on Economy and Mice.



283



by the chemists from whom one orders it I don’t know, but it is

certain that the last three tubes which I purchased were entirely

ineffective.


Traps of various kinds are useful until the mice get accus¬

tomed to them, after which they become very uncertain. I believe I

have tided most of those on the market with very varying' results.

In my youthful days the wood and wire clap-trap was considered

quite satisfactory; now one may set a dozen of those and not a

mouse enters one of them : there used to be a double trap, the bait

for which was contained in a central depression with a perforated

zinc cover : so far as I remember, for I have not seen one of these

traps for some forty or fifty years, the entrances at each end were

formed after the pattern of a lobster-pot.*


The wooden garrotting traps with two or three opening's, en¬

circled when set by wire nooses passed through slots and attached

to powerful springs, seems to have gone out of fashion ; they were a

bother to set, as the nooses were held in place by cotton thread

passed through small holes pierced at top and bottom of the trap.

Behind these threads the bait—usually flour—was placed, and to get

at it the mice had to bite through the cotton, which of course

released the spring and promptly choked them. A somewhat similar,

but better, German tin trap of circular shape with about eight holes

round the sides, used to be obtainable ; in that the spring nooses

were held down by hooks after the pattern of the clap-trap. I have

known the wooden type to catch three mice in a night and its

German representative from two to four; but after a time the

cunning little quadrupeds become suspicious and ignore them.


I have heard of, but never seen, a dead-fall trap ; used, I am

told, by the Sussex peasantry and stated to be very deadly ; I believe

it flattens its victims: the explanation of the mechanism of this

trap was given to me by a Sussex-born bricklayer and was certainly

not lucid. I fancy it must have been worked somewhat on the

principle of the ancient brick trap for catching sparrows, only there

was a tunnel through which the mouse ran, and in the middle of

which the weight fell.



* I have a vague remembrance also of a domed wire-trap made with similar


entrances.



