ers,
the greater and lesser spotted, are occasionally met with on the
Cotswolds. I do not know why we have so few green woodpeckers by the
river, as there are plenty of old trees there; but these birds, which
feed chiefly on the ground among the anthills, have a marked preference
for such woods in the neighbourhood as contain an abundance of oak
trees. The local name for these birds is "hic-wall," which Tom Peregrine
pronounces "heckle." There is no more pleasing sound than the long,
chattering note of the green woodpecker; it breaks so suddenly on the
general silence of the woods, contrasting as it does in its loud,
bell-like tones with the soft cooing of the doves and the songs of the
other birds.

In various places along its course the river has long poles set across
it; on these poles Tom Peregrine has placed traps for stoats, weasels,
and other vermin. Recently, when we were fishing, he pointed out a great
stoat caught in one of these traps with a water-rat in its mouth--a very
strange occurrence, for the trap was only a small one, of the usual
rabbit size, and the rat was almost as big as the stoat. There is so
little room for the bodies of a stoat and a rat in one of these small
iron traps that the betting must be at least a thousand to one against
such an event happening. Unless we had seen it with our eyes we could
not have believed it possible. The stoat, in chasing the rat along the
pole, must have seized his prey at the very instant that the jaws of the
trap snapped upon them both. They were quite dead when we found them.

Every one acquainted with gamekeepers' duties is well aware that the
iron traps armed with teeth which are in general use throughout the
country are a disgrace to nineteenth-century civilisation. It is a
terrible experience to take a rabbit or any other animal out of one of
these relics of barbarism. Sir Herbert Maxwell recently called the
attention of game preservers and keepers to a patent trap which Colonel
Coulson, of Newburgh, has just invented. Instead of teeth, the jaws of
the new trap have pads of corrugated rubber, which grip as tightly and
effectively as the old contrivance without breaking the bones or
piercing the skin. I trust these traps will shortly supersede the old
ones, so that a portion of the inevitable suffering of the furred
denizens of our woods may be dispensed with.

In a hunting country where foxes occasionally find their way into vermin
traps, Colonel Coulson'