412 Practical Game Preserving. 



forthwith be set to catch them. We should not advise the 

 employment of baits, except under certain conditions, when 

 using gins, but the traps should rather be set in any runs 

 or places where the vermin make their paths from one part 

 of the buildings to another. If there be any place where a 

 stray wisp of straw or hay has remained, a trap may be 

 set under it, the straw being put as little as possible inside 

 the jaws, and if using any in covering these, at right angles 

 to the spring, so that when the trap is sprung the straw is 

 raised upon the rising jaws, and does not get between them. 

 The same remarks .hold good in the case of hay. The most 

 likely places are upon the tops of walls, in hay lofts, on 

 the rafters of granaries and all about the corn, behind any 

 barrels standing near the granary walls, and in all such 

 similar spots. One proviso, however, is, not to place them 

 where fingers of other persons, fowls' legs, or what not, are 

 likely to intrude ; and if one conceal the gin either under 

 corn, hay, or other means of hiding, let people be warned 

 against feeling for that which might lead them into disagree- 

 able complications with a rat gin. 



The trapping of rats along hedgerows and water banks is 

 similar to catching rabbits, only on a smaller scale ; the runs 

 must be determined upon, and the traps tilled adjacent to 

 the holes, staked and covered in the orthodox manner, but 

 in numbers sufficient to provide every hole with a wile at its 

 entrance. Rats established in corn ricks are not easily 

 trapped, but only those ricks not mounted on staddles need 

 suffer, as the removal of any possible means by which the 

 rats can regain the rick, once having left it and they must 

 do so to obtain water immediately stops them; those stacks, 



