COUNTRY LIFE
DURING the past month or two I have read a great deal about the step forward that has been taken in official blessing for the Sawyer trap. I believe that it is a real step forward, but gin-traps are still legal and will still be made. They will maim rats and rabbits even if manufacture ceased today. Anyone who has ever handled a gin knows that it is built to last much more than a lifetime. I have one that I took from the leg of a fox a year or two ago, and I am sure that, though it may be twenty or thirty years old, it is good for forty or fifty more. A farmer with a few gin-traps hanging on a nail is hardly likely to go out and buy a new trap that will do no more than those he already has. A man who makes his living trapping is not going to invest in new tools to please reformers. It is not enough to sponsor humane devices and trust to trappers becoming enlightened. Until the gin is made illegal, stocks in country ironmongers' shops will turn over from season to season, and barbaric methods of destroying vermin will go on being used.
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