MABSII BIRDS. 93- 



as thirty dozen in a week to London. One person, an old 

 writer tells us, sent in a single season from Torrington, 

 in Devonshire, woodcock to the value of 1900 pounds into 

 market. Truly those were the days when " cock " were at 

 the height of fashion, and ten, sixteen, and even twenty 

 shillings a couple was willingly given for this admirable 

 table bird. At that time woodcock were taken in the south 

 of England by Y-shaped enclosures in coppices and w r oods 

 they frequented, formed of small light fences of dead holly 

 or beach boughs a foot or so high. The woodcock, instead 

 of attempting to leap or fly over these, ran down the inner 

 side, looking for a small opening to creep through. This he 

 found at the apex of the angle, but a noose hung over it 

 which effectually secured him. by the neck a victim to undue 

 fastidiousness ! 



But that Torrington game-dealer would never have made 

 an annual income of four figures out of Scolopax Rusticola, 

 had he known of no other snare but the above somewhat 

 "single-barrelled" affair. The glade-net was no doubt the 

 engine with which the western men took most of their 

 quarry, though the device, I am well pleased to think, is 

 hardly ever used now on this side of the Channel. It con- 

 sisted of nets hung across the open rides in coppices, "the 

 cock roads," as Blome calls them, into which migrating 

 woodcock, and sometimes partridges, and even hares, plunged 

 when driven from the neighbouring woods by beaters. 

 "The nets have to be of length and breadth proportionate 

 to the glades in which they are suspended," says Folkard, in 

 his "Wild Fowler," a volume that should be on every 

 sportsman's bookcase. The net is suspended between two 

 trees directly in the track of the woodcock's flight. Both 

 the upper and lower corners have a rope attached to them, 

 which is rove through sheaves fastened to the trees on either 

 side, at a moderate height, varying from ten to twelve feet. 

 The falls of the two upper ropes are joined, so that they form 

 a bridle, to the central part of which a rope is attached 



