Richard Jefferies

The Field Detective—Fish Poaching.

THE footpaths through the plantations and across the fields have no milestones by which the pedestrian can calculate the distance traversed; nor is the time occupied a safe criterion, because of the varying nature of the soil—now firm and now slippery—so that the pace is not regular. But these crooked paths—no footpath is ever straight—really represent a much greater distance than would be supposed if the space from point to point were measured on a map. So that the keeper as he goes his rounds, though he does not rival the professional walker, in the course of a year covers some thousands of miles. He rarely does less than ten, and probably often twelve miles a day, visiting certain points twice—i.e. in the morning and evening—and often in addition, if he has any suspicions, making dÉtours. It is easy to walk a mile in a single field of no great dimensions when it is necessary to go up and down each side of four long hedgerows, and backwards and forwards, following the course of the furrows.

The keeper’s eye is ever on the alert for the poacher’s wires; and where the grass is tall to discover these is often a tedious task, since he may go within a few yards and yet pass them. The ditches and the great bramble-bushes are carefully scanned, because in these the poacher often conceals his gun, nets, or game, even when not under immediate apprehension of capture. The reason is that his cottage may perhaps be suddenly searched: if not by authority, the policeman on some pretext or other may unexpectedly lift the latch or peer into the outhouses, and feathers and fur are apt to betray their presence in the most unexpected manner. One single feather, one single fluffy little piece of fur overlooked, is enough to ruin him, for these are things of which it is impossible to give an acceptable explanation.

In dry weather the poacher often hides his implements; especially is this the case after a more than usually venturesome foray, when he knows that his house is tolerably certain to be overhauled and all his motions watched. A hollow tree is a common resource—the pollard willow generally becomes hollow in its old age—and with a piece of the decaying ‘touchwood’ or a strip of dead bark his tools are ingeniously covered up. Under the eaves of sheds and outhouses the sparrows make holes by pulling out the thatch, and roost in these sheltered places in severe weather, warmly protected from the frost; other small birds, as wrens and tomtits, do the same; and the poacher avails himself of these holes to hide his wires.

A gun has been found before now concealed in a heap of manure, such as are frequently seen in the corners of the fields. These heaps sometimes remain for a year or more in order that the materials may become thoroughly decomposed, and the surface is quickly covered with a rank growth of weeds. The poacher, choosing the side close to the hedge, where no one would be likely to go, excavated a place beneath these weeds, partly filled it in with dry straw, and laid his gun on this. A rough board placed over it shielded it from damp; and the aperture was closed with ‘bull-polls’—that is, the rough grass of the furrows chopped up (not unlike the gardener’s ‘turves’)—and thrown on the manure-heap to decay. If the keeper detects anything of this kind he allows it to stay undisturbed, but sets a watch, and so surprises the owner of the treasure.

The keeper is particularly careful to observe the motions of the labourers engaged in the fields; especially at luncheon-time, when men with a hunch of bread and a slice of bacon—kept on the bread with a small thumb-piece of crust, and carved with a pocket knife—are apt to ramble round the hedges, of course with the most innocent of motives, admiring the beauties of nature. Slowly wandering like this, they cast a sidelong glance at their wire, set up in a ‘drock’—i.e. a bridge over a ditch formed of a broad flat stone—which chances to be a favourite highway of the rabbits. Nowadays, in this age of draining, short barrel drains of brick or large glazed pipes are often let through thick banks; these are dry for weeks together, and hares slip through them. A wire or trap set here is quite out of ordinary observation; and the keeper, who knows that he cannot examine every inch of ground, simplifies the process by quietly noting the movements of the men. As he passes and repasses a field where they are at work day after day, and understands agricultural labour, he is aware that they have no necessity to visit hedgerows and mounds a hundred yards distant, and should he see anything of that kind the circle of his suspicions gradually narrows till he hits the exact spot and person.

