146 GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL. 



generally noosed round the neck is dragged 

 down to a peg half concealed in the ground 

 through a hole in which the horse hair passes 

 and forcibly strained against it until life is 

 extinct. But there was something far more 

 simple and picturesque in the old springe of 

 our forefathers : the materials for constructing it 

 were chiefly to be found on the spot, and, indeed, 

 consisted of little else than a few sticks and a 

 string. Perhaps the common contrivance for 

 taking moles, still used in most of the southern 

 counties of England, approaches more nearly than 

 any other to the ancient springe, of which indeed 

 it may be said to be a subterranean variety : but 

 this, too, is gradually making way for a successor 

 in the shape of an elongated toothless gin, which 

 is much admired by the enemies of this really 

 useful little quadruped far blinder in their 

 generation than the animal that they persecute 

 as no practical dexterity is necessary in its 

 management ; its principle is within the compre- 

 hension of a ploughboy, and every tiller of the 

 soil may now be his own mole-catcher. 



I had once, and but once, an opportunity of 

 seeing a woodcock taken in a real old English 

 springe. I was staying several years ago with 

 a friend who resided in one of the most pictu- 

 resque tracts of the forest range of Sussex, 



