EGG-STEALER'S TRICK. 165 



find what he wants, the egg-stealer adopts a simple but 

 effective plan by which he ensures against omitting to 

 examine a single foot of the field. Drop a pocket-knife 

 or some such object in the midst of a great meadow, and 

 you will find the utmost difficulty in discovering it again, 

 when the grass is growing tall as in spring. You may 

 think that you have traversed every inch, yet it is certain 

 that you have not ; the inequalities of the ground insensibly 

 divert your footsteps, and it is very difficult to keep a 

 straight line. What is required is something to fix the 

 eye — what a sailor would call a ' bearing.' This the egg- 

 stealer finds in a walking-stick. He thrusts the point into 

 the earth, and then slowly walks round and round it, 

 enlarging the circle, every time, and thus sweeps every inch 

 of the surface with his eye. When he has got so far from 

 the stick as to feel that his steps are becoming uncertain 

 he removes it, and begins again in another spot. A 

 person not aware of this simple trick will search a field till 

 weary and declare there is nothing to be found ; another, 

 who knows the dodge, will go out and return in an hour 

 with a pocketful of eggs. 



On those clear, bright winter nights when the full 

 moon is almost at the zenith, and the ' definition ' of tree 

 and bough in the flood of light seems to equal if not to 

 exceed that of the noonday, some poaching used to be 

 accomplished with the aid of a horsehair noose on the end 

 of a long slender wand. There are still some districts in 



