68 THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 



earliest Jonas- Webb Down lambs are billeted with 

 their mothers. This comes of living under a gorse- 

 covered hill upon the verge of a forest, which the 

 county hounds don't care to visit. This must be the 

 Reynard that I too charitably allowed to pass unchal- 

 lenged a month since, when stationed at an advanced 

 post in a cover which was being beaten for pheasants. 



I was half-inclined to let drive at the red robber 

 when he trotted so confidently and listeningly along the 

 main path, within thirty yards of the keeper's house, and 

 close beneath my lair. "Ah ! would you ?" " Vulpecide !'* 

 &c., &c. Oh ! yes, I hear ; but if the region be such 

 that hounds cannot hunt it, and your ducks and 

 chickens go, why, what then ? But we won't discuss it, 

 for we have hunted ourselves, and we know the argu- 

 ments of old, and have let thus much drop, just for fun, 

 to disturb any chance venatic reader. Upon the snow 

 we could trace the villains close around the house and 

 buildings, and yet we abstained even from dropping a 

 ham-bone in their way — a bonne louche which as cer- 

 tainly promotes their disappearance, as a meal of salt 

 meat will make a monkey gnaw his tail. 



But writing of stratagems reminds me that the 

 poachers are about after the pheasants, to be disposed 

 of for breeding purposes, and this obliges an incessant 

 look-out. The most favourite modes of taking them in 

 this district are by catching their necks in a noose — a 

 knot on which prevents its being drawn too tight ; or by 

 strewing grain that has been soaked in spirits in their 

 runs, and then arresting them under intoxication ; or, 

 the third way, by scattering tick -beans about, each 

 one strung upon a bristle — the effect of which is that 

 the unhappy bird, unable to swallow the beiTy, owing 



