8 JANUARY. 



the smaller animals, in a continued frost, is 

 immense, particularly if it be accompanied by 

 snow. Snow is a general informer, betraying 

 the footsteps of every creature, great and small. 

 The poacher and the gamekeeper are equally 

 on the alert, while it lies freshly upon the 

 ground ; the one to track game, the other ver- 

 min ; and thousands of polecats, weasels, stoats, 

 rats, otters, badgers, and similar little nightly 

 depredators, are traced to their hiding-places 

 in old buildings, banks, and hollow trees, and 

 marked for certain destruction. The poacher, 

 particularly on moonlight nights, makes havoc 

 with game. Partridges, nestled down in a heap 

 on the stubble, are conspicuous objects ; and 

 hares, driven for food to gardens and turnip- 

 fields, are destroyed by hundreds. Wood-pi- 

 geons are killed in great numbers on cabbagi' 

 and turnip-fields by day, and by moonlight are 

 shot in the trees where they roost. Larks fre- 

 quent stubbles in vast flocks, and are destroyed 

 by gun or net. There is an account, illustrated 

 by an engraving in the second volume of Hone's 

 " Every-Day Book," of a singular mode of 

 killing larks at this season, in some parts of 

 France and England. 



As if the feathered race did not suffer enough 

 from famine and the severity of the weather, 

 everybody seems now up in arms against them. 



