292 Practical Game Preserving. 



and if the ground at the side be rocky and worn from 

 the effects of overflowing, the former are sure to pay 

 visits to ground so admirably suited to their tastes. 



Besides those methods already enumerated, a further 

 manner in which to employ the gin for vermin capture is 

 at the outside of rabbit seats, substituting, however, a dead 

 one in place of the owner or usual occupier of the place. 

 This is often a very productive mode, and is specially 

 suitable in fields where patches of gorse have been allowed 

 to grow up, and in small pieces of sandy common in which 

 the furze is the only covert. If some slight search be made 

 in these latter, several places will be discovered where certain 

 rabbits have formed seats under small but thick set bushes 

 of the gorse. In those of sufficient length for the method 

 to be practicable, a dead rabbit should be propped up to 

 represent one sitting in the retreat, and a trap set at the 

 entrance and one at the back of the small sort of tunnel 

 which exists. In most cases, the vermin, seeking capture 

 of the rabbit, will be trapped in the one set at the back, 

 so that it is not advisable to omit the second tilling. 



A modification of this, and one eminently suitable to 

 small level openings in a plantation, is to form a small 

 oval enclosure of little branches, preferably of thorn, suffi- 

 ciently closely placed to prevent the ingress of vermin 

 except at the openings left. The sides should be about 

 a yard long and i8in. apart at the widest, and ought to 

 slope sharply towards one another at each end/ leaving 

 two narrow entrances, just about the size which a gin 

 would nicely fit. In the centre of this fix up as bait either 

 a dead bird, rabbit, or some other temptation to induce 



