Worthy Poachers On one considerable area of land—I will not
call it an estate—the workmen have been allowed, have indeed been encouraged, to trap rabbits as freely as they will, if the toothed trap is avoided. What used to be a crime has been elevated into virtue. The latter view is surely the better. The rabbit is a useful form of food and is a serious enemy to most forms of cultivation. It is just as well for the community that it should be regarded as a natural source of food very much like the' blackberry, a fruit that in general licenses trespass. Not long since I came upon a man catching rabbits in an un- authorised hedgerow, and we discussed the ethics and technique of his occupation with candour and without heat, as soon as his fears of reprisals were removed. He said that he never caught pheasants, solely on the ground that it would not pay him. If he was found catching rabbits a mild warn- ing was usually enough and sometimes he was employed on the neighbouring estate as expert rabbit-catcher. If he was found snaring a pheasant he would at once, as he explained, fall into the criminal class and his rabbiting would no longer be winked at. Nevertheless he showed me how to set a noose for a pheasant, just to illustrate how easily he would be found out if a keeper saw his elevated noose!
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