Systema agriculturæ, the mystery of husbandry discovered treating of the several new and most advantagious ways of tilling, planting, sowing, manuring, ordering, improving of all sorts of gardens, orchards, meadows, pastures, corn-lands, woods & coppices, as also of fruits, corn, grain, pulse, new-hays, cattle, fowl, beasts, bees, silk-worms, &c. : with an account of the several instruments and engines used in this profession : to which is added Kalendarium rusticum, or, The husbandmans monthly directions, also the prognosticks of dearth, scarcity, plenty, sickness, heat, cold, frost, snow, winds, rain, hail, thunder, &c. and Dictionarium rusticum, or, The interpretation of rustick terms, the whole work being of great use and advantage to all that delight in that most noble practice.

SECT. V. Of taking Fowl with Springes.

Most of the Cloven-footed Water-fowl delight in Plashes, Wa∣ter, Furrows, small Rivolets, and suchlike places, seeking for Worms, Flat-grass, Roots, and the like, in the Winter-time, e∣specially in frosty weather, when many other places are frozen up, and these warm Springly Water-tracts are open; where you must place Springes made of Horse-hair, of bigness and length according to the greatness of the Fowl you designe to take; for the Heron or Bittern, it must be of near a hundred Horse-hairs, and above two foot in length; for the Woodcock, Snipe, Plo∣ver, &c. not above eight or ten Horse-hairs, and one foot in length: the Main Plant, or Sweeper, must be also proportiona∣ble to the strength of the Fowl. For the manner of the making and setting them, I question not but every place will furnish you with Directors, (if you know it not already) which is much easier and better than any written Instructions. Observe also, that you prick small sticks, in manner of a Hedge, cross∣wise, athwart all the other by-passages, about half an inch apart, and somewhat above a handful above the water or ground, sloap∣ing towards the place where your Springe is placed, the better to guide (which is easily done) the Fowl into the Snare: for such is their nature, that they will not press over, where they have li∣berty to pass through any gap. If the places where these Fowl usually haunt be frozen, you must make Plashes; and the harder the Frost is in other places, the greater will the resort of Fowl be here.