NOXIOUS VERMIN. 67 



poultry-yard in the morning, found two of 

 his best sitting hens dead in the traps. 



When a rackoon (Procyon Lotor) enters 

 a yard, wo betide its unlucky inhabitants. 

 He sometimes puts to death fifteen or twen- 

 ty fowls, without eating any part of them 

 except the heads or the blood, which is 

 sucked from the neck. A steel trap, baited 

 with the heads of fowls, and placed outside 

 of the poultry-yard, is the surest mode of 

 capturing these animals. 



When foxes are troublesome in a neigh- 

 bourhood, they may be reduced in number 

 by joining with your neighbours in hunting 

 them to their burrows, when the snow is on 

 the ground. They are not to be taken by 

 ordinary traps, and the only mode I can 

 suggest, and which I have known to suc- 

 ceed, is the Kinderhook bait. This con- 

 sists of a piece of tainted meat, suspended 

 by an iron chain a few feet from the ground. 

 In this meat are concealed a number of 

 small but strong hooks, attached by wire to 

 the main iron cfiain. When poultry are 

 permitted to wander about, and foxes are 



