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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 36948 ***
+
+
+
+
+The Gamekeeper At Home
+Sketches of Natural History and Rural Life
+By Richard Jefferies
+Published by Smith, Elder & Co, London.
+This edition dated 1878.
+The Gamekeeper At Home, by Richard Jefferies.
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME, BY RICHARD JEFFERIES.
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+Those who delight in roaming about amongst the fields and lanes, or have
+spent any time in a country house, can hardly have failed to notice the
+custodian of the woods and covers, or to observe that he is often
+something of a "character."  The Gamekeeper forms, indeed, so prominent
+a figure in rural life as almost to demand some biographical record of
+his work and ways.  From the man to the territories over which he bears
+sway--the meadows, woods, and streams--and to his subjects, their furred
+and feathered inhabitants, is a natural transition.  The enemies against
+whom he wages incessant warfare--vermin, poachers, and trespassers--
+must, of course, be included in such a survey.
+
+Although, for ease and convenience of illustration, the character of a
+particular Keeper has been used as a nucleus about which to arrange
+materials that would otherwise have lacked a connecting link, the facts
+here collected are really entirely derived from original observation.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+R.J.
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE.
+
+THE MAN HIMSELF--HIS HOUSE, AND TOOLS.
+
+The keeper's cottage stands in a sheltered "coombe," or narrow hollow of
+the woodlands, overshadowed by a mighty Spanish chestnut, bare now of
+leaves, but in summer a noble tree.  The ash wood covers the slope at
+the rear; on one side is a garden, and on the other a long strip of
+meadow with elms.  In front, and somewhat lower, a streamlet winds,
+fringing the sward, and across it the fir plantations begin, their dark
+sombre foliage hanging over the water.  A dead willow trunk thrown from
+bank to bank forms a rude bridge; the tree, not even squared, gives
+little surface for the foot, and in frosty weather a slip is easy.  From
+this primitive contrivance a path, out of which others fork, leads into
+the intricacies of the covers, and from the garden a wicket gate opens
+on the ash wood.  The elms in the meadow are full of rooks' nests, and
+in the spring the coombe will resound with their cawing; these black
+bandits, who do not touch it at other times, will then ravage the garden
+to feed their hungry young, despite ingenious scarecrows.  A row of
+kennels, tenanted by a dozen dogs, extends behind the cottage: lean
+retrievers yet unbroken, yelping spaniels, pointers, and perhaps a few
+greyhounds or fancy breeds, if "young master" has a taste that way.
+
+Beside the kennels is a shed ornamented with rows upon rows of dead and
+dried vermin, furred and feathered, impaled for their misdeeds; and over
+the door a couple of horseshoes nailed for luck--a superstition yet
+lingering in the by-ways of the woods and hills.  Within are the ferret
+hutches, warm and dry; for the ferret is a shivery creature, and likes
+nothing so well as to nozzle down in a coat-pocket with a little hay.
+Here are spades and billhooks, twine and rabbit nets, traps, and other
+odds and ends scattered about with the wires and poacher's implements
+impounded from time to time.
+
+In a dark corner there lies a singular-looking piece of mechanism, a
+relic of the olden times, which when dragged into the light turns out to
+be a man-trap.  These terrible engines have long since been disused--
+being illegal, like spring-guns--and the rust has gathered thickly on
+the metal.  But, old though it be, it still acts perfectly, and can be
+"set" as well now as when in bygone days poachers and thieves used to
+prod the ground and the long grass, before they stepped among it, with a
+stick, for fear of mutilation.
+
+The trap is almost precisely similar to the common rat-trap or gin still
+employed to destroy vermin, but greatly exaggerated in size, so that if
+stood on end it reaches to the waist, or above.  The jaws of this iron
+wolf are horrible to contemplate--rows of serrated projections, which
+fit into each other when closed, alternating with spikes a couple of
+inches long, like tusks.  To set the trap you have to stand on the
+spring--the weight of a man is about sufficient to press it down; and,
+to avoid danger to the person preparing this little surprise, a band of
+iron can be pushed forward to hold the spring while the catch is put
+into position, and the machine itself is hidden among the bushes or
+covered with dead leaves.  Now touch the pan with a stout
+walking-stick--the jaws cut it in two in the twinkling of an eye.  They
+seem to snap together with a vicious energy, powerful enough to break
+the bone of the leg; and assuredly no man ever got free whose foot was
+once caught by these terrible teeth.
