20 PRACTICAL TAXIDERMY. 



choose this season for their period of relaxation from business, and 

 devote themselves to the taking of this bird with horsehair springes. 

 The shopkeeper of Liege and Verviers, whose house in the town is the 

 model of comfort and cleanliness, resorts with his wife and children to 

 one or two rooms in a miserable country village to enjoy the sport he 

 has been preparing with their help during the long evenings of the 

 preceding winter, in the course of which he has made as many as from 

 5000 to 10,000 horsehair springes and prepared as many pieces of flexible 

 wood, rather thicker than a swan-quill, in and on which to hang the birds. 

 He hires what he calls his " tenderie," being from four to five acres of 

 underwood about three to five years old, pays some thirty shillings for 

 permission to place his springes, and his greatest ambition is to retain 

 for several years the same tenderie and the same lodgings, which he 

 improves in comfort from year to year. The springes being made and 

 the season of migration near, he goes for a day to his intended place of 

 sojourn, and cuts as many twigs, about 18in. in length, as he intends 

 hanging springes. There are two methods of hanging them — in one the 

 twig is bent into the form of the figure six, the tail end running through 

 a slit cut in the upper part of the twig. The other method is to sharpen 

 a twig at both ends, and insert the points into a grower or stem of 

 underwood, thus forming a bow, of which the stem forms the string 

 below the springe ; and hanging from the lower part of the bow is placed 

 a small branch, with three or four berries of the mountain ash (there 

 called " sorbier ' ') ; this is fixed to the bow by inserting the stalk into a slit 

 in the wood. The hirer of a new tenderie three or four acres in extent 

 is obliged to make zigzag footpaths through it, to cut away the boughs 

 which obstruct them, and even to hoe and keep them clean. Having 

 thus prepared himself, he purchases one or two bushels of mountain 

 ash berries, with the stalks to which they grow, picked for the 

 purpose after they are red, but before they are ripe, to prevent falling 

 off : these he lays out on a table in the loft or attic. The collection of 

 these berries is a regular trade, and the demand for them is so great that, 

 although planted expressly by the side of the roads in the Ardennes, 

 they have been sold as high as £2 the bushel ; but the general price is 

 5 francs. We will now suppose our thrush-catcher arrived at his 

 lodgings in the country — that he has had his footpath cleared by the aid 

 of a labourer, and that he is off for his first day's sport. He is 

 provided with a basket, one compartment of which holds his twigs bent 

 or straight, another his berries ; his springes being already attached to 

 the twigs, he very rapidly drives his knife into a lateral branch, and 

 fixes them, taking care that the springe hangs neatly in the middle of the 



