AND ANGLING SONGS. 2$ I 



Another evil resulting from thorough drainage one which I 

 believe has hitherto escaped remark is the enormous increase 

 of rabbits in the districts where it has been carried on, and that, 

 be it observed, in teeth of the most strenuous efforts to keep 

 them down ; and I may add, notwithstanding the demand made 

 for them, and so largely responded to, as our poulterers' shops 

 can testify, as an article of table consumption. No one requires 

 to be twice told, that the immense number and stretch of cavities 

 formed even over a single farm under the system protested 

 against, furnish both harbour and breeding-ground for what the 

 agriculturists themselves have proclaimed to be a nuisance of 

 the worst description. 



THE DROUGHT OF 1864, HOW IT AFFECTED 

 THE ANGLER. 



PART I. 



I. 



THE lips of all the springs are dry, 

 And parch'd the throats of every rill ; 



A fiery shape hath scaled the hill 

 With blistering foot and brazen eye. 



n. 

 A fiery shape hath cross'd the lea, 



And trodden out its summer life, 



Filling the hags with fetid stife, 

 And staggers onward to the sea. 



in. 



Within the range of its regard, 



Drop silenced all the tongues of mirth ; 

 Aspiring flowers crouch back to earth, 



The emeralds of the mead lie charr'd. 



