186 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
which takes place on their annual passage. As the result of subdivision of 
landed property in France, every one or two small fields is held separately 
by a peasant and his family. These are usually cultivated with Indian 
corn, haricot beans, and vegetables, and the crops are all off by September. 
The field is generally a square or a parallelogram, and as soon as it is clear, 
each man puts up a small hut in one corner, and fixes a long folding clap- 
net in the middle of his field. Seed is then spread, and tame Finches, 
Larks or Pigeons, attached by a short string, are placed as decoys. 
Monsieur le Propriétaire then sits in his hut and waits, keeping a sharp 
look-out for the flights coming from the north: as soon as he sees them 
coming he agitates his decoys, and the birds immediately come down to 
feed and rest, when a pull of the cord encloses ten, twenty, forty, or more 
at one haul. These are killed and picked clean for the market, and the 
net re-set. This goes on all day and every day during the period of 
migration in all the fields in the district, and presumably in most other 
parts of the country. I used to go round to watch the proceedings, and at 
every hut I found by the man’s side a mound (a foot or more high) of little 
victims without their feathers. The Finches were the most numerous: 
Chaffinch, Greenfinch, Hawfinch, Goldfinch, Linnet, and Siskin,—nothing 
comes amiss to them, and everything finds a ready sale in the market. 
One man I found picking a Sparrowhawk. I suggested that it was not 
eatable; but he said, ‘‘With the head and feet cut off, no one would 
know it from a Pigeon”! After all, considering the vast flights that are 
moving at these seasons of migration, it is a question whether this partial 
destruction does more than decimate the different species or sensibly 
diminish their numbers. I have stood at my window at Biarritz, over- 
looking the sea, and watched flights of thirty or forty Chaffinches every 
three or four minutes pass incessantly to the south. In addition to the 
nets, wherever there are fences or hedges I found them covered with limed 
twigs, which are visited every day for insectivorous birds. These they 
have a plan of packing by the dozen, by inserting their necks between a 
split stick tied at both ends. I was once driving at Cambo, and saw a man 
with some of these sticks of coloured birds, and thinking they might be 
rare specimens I bought one in a hurry, and on reaching home found they 
were Robins and Redstarts! They take the Stock Dove and Turtle Dove 
at Biarritz, but the capture of the Wood Pigeon isa special pursuit. Vast 
flights of our Common Cushat, or Wood Pigeon, migrate south in the 
autumn through the gorges of the Pyrenees, the inhabitants of the 
localities having an hereditary vested interest in particular narrow gorges 
in the mountains through which they pass. These are known as 
« Palombiéres.” At the proper season nets are spread acros3 these narrow 
passes from trees on one side to the trees on the other. At the top of a 
high tree at the side, a boy is stationed provided with a stuffed hawk: he 
