Page:The Life of the Fields, Jefferies, 1884.djvu/175

Rh ably believed to be very audible indeed to the jack. The wire fences which are now so much used round shrubberies and across parks give a very good illustration of the conveyance of sound. Strung tight by a spanner, the strands of twisted wire resemble a stringed instrument. If you place your hand on one of the wires and get a friend to strike it with his stick, say, thirty or forty yards away, you will distinctly feel it vibrate. If the ear is held close enough you will hear it, vibration and sound being practically convertible terms. To the basking jack three such wires extend, and when the cart-horse in the meadow puts down his heavy hoof he strikes them all at once. Yet, though fish are so sensitive to sound, the jack is not in the least alarmed, and there can be little doubt that he knows what it is. A whole herd of cattle feeding and walking about does not disturb him, but if the light step—light in comparison—of a man approach, away he goes. Poachers, therefore, unable to disguise their footsteps, endeavour to conceal them, and by moving slowly to avoid vibrating the earth, and through it the water.

In poaching, the intelligence of the man is backed against the intelligence of the fish or animal, and the poacher tries to get himself into the ways of the creature he means to snare. That is what really takes place as seen by us as lookers-on; to the poacher himself, in nine out of ten cases, it is merely an acquired knack learned from watching others, and improved by practice. But to us, as lookers-on, this is what occurs: the man fits himself to the ways of the creature, and for the time it becomes a struggle between them. It