The gateways and gaps receive careful attention—unusual footmarks in the mud are looked for. Sometimes he detects a trace of fur or feathers, or a bloodstain on the spars or rails, where a load of rabbits or game has been hung for a few minutes while the bearer rested. The rabbit-holes in the banks are noted: this becomes so much a matter of habit as to be done almost unconsciously and without effort as he walks; and anything unusual—as the sand much disturbed, the imprint of a boot, the bushes broken or cut away for convenience of setting a net—is seen in an instant. If there be any high ground—woods are often on a slope—the keeper has here a post whence to obtain a comprehensive survey, and he makes frequent use of this natural observatory, concealing himself behind a tree trunk.

The lanes and roads and public footpaths that cross the estate near the preserves are a constant source of uneasiness. Many fields are traversed by a perfect network of footpaths, half of which are of very little use, but cannot be closed. Nothing causes so much ill-will in rural districts as the attempt to divert or shut up a track like this. Cottagers are most tenacious of these ‘rights,’ and will rarely exchange them for any advantage. ‘There always wur a path athwert thuck mead in the ould volk’s time’ is their one reply endlessly reiterated; and the owner of the property, rather than make himself unpopular, desists from persuasion. The danger to game from these paths arises from the impossibility of stopping a suspicious character at once. If he breaks through a hedge it is different; but the law is justly jealous of the subject’s liberty on a public footpath, and you cannot turn him back.

Neither is it of any use to search a man whose tools, to a moral certainty, are concealed in some hedge. With his hands in his pockets, and a short pipe in his mouth, he can saunter along the side of a preserve if only a path, as is often the case, follows the edge; and by-and-by it grows dusk, and the keeper or keepers cannot be everywhere at once. There is nothing to prevent such fellows as these from sneaking over an estate with a lurcher dog at their heels—a kind of dog gifted with great sagacity, nearly as swift as a greyhound, and much better adapted for picking up the game when overtaken, which is the greyhound’s difficulty. They can be taught to obey the faintest sign or sound from their owners. If the latter imagine watchers to be about, the lurcher slinks along close behind, keeping strictly to the path. Presently, if the poacher but lifts his finger, away dashes the dog, and will miss nothing he comes across. The lurcher has always borne an evil repute, which of course is the due not of the dog but of his master. If a man had to get his living by the chase in Red Indian fashion, probably this would be the best breed for his purpose. Many shepherds’ dogs now have a cross of the lurcher in their strain, and are good at poaching.

Sunday is the gamekeeper’s worst day; the idle, rough characters from the adjacent town pour out into the country, and necessitate extra watchfulness. On Sunday, the keeper, out of respect to the day, does not indeed carry his gun, but he works yet harder than on week-days. While the chimes are ringing to church he is on foot by the edge of the preserves. He has to maintain a sort of surveillance over the beer-houses in the village, which is done with the aid of the district policeman, for they are not only the places where much of the game is sold, but the rendezvous of those who are planning a raid.

If the policeman notices an unusual stir, or the arrival of strange men without any apparent business, he acquaints the keeper, who then takes care to double his sentinels, and personally visit them during the night. This night-work is very trying after his long walks by day. A great object is to be about early in the morning—just before the dawn; that is the time when the poachers return to examine their wires. By day he often varies his rounds so as to appear upon the scene when least expected; and has regular trysting places, where his assistants meet him with their reports.

The gipsies, who travel the road in caravans, give him endless trouble; they are adepts at poaching, and each van is usually accompanied by a couple of dogs. The movements of these people are so irregular that it is impossible to be always ready for them. They are suspected of being recipients of poached game, purchasing it from the local professionals. Under pretence of cutting skewer-wood, often called dogwood, which they split and sharpen for the butchers, they wander across the open downs where it grows, camping in wild, unfrequented places, and finding plenty of opportunities for poaching. Down land is most difficult to watch.

