APPENDIX III. 279 



tance, you can do so by packing them in wet moss (Sphag- 

 num). They will live forty-eight hours in it. Or, if it is 

 in the winter, you can freeze them up and carry them, if 

 you do not freeze them so stiff but that you can bend 

 them easily. This you can also do with pickerel and other 

 fish. 



When muskrats begin to come up your brook in the 

 fall, set your traps in the middle of the stream and place 

 obstructions (stakes or anything) on each side of the trap, 

 as far as the bank. The rats will go into the trap, rather 

 than go around or over the obstruction. If the muskrats 

 have succeeded in getting up into your ponds, sink a barrel 

 into the pond, fill it a little less than half full of water, and 

 put a sweet apple in it. The rats will get into it after the 

 apple, and cannot get out 



If minks have got into your ponds, push one end of a 

 plank into the water, on the north bank of the pond, and 

 let it rest so, obliquely, on the bank, facing the south. Put 

 your trap on the plank, so that the mink must step into it 

 if he comes up on the plank. He will presently climb up 

 the plank to sun himself, and will be caught. 



If kingfishers or fish hawks molest your trout, erect a 

 pole on the bank, and fasten a common steel trap on the 

 top of it. The birds will surely light on the pole to watch 

 their prey, and will almost always be caught. If large 

 herons visit the ponds, place a number of steel traps in 

 any shallow part of the pond where their tracks are seen. 

 The heron's feet are so large that he will not be long step- 

 ping into one of the traps. The traps should be firmly 

 fastened, of course. 



If you wish to know whether poachers visit the ponds 



creature will immediately gain his equilibrium in the water, and 

 endeavor to move off with as natural a motion of the fins as if 

 nothing had happened. This sickening sight I have often seen 

 at the Missisquoi River. 



