415 



POISON AND THE MODE OF LAYING IT. 



A good trapper will seldom use poison, on account of the 

 danger inseparably connected with it, either to the human 

 kind or to dogs, whose lives are sometimes still more highly 

 valued by keepers than the members of their own family. 

 Sometimes, however, a particular bird or pair of birds is 

 doing great damage, and yet is so cunning as to elude every 

 trap set for him or them, and also to keep out of shot. Here 

 strychnine may be justifiable, but only as a last resource, and 

 its careless or indiscriminate use ought to cause the dismissal 

 of the person employing it in that way. Of course strychnine 

 cannot be employed against those birds which will not take 

 a dead bait, and its effects are confined to those which will 

 do so, and to the egg-destroyers, which may equally be taken 

 by the steel-trap set round these baits as by the poison con- 

 tained in them. I cannot, therefore, see the advantage of 

 the process, but I have been assured by one or two really 

 good keepers that they have been sometimes enabled to 

 succeed with the one after failing with the other, and I 

 therefore shall not set up my opinion against their more 

 extended practice. 



No oilier poison is to be compared with strychnine, five 

 grains of which will suffice for any bait. This quantity may 

 be inserted in its dry state, a pinch at a time, in punctures 

 cut in the flesh which forms the bait,' whether part of a 

 larger animal or the whole of a small one. This should then 

 be placed where dogs, cats, and children cannot get to it 

 that is, either beneath the earth in a run or in a tree. If an 

 egg is used, a small hole is made in one end, the strychnine 

 is inserted, a piece of the skin of another egg is glued over 

 the opening with some of the white, and the aperture is 

 securely sealed. The egg is then placed where it will be 

 likely to be taken by the bird and is yet out of tJie reach of 

 children, and there it is left till it is broken and despatched. 

 The carcases of all animals killed by this poison should be 

 immediately buried. 



