CHAPTER XLV 



Pole-traps Burying a trap Cruelty of trapping Land Rails Invisible 

 young Omnivorous Geese Geese and Foxes Fungi Squirrels and 

 Weasels Cat and Weasel Dog-eating Fox. 



A RELIC of barbarous times, not yet very remote, was met 

 with in several places during my wanderings in Merioneth- 

 shire, in the shape of pole-traps, and the accompanying 

 photograph of one in situ may some day be of interest, when 

 the use of such things has been forgotten. Some of the 

 traps were still set, and in working order, maugre the fact 

 that their use had several years before been declared to be 

 illegal by Parliament sitting in a very far distant city. Two 

 of them belonged to, or were " looked after " by a farmer, 

 who combined the avocation of " game watcher " with his 

 ordinary calling, and who, of course, had never heard of any 

 law against them ; another had been set by a keeper, who 

 knew better, but was willing to run the risk of the long 

 arm of the law proving too short to reach him here. In 

 the last, a Buzzard and one or two head of minor vermin 

 had been recently taken ; one of the others had yielded 

 only a Cuckoo and a Missel Thrush during that season ; 

 while a third had been so unproductive that it had not been 

 considered worth while to visit it for so long that its catch 

 had become so rusted, when I saw it, that hardly anything 

 less heavy than an eagle would have sufficed to set it off. 

 So much for carelessness of consequences ; another keeper 

 had gone to the opposite extreme. He, needless to say, 

 was a carefu' Hielant lad, and fearing lest he might be 

 compromised by having the implements of offence found 

 about him, while at the same time reluctant to wantonly 

 destroy his employer's property, he had taken the pre- 

 caution of burying his pole-traps at a safe distance from 



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