e should be little difficulty with
partridges.

Pheasants are more individual in their ways, and act less together; but
they have the same habit of running instead of flying, and if a poacher
did but dare he could take them with nets as easily as possible. They
form runs through the woods--just as fowls will wander day after day
down a hedge, till they have made quite a path. So that, having found
the run and knowing the position of the birds, the rest is simplicity
itself. The net being stretched, the pheasants were driven in. A cur dog
was sometimes sent round to disturb the birds. Being a cur, he did not
bark, for which reason a strain of cur is preferred to this day by the
mouchers who keep dogs. Now that the woods are regularly watched such a
plan has become impracticable. It might indeed be done once, but surely
not twice where competent keepers were about.

Nets were also used for hares and rabbits, which were driven in by a
dog; but, the scent of these animals being so good, it was necessary to
work in such a manner that the wind might not blow from the net, meeting
them as they approached it. Pheasants, as every one knows, roost on
trees, but often do not ascend very high; and, indeed, before the leaves
are off they are said to be sometimes taken by hand--sliding it along
the bough till the legs are grasped, just as you might fowls perched at
night on a rail across the beams of a shed.

The spot where they roost is easily found out, because of the peculiar
noise they make upon flying up; and with a little precaution the trees
may be approached without startling them. Years ago the poacher carried
a sulphur match and lit it under the tree, when the fumes, ascending,
stupefied the birds, which fell to the ground. The process strongly
resembled the way in which old-fashioned folk stifled their bees by
placing the hive at night, when the insects were still, over a piece of
brown paper dipped in molten brimstone and ignited. The apparently dead
bees were afterwards shaken out and buried; but upon moving the earth
with a spade some of them would crawl out, even after two or three days.

Sulphur fumes were likewise used for compelling rabbits to bolt from
their buries without a ferret. I tried an experiment in a bury once with
a mixture the chief component of which was gunpowder, so managed as to
burn slowly and give a great smoke. The rabbits did, indeed, just hop
out and hop in again; but it is a most clumsy expe