332 
NOTES TO THE 
do not thrust tlieir noses under water Avhen they drink. There 
is no doubt that it is very desirable for hunters and race-horses 
to have large nostrils. Deer, when they are hardly pressed, run 
with their mouth open, which a horse does not. I cannot 
think that it would be necessary for an animal at slow work to 
have its nostrils slit." 
Most deer and many antelopes liave these curious tear-pits 
under the eye. They contain a waxy secretion. The use of 
tliis is probably sexual, as they rub tiie secretion on to the 
boughs of trees, &c. 
A connoisseur in venison informs me that the venison of 
the fallow deer, as a rule, is preferred to that of the red 
deer, being finer grained and more delicate ; but the flesh of 
the two species seldom meets with fair comparison, inasmuch 
as the fallow deer is generally shot in an inclosed park — his 
exact age and condition are carefully noted, and care is taken 
to pick him off in his fullest perfection ; whereas the stag, 
generally roaming at large in a forest or extensive w^oodland, is 
killed at hazard and at random, his head alone guiding the rifle 
in its selection. Red deer venison, if of the proper age, season, 
and fatness, is by many allowed to be second to no other. 
Man-traps axd Spring-guns, p. 18. — In Gilbert White's 
time man-traps and spring-guns were probably set for the benefit 
of the Waltham Blacks which he" mentions. These instruments 
were made illegal in 1826. I have in my museum a very fine speci- 
men of a man-trap given me by Mr. James Wiseman, of Pagle- 
sham, Essex. The drawing opposite is taken from a photograph of 
two man-traps that belonged to my late friend Sir Robert Clifton, 
tlien M.I\ for Nottingham ; they act upon the principle of a 
rat-trap, with very strong springs at each end, and inflicted 
fearful wounds upon the human leg. Their size will be seen 
from the height of Sir Robert's gamekeeper, who has his hand 
upon the top of the trap. Sir Robert put this man into one of 
these traps and had a great difficulty to get him out again. In 
the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford there are three very fine 
specimens of man-traps, also a spring-gun. The spring-gun is 
about the size of an old-fashioned navy pistol. It turns upon 
a pivot ; wires were attached to it, which were suspended in 
all directions among the bushes about the height of a man's 
knee ; by a simple mechanism the gun revolved and went off 
exactly in the direction of the wire which was touched by the 
man's leg. Close to these traps in the Ashmolean museum is 
the burat end of a wooden stake, which was, without a doubt, 
used at the martyrdom of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley. 
