THE RABBIT IN A SNARE 33 



done them, will use steel traps where they could save 

 themselves much labour, and the rabbits a good deal 

 of suffering, if they were to use snares. Several 

 hundred snares can be set in the time it would take 

 to set a hundred traps, and the snares cost little, 

 and weigh next to nothing a consideration when 

 traps or snares have to be carried a long way. A 

 few traps make a heavy load. 



Snares themselves are far from ideal. If they 

 are properly set a good many rabbits may run into 



them at speed and kill themselves almost 

 The instantly ; but the majority of the rabbits 



alsnape" 1 cau g nt wil1 not be thus neatly despatched. 



Half a night's catch may be found dead 

 in the morning, some having been hanged out- 

 right, others strangled more or less slowly ; but half 

 will be found still living, if nearly dead. This slow 

 strangulation is prevented when a knot is made in 

 the snare, or some sort of ring or washer is attached, 

 so that the wire cannot be drawn tight enough to 

 prevent the rabbit breathing ; but no rabbit then is 

 killed swiftly and mercifully by the wire, and on 

 other accounts the plan could not prove a real solu- 

 tion to the problem. There is still another way of 

 setting a snare which prevents a slow death : a 

 bender a springy stick of hazel or ash about four 

 feet long is fixed firmly in the ground : the snare 

 is made fast to the thin top of it, the stick is bent 



c 



