PBESERVATION OF GAME. 61 



pigeons being on the wing. In the fields you may hear 

 the drag-net brush over the stubbles, and the hares cry 

 when taken by gate-nets or wires. When you think a 

 particular field (where one or two large coveys jug) will 

 be drawn, put three or four old sickles into long han- 

 dles, and stick them upon the tops of the stetches, edges 

 reversed ; these, if they carry the tail of the net, will 

 divide it, but they must be very sharp. Unsuspected 

 plashes, made in the rides and glades in covers, will 

 catch the prints of the poachers' feet, by which you will 

 often be enabled to make them out. Sometimes, when 

 they look very fresh, you may, by walking counter, 

 come upon them. 



The best outside covering for a keeper to go out with 

 at night, is an ass-skin dressed, with holes for the arms 

 and loops in front. In this, with an invulnerable cap, 

 covered with the same, he may lie down anywhere, 

 without being suspected. 



To find wires in cover, observe upon which side the 

 haunt for feeding lies ; on that side crosswise they are 

 planted : get in some five or six rods, and about the 

 same distance into young slop from the wall, and where 

 you have found one by the break or moss, you may per- 

 haps follow the rest. If there should be no break, get 

 two wires in a line, take an object on the other side of 

 the cover, to which walk, looking sharp right and left, 

 and you will be sure to find them, particularly if there 

 are hares in them, as they will be so much easier seen. 



Hay-nets, and other cumbersome apparatus for the 



