REARING AND PROTECTION. 41 
in his useful manual on Game Preserving, which has been too long out of print. 
The author writes: “I have constructed an alarm gun which combines the desiderata 
of cheapness and simplicity more completely than any I have yet seen. I do not 
lay claim to the invention of this gun, but I certainly find I can adopt materials 
in its construction that will come to a tenth part of the money usually charged ; 
in fact, any tolerable mechanic ought to make it in an hour. It is formed as 
follows: get a piece of iron gas-pipe, three inches long and three-quarters bore. At 
the threaded end make a plug of iron a quarter of an inch thick, and tapped in the 
centre for a nipple. Drive this plug into the barrel, and braze it. The nipple is 
then screwed in. Then get a corresponding piece of the gas-pipe, from two feet six 
inches to three feet long, also threaded at the end. Screw the collar (that always 
goes along with this sort of gas-pipe), on to the long piece as tight as it will go. 
The gun is now complete with the exception of the hammer, which is a piece of 
round iron about a foot long, and slipping easily down the barrel. To set the gun 
you must tie the long barrel fast to the stem of a tree in the plantation, with 
the short barrel downwards. Unscrew the latter and load it with a couple of 
charges of powder, and put on the cap, which you should cover with some beeswax 
and suet mixed. Then screw the short barrel into the long one. Drill a small 
hole through the loose piece of iron about four inches from one end, and put it in 
the barrel with a nail or peg in the small hole, and a string from the nail going 
down the side of the tree in the direction you may choose. Mind and not have 
the wire so low that a dog can let it off. When the wire is touched it draws the 
nail, and the hammer, falling down on the barrel, lets the cap off. Being fastened 
up in a tree, and close to the stem, it can catch the eye of no one, and merely has 
to be shifted occasionally, though of course there is no need to do this until after 
it has been fired. After all, nothing daunts poachers so much as pit-falls made in 
the woods. They should be about seven fect deep, and made with the sides slanting, 
so that the chamber is larger at the bottom than at the top. Unless boarded all 
round, the soil will fall in. The opening should be four feet square, and be covered 
with sticks and sods, or anything resembling the surrounding ground. Poachers are 
very shy of venturing into woods where you have these pit-falls.” 
A more complicated alarm gun, giving four distinct reports in rapid 
succession, was described in the first edition, but the danger attending its employ- 
ment in consequence of its discharging the wooden plugs, with which the barrels 
are closed, upwards, has induced me to omit the account. 
A very simple alarm gun, which can be constructed out of any old pistol barrel 
and a spiral bell spring, is shown in the followitlg engraving, in which D 
represents a block of wood, capable of being nailed to a tree; C the barrel, which 
is loaded and capped in the usual manner. The gun is discharged by the descent 
of the hammer B; this is pulled down by the spiral spring, when the peg A, 
G 