+
+The keeper will tell you that it used to be set up in the corner of the
+gardens and orchard belonging to the great house, and which in the
+pre-policemen days were almost nightly robbed.  He thinks there were
+quite as many such traps set in the gardens just outside the towns as
+ever there were in the woods and preserves of the country proper.  He
+recollects but one old man (a mole-catcher) who actually had experienced
+in his youth the sensation of being caught; he went lame on one foot,
+the sinews having been cut or divided.  The trap could be chained to its
+place if desired; but, as a matter of fact, a chain was unnecessary, for
+no man could possibly drag this torturing clog along.
+
+Another outhouse attached to the cottage contains a copper for preparing
+the food for both quadrupeds and birds.  Some poultry run about the
+mead, and perhaps with them are feeding the fancy foreign ducks which in
+summer swim in the lake before the hall.
+
+The cottage is thatched and oddly gabled--built before "improvements"
+came into fashion--yet cosy; with walls three feet thick, which keep out
+the cold of winter and the heat of summer.  This is not solid masonry;
+there are two shells, as it were, filled up between with rubble and
+mortar rammed down hard.
+
+Inside the door the floor of brick is a step below the level of the
+ground.  Sometimes a peculiar but not altogether unpleasant odour fills
+the low-pitched sitting room--it is emitted by the roots burning upon
+the fire, hissing as the sap exudes and boils in the fierce heat.  When
+the annual fall of timber takes place the butts of the trees are often
+left in the earth, to be afterwards grubbed and split for firewood,
+which goes to the great house or is sold.  There still remain the roots,
+which are cut into useful lengths and divided among the upper employes.
+From elm and oak and ash, and the crude turpentine of the fir, this
+aromatic odour, the scent of the earth in which they grew, is exhaled as
+they burn.
+
+The ceiling is low and crossed by one huge square beam of oak, darkened
+by smoke and age.  The keeper's double-barrelled gun is suspended from
+this beam: there are several other guns in the house, but this, the
+favourite, alone hangs where it did before he had children--so strong is
+habit; the rest are yet more out of danger.  It has been a noble weapon,
+though now showing signs of age--the interior of the breech worn larger
+than the rest of the barrel from constant use; so much so that, before
+it was converted to a breech-loader, the wad when the ramrod pushed it
+down would slip the last six inches, so loosely fitting as to barely
+answer its purpose of retaining the shot; so that when cleaned out,
+before the smoke fouled it again, he had to load with paper.  This in a
+measure anticipated the "choke-bore," and his gun was always famous for
+its killing power.  The varnish is worn from the stock by incessant
+friction against his coat, showing the real grain of the walnut-wood,
+and the trigger-guard with the polish of the sleeve shines like silver.
+It has been his companion for so many years that it is not strange he
+should feel an affection for it; no other ever fitted the shoulder so
+well, or came with such delicate precision to the "present" position.
+So accustomed is he to its balance and "hang" in the hand that he never
+thinks of aiming; he simply looks at the object, still or moving, throws
+the gun up from the hollow of his arm, and instantly pulls the trigger,
+staying not a second to glance along the barrel.  It has become almost a
+portion of his body, answering like a limb to the volition of will
+without the intervention of reflection.  The hammers are chased and
+elegantly shaped--perfectly matching: when once the screw came loose,
+and the jar of a shot jerked one off among the dead leaves apparently
+beyond hope of recovery, he never rested night or day till by continuous
+search and sifting the artistic piece of metal was found.  Nothing
+destroys the symmetry of a gun so much as hammers which are not pairs;
+and well he knew that he should never get a smith to replace that
+delicate piece of workmanship, for this gun came originally from the
+hands of a famous maker, who got fifty, or perhaps even seventy guineas
+for it years ago.  It did not shoot to please the purchaser--guns of the
+very best character sometimes take use to get into thorough order--and
+was thrown aside, and so the gun became the keeper's.
+
+These fine old guns often have a romance clinging to them, and sometimes
+the history is a sad one.  Upstairs he still keeps the old copper
+powder-flask curiously chased and engraved, yet strong enough to bear
+the weight of the bearer, if by chance he sat down upon it while in his
+pocket, together with the shot-belt and punch for cutting out the wads
+from cardboard or an old felt hat.  These the modern system of loading
+at the breech has cast aside.  Here, also, is the apparatus for filling
+empty cartridge-cases--a work which in the season occupies him many
+hours.
