads attain to sixteen they 

 become in turn the owner of an old flintlock, 

 an heirloom, which has been in the family 

 for generations. Then larger game can be got 

 at. Wood-pigeons are waited for in the larches, 