Then the men who come out from the towns, ostensibly to gather primroses in the early spring, or ferns, which they hawk from door to door; and the watercress men, who are about the meadows and brooks twice a year, in spring and autumn, require constant supervision. An innocent-looking basket or small sack-bag of mushrooms has before now, when turned upside down, been discovered to contain a couple of rabbits or a fine young leveret. This detective work is, in fact, never finished. There is no end to the tricks and subterfuges practised, and with all his experience and care the gamekeeper is frequently outwitted.

The relations between the agricultural labourers and the keeper are not of the most cordial character; in fact, there is a ceaseless distrust upon the one hand and incessant attempts at over-reaching upon the other. The ploughmen, the carters, shepherds, and foggers, have so many opportunities as they go about the fields, and they never miss the chance of a good dinner or half-a-crown when presented to them. Higher wages have not in the slightest degree diminished poaching, regular or occasional; on the contrary, from whatever cause, there is good reason to believe it on the increase. If a labourer crossing a field sees a hare or rabbit crouching in his form, what is to prevent him from thrusting his prong like a spear suddenly through the animal and pinning him to the turf? There are plenty of ways of hiding dead game, under straw or hay, in the thick beds of nettles which usually spring up outside or at the back of a cowshed.

Why does the keeper take such a benevolent interest in the progress of spade-husbandry, as exemplified in allotment gardens near the village, which allotments are generally in a field set apart by the principal landowner for the purpose? In person or by proxy the keeper is very frequently seen looking over the close-cropped hedge which surrounds the spot, and now and then he takes a walk up and down the narrow paths between the plots. His dog sniffs about among the heaps of rubbish or under the potato-vines. The men at work are remarkably civil and courteous to the gentleman in the velveteen jacket, who on his side, is equally chatty with them; but both in their hearts know very well the why and wherefore of this interest in agriculture. Almost all kinds of game are attracted by gardens, presupposing, of course, that they are situated at a distance from houses, as these allotments are. There is a supply of fresh, succulent food of various kinds: often too, after a large plot has been worked for garden produce, the tenant will sow it for barley or beans or oats, on the principle of rotation; and these small areas of grain have a singular fascination for pheasants, and hares linger in them.

Rabbits, if undisturbed, are particularly fond of garden vegetables. In spring and early summer they will make those short holes in which they bring forth their young under the potato-vines, finding the soil easy to work, dry, and the spot sheltered by the thick green stems and leaves. Both rabbits and hares do considerable damage if they are permitted the run of the place unchecked. The tenants of the allotments, however, instead of driving them off, are anxious that they should come sniffing and limping over the plots in the gloaming, and are strongly suspected of allowing crops specially pleasing to game to remain in the ground till the very latest period in order that they may snare it.

Much kindly talk has been uttered over allotments, and undoubtedly they are a great encouragement to the labourer; yet even this advantage is commonly abused. The tenants have no ground of complaint as to damage to their crops, because the keeper, at a word from them, would lose not a moment of time in killing or driving away the intruder; and as an acknowledgment of honesty and in reparation of the mischief, if any, a couple of rabbits would be presented to the man who carried the complaint. But the labourer, if he spies the tracks of a hare running into his plot of corn, or suspects that a pheasant is hiding there, carefully keeps that knowledge to himself. He knows that a pheasant, if you can get close enough to it before it rises, is a clumsy bird, and large enough to offer a fair mark, and may be brought down with a stout stick dexterously thrown. As very probably the pheasant is a young one and (not yet having undergone its baptism of fire) only recently regularly fed, it is almost tame and may be approached without difficulty. This is why the keeper just looks round the allotment gardens now and then, and lets his dogs run about; for their noses are much more clever at discovering hidden fur or feathers than his eyes.