+
+Being an artist in his way, he takes a pride in the shine and polish of
+his master's guns, which are not always here, but come down at intervals
+to be cleaned and attended to.  And woe be to the first kid gloves that
+touch them afterwards; for a gun, like a sardine should be kept in fine
+oil, not thickly encrusting it, but, as it were, rubbed into and oozing
+from the pores of the metal and wood.  Paraffin is an abomination in his
+eyes (for preserving from rust), and no modern patent oil, he thinks,
+can compare with a drop of gin for the locks--the spirit never congeals
+in cold weather, and the hammer comes up with a clear, sharp snick.  He
+has two or three small screwdrivers and gunsmith's implements to take
+the locks to pieces; for gentlemen are sometimes careless and throw
+their guns down on the wet grass, and if a single drop of water should
+by chance penetrate under the plate it will play mischief with the
+works, if the first speck of rust be not forthwith removed.
+
+His dog-whistle hangs at his buttonhole.  His pocket-knife is a basket
+of tools in itself, most probably a present from some youthful sportsman
+who was placed under his care to learn how to handle a gun.  The
+corkscrew it contains has seen much service at luncheon-time, when under
+a sturdy oak, or in a sheltered nook of the lane, where the hawthorn
+hedge and the fern broke the force of the wind, a merry shooting party
+sat down to a well-packed hamper and wanted some one to draw the corks.
+Not but what the back of the larger blade has not artistically tapped
+off the neck of many a bottle, hitting it gently upwards against the
+rim.  Nor must his keys be forgotten.  The paths through the preserves,
+where they debouch on a public lane or road, are closed with
+high-sparred wicket gates, well pitched to stand the weather, and
+carefully locked, and of course he has a key.  His watch, made on
+purpose for those who walk by night, tells him the time in the densest
+darkness of the woods.  On pressing a spring and holding it near the
+ear, it strikes the hour last past, then the quarters which have since
+elapsed; so that even when he cannot see an inch before his face he
+knows the time within fifteen minutes at the outside, which is near
+enough for practical purposes.
+
+In personal appearance he would be a tall man were it not that he has
+contracted a slight stoop in the passage of the years, not from weakness
+or decay of nature, but because men who walk much lean forward somewhat,
+which has a tendency to round the shoulders.  The weight of the gun, and
+often of a heavy game-bag dragging downwards, has increased this defect
+of his figure, and, as is usual after a certain age, even with those who
+lead a temperate life, he begins to show signs of corpulency.  But these
+shortcomings only slightly detract from the manliness of his appearance,
+and in youth it is easy to see that he must have been an athlete.  There
+is still plenty of power in the long sinewy arms, brown hands, and
+bull-neck, and intense vital energy in the bright blue eye.  He is an
+ash-tree man, as a certain famous writer would say; hard, tough,
+unconquerable by wind or weather, fearless of his fellows, yielding but
+by slow and imperceptible degrees to the work of time.  His neck has
+become the colour of mahogany; sun and tempest have left their indelible
+marks upon his face; and he speaks from the depths of his broad chest,
+as men do who talk much in the open air, shouting across the fields and
+through the copses.  There is a solidity in his very footstep, and he
+stands like an oak.  He meets your eye full and unshirkingly, yet
+without insolence; not as the labourers do, who either stare with sullen
+ill-will or look on the earth.  In brief, freedom and constant contact
+with nature have made him every inch a man; and here in this nineteenth
+century of civilised effeminacy may be seen some relic of what men were
+in the old feudal days when they dwelt practically in the woods.  The
+shoulder of his coat is worn a little where the gun rubs, and so is his
+sleeve; otherwise he is fairly well dressed.
+
+Perfectly civil to every one, and with a willing manner towards his
+master and his master's guests, he has a wonderful knack of getting his
+own way.  Whatever the great house may propose in the shooting line, the
+keeper is pretty certain to dispose of in the end as he pleases; for he
+has a voluble "silver" tongue, and is full of objections, reasons,
+excuses, suggestions, all delivered with a deprecatory air of superior
+knowledge which he hardly likes to intrude upon his betters, much as he
+would regret to see them go wrong.  So he really takes the lead, and in
+nine cases in ten the result proves he is right, as minute local
+knowledge naturally must be when intelligently applied.
+
+Not only in such matters as the best course for the shooting party to
+follow, or in advice bearing upon the preserves, but in concerns of a
+wider scope, his influence is felt.  A keen, shrewd judge of
+horseflesh--(how is it that if a man understands one animal he seems to
+instinctively see through all?)--his master in a careless way often asks
+his opinion before concluding a bargain.  Of course the question is not
+put direct, but "By-the-by, when the hounds were here you saw
+so-and-so's mare; what do you think of her?"  The keeper blurts out his
+answer, not always flattering or very delicately expressed; and his view
+is not forgotten.  For when a trusted servant like this accompanies his
+master often in solitary rambles for hours together, dignity must unbend
+now and then, however great the social difference between them; and thus
+a man of strong individuality and a really valuable gift of observation
+insensibly guides his master.
