Country Life
ILLEGAL TRAPPERS.
The movement to prevent the •use of steel traps was definitely advanced last week by a meeting held at, Caxton Hall under the chairmanship of the Editor. of the Spectator. In various speeches the facts of the case were clearly brought out. First, this trapping of rabbits by those instruments of the torture chamber is on a huge scale. Individual trappers in the West set as many as five or six score at one bout, in order to be able to_ supply dealers with their full quota ; and they operate o ver so wide an area that it is impossible to visit all the traps at short intervals and difficult not to forget a certain number. Second, numbers of these traps are set in the open—and this is, against the law. Such traps kill or wound a great number and great 'variety of creatures : dogs, cats, and foxes ; pheasants and partridges, and most vermin, except rats, which are the producers' worst enemy by far. The result is that in parts of the West Country (especially Pembrokeshire and South Devon, to speak from my own experience), owners of eats and dogs find a very large percentage wounded ; and fOxes, pheasants, and partridges have in places been clean
wiped out. * * * *
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