burning diamond. A great white setter lay at
the door, that had been too much with gentlemen
to bark at seeing me. I entered. There
was the old cottage, with guns on the rack over
the fireplace, and a stuffed white owl staring at
you with glassy unblinking eyes from above the
American clock. There was Targett busy
chopping up rabbits for the young pheasants,
while a nice old woman, with all the blandness
and ease of a duchess, wiped a chair
clean for me, and then smiling welcome, went on
stirring the oatmeal over the fire. The younger
Targett was stuffing a hawk to nail up over the
window.

We first discussed the wonderful skill and
readiness of poachers; how they bewitch trout with
quick lime, and send the three-pounders floating
down the stream from under the weeds; how they
use cherries with the stones out, and young grass-
hoppers and wasp-grubs, and salmon-roe, and all
sorts of unlikely things for trout that the fish
could never have tasted or heard of, yet always
bring the poacher's creel home heavy. On
moonlight nights when they could see the hares,
"these gentry" were sure to be about. He told
me, too, that the herons had an oil in their legs
that attracted the fish round those meditative
birds as they stood in the shallows, and that
poachers, it was said, about the Trent, extracted
this oil, and used it with great advantage to dip
their bait in; this was one of those things,
he thought, that "gents as wrote on natyral
'istory" and were wide awake, should inquire into.
He had no time to do it; it was quite enough for
him to see the dogs were fed, and the vermin
killed, and the rabbits snared to feed the
pheasants with. As for all those bright varnished rods
and expensive tackle gents brought down with
them, and wonderful flies with "mouse's bodies
and peacock's wings," he would wager any night
to catch a basket of perch with one gudgeon's
eye on the hook—ay, with mere line and no rod
at all.

Then about foxes—they were cunning surely.
Many a night watching he had seen them in the
hare runs, practising how far they could leap
from a certain bush so as to be sure of
their prey, to the very inch, and off before the
best of shots could get his gun up. Didn't
they eat too, and spoil more than they eat? He
had known a dog-fox, when it had cubs in an
earth hard by, kill thirty ducks one night; and, a
week after, thirty pheasants. Couldn't eat half
of them of course, but dug holes in ditches and
buried the overplus. It often happened Fox
forgot where he buried them, or at least never
dug them up again. Why, he had seen them
down in the water meadows try a plank that
crossed a brook, try it a dozen times, before they
would go over; and he had seen them dip their
tails in urine, and then drag a trail from a
stone heap in a field to where they lay hid.
Presently out ran the mice, followed the trail,
and were instantly pounced upon. He had met
them, too, with geese thrown over their backs
and the necks in their mouths. As for trapping
them, it was difficult. Why, if you put a gin
at the mouth of the earth, they would scratch
out above it, or scratch out backwards, and so
make the thrown-out earth spring the trap.
Even when caught they would sometimes bite
off the broken leg and escape.

"Did they really read the newspapers to see
where the hounds met next morning?"

"Well, that was a woundy good 'un!"
(Here Targett beat his thigh jovially.) No, he
thought the varmint did everything but that.
They had been known to breed on the
top of a church, getting up every day by
the ivy boughs, and had been at last killed
by the hounds on the very church roof. They
had been found with their cubs in the
hollow top of pollard trees, and they had been
known, wnen chased, to take to the water and
hang on by their teeth among the osiers to
a willow bough, their body being invisible.
As for their cubs, the vixens will carry them
any distance; any disturbance or noise near a
hole will make the vixen and cubs change their
hole. As for the mange, that scourge of
dogs, they "have it dreadful," and have been
found as bare as an old trunk and without a hair
in their tails. Foxes would run twenty miles
straight without turning; even foxes hid in sea
cliff that seldom ramble far, perhaps living on
fish, and I must remember, too, the fox was
always taken at a disadvantage, generally full
in stomach and tired with the night's prowl; an
evening fox fresh from the day's sleep few dogs
could catch.

Here Targett, junior, who had been burning
to put in his oar, and was dancing round me
with the half-stuffed bat in his hand, broke in to
tell me how last night, outside the warren, he
had heard a dreadful shriek, as of a woman being
murdered, round the corner of a wall. He
looked and saw a hare, its head sopped wet
crimson with blood, tearing along, and a stoat
riding on its neck, sucking like a demon at
the spine. As he got up the hare fell dead, and
the stoat slid away.

I don't know what I might not have heard to
enrich our meagre natural history, had not at this
moment the squire's dinner gong boomed out an
imperious summons for me, which even my zeal
for science was not strong enough to induce me
to disobey.

DOWN IN THE WORLD.

OUR errand leads us into a long and rather
low-roofed ward in a workhouse, containing
from thirty to forty inmates. It is their sleeping
room and sitting room, and while some
(in the last stage of weakness, but without any
active disease calling for infirmary practice) are
confined to their beds, others are sitting round
the fire, or making sofas of the outside of their
beds, or leaning over a table in the centre of
the ward, upon which are spread pamphlets, or
newspapers, or books from the workhouse
library. The ward is long, and tolerably broad;
there is room for a double row of beds, fifteen
or twenty in each row, with the heads against