CAUGHT!—THE CAPTURE OF A FUTURE COMPETITOR.
From a Photograph.
These matches are under the strictest control, both as regards discipline and fairness, and any candidate found guilty of dishonesty in marking is punished by summary expulsion from his club. Stewards controlling the judging parade up and down with their eyes upon the markers, so that cheating under such close supervision is well-nigh impossible.
As the most successful of the finches trilled forth its five hundred and eighteenth “Chuie, chuie, chuie, chuie, chuiep” the order was passed along the line to cease scoring and make known the final results. With startling promptness each candidate sprang to his feet and began to add his score. The owner of the champion bird, a cripple, showed calm pleasure as he proceeded to replace in its box his little favourite’s cage, upon which was painted a landscape which succeeded in defying every law of perspective.
During the summer months these “concours” are held at very frequent intervals in the country districts of both France and Belgium, and a competitor is frequently the possessor of several birds, which are usually caught by means of a net, but almost every method is productive of quick results, for the chaffinch is an eager wooer, his addresses to his lady-love rendering him totally blind to his own danger. He is beset with rivals, and as the female bird invariably smiles upon the strongest suitor she is the cause of innumerable battles, in which it is usual for several lovers to be left dead upon the field. The chaffinch is very easily trapped by using a tame finch to stir up his jealousy. A limed twig is attached to the tame bird, who is allowed to run about where the twittering of the wild birds is heard. As soon as the latter become conscious of the presence of an alien in their midst an onslaught is made, which generally ends in the capture of one, if not more, of the attackers. Another method of capturing the chaffinch, and the one most in vogue among the Flemish “Vinkeniers,” is represented in two of the accompanying photographs. A stuffed finch fixed to a small peg is placed in the grass, clearly visible to the birds in the trees, while a live decoy, in a cage, carefully covered up with loose grass and twigs, so as not to attract any attention, is concealed not many yards away. A long net, spread out on the ground between the two decoy birds, lies in readiness to make prisoners of the little feathered warriors as soon as they cluster round the stuffed bird, incited by the clamours of the caged enticer. A pull of the long strings, leading into the ambush of the bird-catchers, may cause as many as thirty finches at a time to fall into the hands of the trappers.
THE FIGHT AT THE A-T RANCH.
By Frank Bransted.
The story of one of the most sanguinary “cattle wars” the West has ever known. The long-standing feud between the big cattlemen and the homesteaders, whose advent means the doom of the open range, led in this instance to a most extraordinary state of affairs, in which one side raised a regiment of ruffians to wipe out their enemies, while the other retorted by laying siege to their opponents’ head-quarters with rifle-pits and dynamite bombs! “The narrative is absolutely true,” writes the author, “only the names of the cattlemen concerned being changed.”