In winter if the weather be severe, hares and rabbits are very bold, and will enter gardens though attached to dwelling-houses. Sometimes when a vast double-mound hedge is grubbed, the ditches each side are left, and the interior space is ultimately converted into an osier-bed, osiers being rather profitable at present. But before these are introduced it is necessary that the ground be well dug up, for it is full of roots and the seeds of weeds, which perhaps have lain dormant for years, but now spring up in wonderful profusion. In consideration of cleansing the soil, and working it by digging, burning the weeds and rubbish, etc., the farmer allows one or two of his labourers to use it as a garden for the growth of potatoes, free of rent, for say a couple of years. Potatoes are a crop which flourish in fresh-turned soil, and so they do very well over the arrangement. But unfortunately as they dig and weed, etc., in the evenings after regular work, they have an excuse for their presence in the fields, and perhaps near preserves at a tempting period of the twenty-four hours. The keeper, in short, is quite aware that some sly poaching goes on in this way.

Another cause of unpleasantness between him and the cottagers arises from the dogs they maintain; generally curs, it is true, and not to all appearance capable of harm. But in the early summer a mongrel cur can do as much mischief as a thoroughbred dog. Young rabbits are easily overtaken when not much larger than rats, and at other seasons, when the game has grown better able to take care of itself, any kind of dog rambling loose in the woods and copses frightens it and unsettles it to an annoying degree. Consequently, when a dog once begins to trespass, it is pretty sure to disappear for good—it is not necessary to indicate how—and though no actual evidence can be got against the keeper, he is accused of the destruction of the ugly, ill-bred ‘pet.’ If a dog commences to hunt on his own account he can only be broken off the habit by the utmost severity; and so it sometimes happens that other dogs besides those of the cottagers come to an untimely end by shot and gin.

The keeper, being a man with some true sense of sport, dislikes shooting dogs, though compelled to do so occasionally; he never fires at his own, and candidly admits that he hates to see a sportsman give way to anger in that manner. The custom of ‘peppering’ with shot a dog for disobedience or wildness, which was once very common in the field, has however gone a great deal into disuse.

Shepherds, who often have to visit their flocks in the night—as at this season of the year, while lambing is in progress—who, in fact, sometimes sleep in the fields in a little wooden house on wheels built for the purpose, are strongly suspected of tampering with the hares scampering over the turnips by moonlight. At harvest-time many strange men come into the district for the extra wages of reaping. They rarely take lodgings—which, indeed, they might find some difficulty in obtaining—but in the warm summer weather sleep in the outhouses and sheds, with the permission of the owner. Others camp in the open in the corner of a meadow, where the angle made by meeting hedges protects them from the wind, crouching round the embers of the fire which boils the pot and kettle. This influx of strangers is not without its attendant anxiety to the keeper, who looks round now and then to see what is going on.

Despite the ill-will in their hearts, the labourers are particularly civil to the keeper; he is, in fact, a considerable employer of labour—not on his own account—but in the woods and preserves. He can often give men a job in the dead of winter, when farm work is scarce and the wages paid for it are less; such as hedge-cutting, mending the gaps in the fences, cleaning out ditches or the water-courses through the wood.

Then there is an immense amount of ferreting to be done, and there is such an instinctive love of sport in every man’s breast, that to assist in this work is almost an ambition; besides which, no doubt the chances afforded of an occasional private ‘bag’ form a secret attraction. One would imagine that there could be but little pleasure in crouching all day in a ditch, perhaps ankle-deep in ice-cold water, with flakes of snow driving in the face, and fingers numbed by the biting wind as it rushes through the bare hawthorn bushes, just to watch a rabbit jump out of a hole into a net, and to break his neck afterwards. Yet so it is; and some men become so enamoured of this slow sport as to do nothing else the winter through; and as of course their employment depends entirely upon the will of the keeper, they are anxious to conciliate him.

Despite therefore of missing cur dogs and straying cats which never return, the keeper is treated with marked deference by the cottagers. He is, nevertheless, fully aware of the concealed ill-will towards him; and perhaps this knowledge has contributed to render him more morose, and sharper of temper, and more suspicious of human nature than he would otherwise have been; for it never improves a man’s character to have to be constantly watching his fellows.

