For moles' skins the keeper has no sentiment. He will not part with his skins of rare birds--but will willingly barter the prospect of wearing a moles' skin waistcoat for the price of an ounce of shag a skin. By catching moles he pleases the farmers, who know no more than he himself about any good work that moles do: he frees his rides from unsightly heaps and raised tunnellings; and now and then his mole-traps catch a weasel. Many keepers make a fair sum of money each year by selling moles' skins; furriers will as readily give twopence for a skin as others threepence or sixpence. The skins, cut close round the head, are drawn from the moles' bodies as a man draws stockings from his legs; they are pegged out, fur downwards, on a board, to be dried and powdered with alum, then are stuffed with meadow hay, and packed by scores or hundreds. Perhaps no fur is quite so soft and beautiful as the mole's; and the keeper is always well pleased to note how well the pelts of his enemies become women-folk's faces. * * * * * Covert-shooting Problems To shoot while there are still many leaves on the underwood and trees, and while there is a full muster of pheasants, or to wait until there are fewer leaves and fewer pheasants--that often is the question. For there are many coverts in which pheasants will not stay after the fall of the leaf. Then the shooting man who does not own the coverts to which his birds will betake themselves must make the best of things, and be content to bring down more leaves than pheasants, and often nothing but leaves. What with the showering of leaves and the crashing of shot-pruned boughs and dead wood, he may imagine that a pheasant must be an extra heavy bird--only to find that not a feather has been touched. To shoot pheasants among a crowd of leafy oaks is no simple matter--it is more difficult than to shoot a rocketer in the open valley. One thing may be said for this aggravating pastime; it teaches the slow shooter to be quick. * * * * * "Cocks only"--to compromise