Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Inspection of Plantations—Prints of Vermin in soft Ground—Walls, Gates, and Meuses—Bars of Gates off and Meuses stopped—Finding old Supports for "Hangs"—"Keeper's Tree"—"Dog-wires" in Plantation—Magpies and Carricn-Crows—Covey of Partridges "jugging"—Flock of Sheep apparently frightened—Ascertain Cause—Description of various Kinds of Nets— Keeper's Telescope. Having the best part of the afternoon before us, we determined to devote it to a minute inspection of the plantations, as I was anxious to discover in detail their capabilities for holding game. A little rain had fallen in the night, and it had, in fact, been rather wet for a few weeks previously, and altogether I did not much fancy going amongst trees under the circumstances. In this matter, however, I had to defer to my keeper, who considered it to be very much in our favour, as, the ground being soft, we should have the better chance of pricking a hare, and also of seeing what marks of vermin there were. We made our way across a very large field of white clover, of a stunted and poor-looking growth, and at the end of this field was my principal plantation. It was the large one, to which I have before alluded ; and a more desirable covert could not be imagined. The clover-field and the fields on each side of it were separated by hedges, but the plantation was inclosed on that side for several hundred yards by a wall of about four feet six inches high. Our first object of inspection was of course the gate. It was a very good five-barred one, with oak "head" and "back," and larch bars. To the bars a quantity of upright pales had been nailed, but in one spot a paling was deficient. It had of course been knocked off for the purpose of encouraging hares to go through. The wall was full of " meuses," but ...