The streams are no more sacred from marauders than the woods and preserves. The brooks and upper waters are not so full of fish as formerly, the canal into which they fall being netted so much; and another cause of the diminution is the prevalence of fish-poaching, especially for jack, during the spawning season and afterwards. Though the keepers can check this within their own boundaries, it is not of much use.

Fish-poaching is simple and yet clever in its way. In the spawning time jack fish, which at other periods are apparently of a solitary disposition, go in pairs, and sometimes in trios, and are more tame than usual. A long slender ash stick is selected, slender enough to lie light in the hand and strong enough to bear a sudden weight. A loop and running noose are formed of a piece of thin copper wire, the other end of which is twisted round and firmly attached to the smaller end of the stick. The loop is adjusted to the size of the fish—it should not be very much larger, else it will not draw up quick enough, nor too small, else it may touch and disturb the jack. It does not take much practice to hit the happy medium. Approaching the bank of the brook quietly, so as not to shake the ground, to the vibrations of which fish are peculiarly sensitive, the poacher tries if possible to avoid letting his shadow fall across the water.

Some persons’ eyes seem to have an extraordinary power of seeing through water, and of distinguishing at a glance a fish from a long swaying strip of dead brown flag, or the rotting pieces of wood which lie at the bottom. The ripple of the breeze, the eddy at the curve, or the sparkle of the sunshine cannot deceive them; while others, and by far the greater number, are dazzled and see nothing. It is astonishing how few persons seem to have the gift of sight when in the field.

The poacher, having marked his prey in the shallow yonder, gently extends his rod slowly across the water three or four yards higher up the stream, and lets the wire noose sink without noise till it almost or quite touches the bottom. It is easier to guide the noose to its destination when it occasionally touches the mud, for refraction distorts the true position of objects in water, and accuracy is important. Gradually the wire swims down with the current, just as if it were any ordinary twig or root carried along, such as the jack is accustomed to see, and he therefore feels no alarm. By degrees the loop comes closer to the fish, till with steady hand the poacher slips it over the head, past the long vicious jaws and gills, past the first fins, and pauses when it has reached a place corresponding to about one-third of the length of the fish, reckoning from the head. That end of the jack is heavier than the other, and the ‘lines’ of the body are there nearly straight. Thus the poacher gets a firm hold—for a fish, of course, is slippery—and a good balance. If the operation is performed gently the jack will remain quite still, though the wire rubs against his side: silence and stillness have such a power over all living creatures. The poacher now clears his arm and, with a sudden jerk, lifts the fish right out of the stream and lands him on the sward.

So sharp is the grasp of the wire that it frequently cuts its way through the scales, leaving a mark plainly visible when the jack is offered for sale. The suddenness and violence of the compression seem to disperse the muscular forces, and the fish appears dead for the moment. Very often, indeed, it really is killed by the jerk. This happens when the loop either has not passed far enough along the body or has slipped and seized the creature just at the gills. It then garottes the fish. If, on the other hand, the wire has been passed too far towards the tail, it slips off that way, the jack falling back into the water with a broad white band where the wire has scraped the scales. Fish thus marked may not unfrequently be seen in the stream. The jack, from its shape, is specially liable to capture in this manner; long and well balanced, the wire has every chance of holding it. This poaching is always going on; the implement is so easily obtained and concealed. The wire can be carried in the pocket, and the stick may be cut from an adjacent copse.

