Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/337

Rh vation due to the introduction, about a century ago, of a variety from the far East. If we accompany the man of traps and guns as he makes his round we shall come to the conclusion that his knowledge of the ways of the tenants of copse and spinney falls little short of all that there is to know. Being a master of his trade, he trusts more to traps than to his gun. Here the bait of a dead rabbit has proved the undoing of a carrion crow, and in this ditch he has placed a little wooden culvert up which any creature of the weasel kind will be certain to venture in its travels, the said culvert containing a well-hidden trap. Sometimes a gin, artfully concealed by soil and grass, is placed in a hollow out of which a sod has been lifted. In the nice adjustment of snares and poisoned baits he is, too, a past master. This rabbit skin, neatly turned inside out, bespeaks the handiwork of the fox. Not such was the fate of the furry owner of the little white skull which we pick up soon afterwards. Two lower incisors grown out into long curved tusks show that dental troubles shortened its days.

Crossing the fields beyond the plantation, we note that the remains of the partridge coveys are uniting to form packs, as they always do towards the close of the shooting season. So the short day passes, well-spent, until with dusk the sparrows noisily go to roost in the ivy, and the greenfinches seek the shelter of the clipped yew-hedges.