VIVISECTION AND CRUELTY.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPEOTATOR.1 Szn,—Whilst agreeing with the general purport of Mrs. Darwin's letter in your paper of yesterday on the trapping of vermin, I demur—having had considerable experience of the various means for destroying the various lower-animal destroyers of game—to your correspondent's assertion that the use of steel traps is " the most effectual way of preserving game." I have myself caught, I regret to think, a larger number of weasels, stoats, and other vermin in steel traps than the majority of men who are not game- keepers by profession, and I have to say, with a similar experience of it, that the " Figure-of-Four Trap" is not only incomparably cheaper, but is also incomparably more effective than the steel trap, and at the same time entirely free from the objection on the score of producing suffering to which those traps are so justly amenable, "What is a figure-of-four trap?" A figure- of-four trap is made by resting a slate or other heavy flat body in the position of an inclined plane upon the apex of three pegs, arranged by three notches into the shape of the figure 4. It is figured and described at page 240 of the " Boy's Own Book," my twelfth edition copy of which, published in 1837, I have before me as I write. Of course by increasing the strength of the standard and oblique pegs you can increase the size and weight of the in- clined plane to any required extent. A small door, however, such as that of a dog-kennel or pig-stye, loaded with turf, forms about as large a trap as in practice is ever required. For catching the smaller animals above specified and crushing them instantaneously and entirely flat, a slate of much smaller dimensions is large enough. Weasels and stoats run along hedges, and by placing figure-of-four traps, baited with flesh-meat, at points where several hedges meet, they may be caught, and especially in the spring and autumn, with the greatest facility, and without risk to• foxes or fox-hounds, and without any but momentary pain. A mathematician could calculate, but none but a trapper can realise the utter flattening and the consequent instantaneousness of the death produced by these traps, expressively called by some of the few gamekeepers who use them, " Sampson Falls." Some of your readers will object that the use of steel-traps will still be necessary, if not for ground-vermin, at all events for magpies, jays, carrion- crows, and hawks. To this I have to answer that the inordinate increase of the three first-mentioned animals is readily, only too readily, kept in check by destroying their easily discoverable nests ; and that in the not unfrequent case of an absence of solidarity between contiguous landowners preventing this, the use of poison in severe weather will render the more cruel use of steel-traps entirely unnecessary. The case of hawks is more difficult. In many parts of the country they are caught by steel traps placed on the top of some convenient landing-place, such as a post or stump. Though I once caught a sparrow-hawk
in a figure-of-four trap, baited with a hawfinch, a thing I can now scarcely believe myself, I cannot think these traps would be of any great use as against this class of "vermin." In a country free from cliffs and inaccessible rocks, the, to my mind, undesir- able end of curtailing the number of these birds, which add so much even to the landscape view of a country, is attainable by destroying their nests. The hawks, however, with which we have mainly to deal in this country are the kestrel and the sparrow- hawk ; and though they will both of them now and then destroy both ground and winged game, they never touch eggs, and are for this, amongst other reasons, incomparably less mischievous than the corvidte above mentioned.
The rationale of gamekeeping may be summed up by saying that the great enemies of game are poachers of the lower animal series, and eminently amongst these the mustelidx, the corvidx, and, in this country, feral and semiferal cats. The first and the last of these poachers are easily caught in smaller or larger Sgure-of-four traps ; the avian poachers can be kept in check by the destruction of their nests or by poison. Steel traps are not a necessity for the obtaining a great head of game. Human poachers, if debarred from netting, are much less destructive than the other kinds specified.—I am, Sir, &c., P.S.—Steel traps, I have heard, are employed on a large scale in some rabbit-warrens for catching, not vermin, but rabbits. This is a needlessly expensive, as well as a needlessly cruel, way of catching them. The "rabbit-tip," a pitfall in their " runs," fitted with a swinging trap-door, is a much more economical, as well as merciful, plan for the purpose.
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