The poachers observe that after a fish has once escaped from an attempt of the kind it is ever after far more difficult of capture. The first time the jack was still and took no notice of the insidious approach of the wire gliding along towards it; but the next—unless a long interval elapses before a second trial—the moment it comes near he is away. At each succeeding attempt, whether hurt or not, he grows more and more suspicious, till at last to merely stand still or stop while walking on the bank is sufficient for him; he is off with a swish of the tail to the deeper water, leaving behind him a cloud, so to say, of mud swept up from the bottom to conceal the direction of his flight. For it would almost seem as if the jack throws up this mud on purpose; if much disturbed he will quite discolour the brook. The wire does a good deal to depopulate the stream, and is altogether a deadly implement.

But a clever fish-poacher can land a jack even without a wire, and with no better instrument than a willow stick cut from the nearest osier-bed. The willow, or withy as it is usually called, is remarkably pliant, and can be twisted into any shape. Selecting a long slender wand, the poacher strips it of leaves, gives the smaller end a couple of twists, making a noose and running knot of the stick itself. The mode of using it is precisely similar to that followed with a wire, but it requires a little more dexterity, because, of course, the wood, flexible as it is, does not draw up so quickly or so closely as the metal, neither does it take so firm a grip. A fish once caught by a wire can be slung about almost anyhow, it holds so tightly. The withy noose must be jerked up the instant it passes under that part of the jack where the weight of the fish is balanced—the centre of gravity; if there is an error in this respect it should be towards the head, rather than towards the tail. Directly the jack is thrown out upon the sward he must be seized, or he will slip from the noose, and possibly find his way back again into the water. With a wire there is little risk of that; but then the withy does not cut its way into the fish.

This trick is often accomplished with the common withy—not that which grows on pollard trees, but in osier-beds; that on the trees is brittle. But a special kind is sought for the purpose, and for any other requiring extreme flexibility. It is, I think, locally called the stone osier, and it does not grow so tall as the common sorts. It will tie like string. Being so short, for poaching fish it has to be fastened to a thicker and longer stick, which is easily done; and some prefer it to wire because it looks more natural in the water and does not alarm the fish, while, should the keeper be about, it is easily cut up in several pieces and thrown away. I have heard of rabbits, and even hares, being caught with a noose of this kind of withy, which is as ‘tough as wire;’ and yet it seems hardly possible, as it is so much thicker and would be seen. Still, both hares and rabbits, when playing and scampering about at night, are sometimes curiously heedless, and foolish enough to run their necks into anything.

With such a rude implement as this some fish-poachers will speedily land a good basket of pike. During the spawning season, as was observed previously, jack go in pairs, and now and then in trios, and of this the poacher avails himself to take more than one at a haul. The fish lie so close together—side by side just at that time—that it is quite practicable, with care and judgment, to slip a wire over two at once. When near the bank two may even be captured with a good withy noose: with a wire a clever hand will make a certainty of it. The keeper says that on one occasion he watched a man operating just without his jurisdiction, who actually succeeded in wiring three jacks at once and safely landed them on the grass. They were small fish, about a pound to a pound and a half each, and the man was but a few minutes in accomplishing the feat. It sometimes happens that after a heavy flood, when the brook has been thick with suspended mud for several days, so soon as it has gone down fish are more than usually plentiful, as if the flood had brought them up-stream: poachers are then particularly busy.

Fresh fish—that is, those who are new to that particular part of the brook—are, the poachers say, much more easily captured than those who have made it their home for some time. They are, in fact, more easily discovered; they have not yet found out all the nooks and corners, the projecting roots and the hollows under the banks, the dark places where a black shadow falls from overhanging trees and is with difficulty pierced even by a practised eye. They expose themselves in open places, and meet an untimely fate.

