29 FEBRUARY 1952, Page 18

Users of the Road Man has made the roads and

the lanes, but he is not the only one using them. In the dusk, in the moonlight or the mist of early day, animals of all sizes are in the habit of crossing. The hedge bottom is riddled and divided with tracks. Anyone who drives by night can testify to the numbers of rabbits encountered, but many other creatures go unobserved. The tracks of mice are on the banks, the tracks of voles and rats as well as the path the fox takes when he crosses from one wood to the next. Hedgehogs are frequently found by the grass verge, and the wear on the tracks is an indication of the traffic they carry. To a man who knows the way of such things, a snare might provide many a good meal without causing him to step off the highway, for the hare goes over the metalled surface as well as the rabbit, and the pheasant does not always fly across the hedge.