26 THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME. 



little skin has to be separately prepared, and when finished 

 hardly covers two square inches of surface. Consequently 

 it requires several scores of skins, and the work is a year 

 or more about. There is then the sewing together, which 

 is not to be accomplished without much patience and skill. 

 The fur is beautifully soft and glossy, with more resem- 

 blance to velvet than is possessed by any other natural 

 substance, and very warm. Mittens for the wrists are also 

 made of it, and skull-caps. Moleskin waistcoats used to 

 be thought a good deal of, but are now only met with 

 occasionally as a curiosity. 



The old wooden mole-trap is now almost extinct, 

 superseded by the modern iron one, which anybody can 

 set up. The ancient contrivance, a cylinder of wood, could 

 only be placed in position by a practised hand, and from 

 his experience in this the mole-catcher — locally called 

 * oont-catcher ' — used to be an important personage in his 

 way. He is now fast becoming extinct also — that is, as a 

 distinct handicraftsman spending his whole time in such 

 trapping. He was not unfrequently a man who had once 

 occupied a subordinate place under a keeper, and when 

 grown too feeble for harder labour, supported himself in 

 this manner : contracting with the farmers to clear their 

 fields by the season. 



Neither stoats' nor weasels' skins are preserved, except 

 now and then for stuffing to put under a glass case, though 

 the stoat is closely allied to the genuine ermine. Polecats, 