Besides pike, tench are occasionally wired, and now and then even a large roach; the tench, though a bottom fish, in the shallow brooks may be sometimes detected by the eye, and is not a difficult fish to capture. Every one has heard of tickling trout: the tench is almost equally amenable to titillation. Lying at full length on the sward, with his hat off lest it should fall into the water, the poacher peers down into the hole where he has reason to think tench may be found. This fish is so dark in colour when viewed from above that for a minute or two, till the sight adapts itself to the dull light of the water, the poacher cannot distinguish what he is searching for. Presently, having made out the position of the tench, he slips his bared arm in slowly, and without splash, and finds little or

no trouble as a rule in getting his hand close to the fish without alarming it: tench, indeed, seem rather sluggish. He then passes his fingers under the belly and gently rubs it. Now it would appear that he has the fish in his power, and has only to grasp it. But grasping is not so easy; or rather it is not so easy to pull a fish up through two feet of superincumbent water which opposes the quick passage of the arm. The gentle rubbing in the first place seems to soothe the fish, so that it becomes perfectly quiescent, except that it slowly rises up in the water, and thus enables the hand to get into proper position for the final seizure. When it has risen up towards the surface sufficiently far—the tench must not be driven too near the surface, for it does not like light and will glide away—the poacher suddenly snaps as it were; his thumb and fingers, if he possibly can manage it, closing on the gills. The body is so slimy and slippery that there alone a firm hold can be got, though the poacher will often flick the fish out of water in an instant so soon as it is near the surface. Poachers evidently feel as much pleasure in practising these tricks as the most enthusiastic angler using the implements of legitimate sport.

No advantage is thought too unfair to be taken of fish; nothing too brutally unsportsmanlike. I have seen a pike killed with a prong as he lay basking in the sun at the top of the water. A labourer stealthily approached, and suddenly speared him with one of the sharp points of the prong or hayfork he carried: the pike was a good-sized one too.

The stream, where not strictly preserved, is frequently netted without the slightest regard to season. The net is stretched from bank to bank, and watched by one man, while the other walks up the brook thirty or forty yards, and drives the fish down the current into the bag. With a long pole he thrashes the water, making a good deal of splash, and rousing up the mud, which fish dislike and avoid. The pole is thrust into every hiding-place, and pokes everything out. The watcher by the net knows by the bobbing under of the corks when a shoal of roach and perch, or a heavy pike, has darted into it, and instantly draws the string and makes his haul. In this way, by sections at a time, the brook, perhaps for half a mile, is quite cleared out. Jack, however, sometimes escape; they seem remarkably shrewd and quick to learn. If the string is not immediately drawn when they touch the net, they are out of it without a moment’s delay: they will double back up stream through all the splashing and mud, and some will even slide as it were between the net and the bank if it does not quite touch in any place, and so get away.

In its downward course the brook irrigates many water meadows, and to drive the stream out upon them there are great wooden hatches. Sometimes a gang of men, discovering that there is a quantity of fish thereabouts, will force down a hatch, which at once shuts off or greatly diminishes the volume of water flowing down the brook, and then rapidly construct a dam across the current below it with the mud of the shore. Above this dam they thrash the water with poles and drive all the fish towards it, and then make a second dam above the first so as to enclose them in a short space. In the making of these dams speed is an object, or the water will accumulate and flow over the hatch; so hurdles are used, as they afford a support to the mud hastily thrown up. Then with buckets, bowls, and ‘scoops,’ they bale out the water between the two dams, and quickly reduce their prey to wriggling helplessness. In this way whole baskets full of fish have been taken, together with eels; and nothing so enclosed can escape.

The mere or lake by the wood is protected by sharp stakes set at the bottom, which would tear poachers’ nets; and the keeper does not think any attempt to sweep it has been made of late years, it is too well watched. But he believes that night lines are frequently laid: a footpath runs along one shore for some distance, and gives easy access, and such lines may be overlooked. He is certain that eels are taken in that way despite his vigilance.

Trespassing for crayfish, too, causes much annoyance. I have known men to get bodily up to the waist into the great ponds, a few of which yet remain, after carp. These fish have a curious habit of huddling up in hollows under the banks; and those who know where these hollows and holes are situate can take them by hand if they can come suddenly upon them. It is said that now and then fish are raked out of the ponds with a common rake (such as is used in haymaking) when lying on the mud in winter.