+
+Passing across the turnips, the landlord, who perhaps never sees his
+farms save when thus crossing them with a gun, remarks that they look
+clean and free from weeds; whereupon the keeper, walking respectfully a
+little in the rear, replies that so-and-so, the tenant, is a capital
+farmer, a preserver of foxes and game, but has suffered from the
+floods--a reply that leads to inquiries, and perhaps a welcome reduction
+of rent.  On the other hand, the owner's attention is thus often called
+to abuses.  In this way an evilly-disposed keeper may, it is true, do
+great wrongs, having access to the owner and, in familiar phrase, "his
+ear."  I am at present delineating the upright keeper, such as are in
+existence still, notwithstanding the abuse lavished upon them as a
+class--often, it is to be feared, too well deserved.  It is not
+difficult to see how in this way a man whose position is lowly may in an
+indirect way exercise a powerful influence upon a large estate.
+
+He is very "great" on dogs (and, indeed, on all other animals); his
+opinion is listened to and taken by everybody round about who has a dog,
+and sometimes he has three or four under treatment for divers ills.  By
+this knowledge many "tips" are gained, and occasionally he makes a good
+thing by selling a pup at a high price.  He may even be seen, with his
+velveteen jacket carefully brushed, his ground-ash stick under his arm,
+and hat in hand, treading daintily for fear of soiling the carpet with
+his shoe, in the anteroom, gravely prescribing for the ailing pug in
+which the ladies are interested.
+
+At the farmhouses he is invited to sit down and take a glass, being
+welcome for his gossip of the great house, and because, having in the
+course of years been thrown into the society of all classes, he has
+gradually acquired a certain tact and power of accommodating himself to
+his listener.  For the keeper, when he fulfils his duty in a quiet way
+as a man of experience does, is by no means an unpopular character.  It
+is the too officious man who creates a feeling among the tenants against
+himself and the whole question of game.  But the quiet experienced hand,
+with a shrewd knowledge of men as well as the technicalities of his
+profession, grows to be liked by the tenantry, and becomes a local
+authority on animal life.
+
+Proud, and not without reason, of his vigour and strength, he will tell
+you that though between fifty and sixty he can still step briskly
+through a heavy field-day, despite the weight of reserve ammunition he
+carries.  He can keep on his feet without fatigue from morn till eve,
+and goes his rounds without abating one inch of the distance.  In one
+thing alone he feels his years--i.e. in pace; and when "young master,"
+who is a disciple of the modern athletic school, comes out, it is about
+as much as ever he can do to keep up with him over the stubble.  Never
+once for the last thirty years has he tossed on a bed of sickness; never
+once has he failed to rise from his slumber refreshed and ready for his
+labour.  His secret is--but let him tell it in his own words:
+
+"It's indoors, sir, as kills half the people; being indoors three parts
+of the day, and next to that taking too much drink and vittals.
+Eating's as bad as drinking; and there ain't nothing like fresh air and
+the smell of the woods.  You should come out here in the spring, when
+the oak timber is throwed (because, you see, the sap be rising, and the
+bark strips then), and just sit down on a stick fresh peeled--I means a
+trunk, you know--and sniff up the scent of that there oak bark.  It goes
+right down your throat, and preserves your lungs as the tan do leather.
+And I've heard say as folk who work in the tan-yards never have no
+illness.  There's always a smell from trees, dead or living--I could
+tell what wood a log was in the dark by my nose; and the air is better
+where the woods be.  The ladies up in the great house sometimes goes out
+into the fir plantations--the turpentine scents strong, you see--and
+they say it's good for the chest; but, bless you, you must live in it.
+People go abroad, I'm told, to live in the pine forests to cure 'em: I
+say these here oaks have got every bit as much good in that way.  I
+never eat but two meals a day--breakfast and supper: what you would call
+dinner--and maybe in the middle of the day a hunch of dry bread and an
+apple.  I take a deal for breakfast, and I'm rather lear [hungry] at
+supper; but you may lay your oath that's why I'm what I am in the way of
+health.  People stuffs theirselves, and by consequence it breaks out,
+you see.  It's the same with cattle; they're overfed, tied up in stalls
+and stuffed, and never no exercise, and mostly oily food too.  It stands
+to reason they must get bad; and that's the real cause of these here
+rinderpests and pleuro-pneumonia and what-nots.  At least that's my
+notion.  I'm in the woods all day, and never comes home till
+supper--'cept, of course, in breeding-time, to fetch the meal and stuff
+for the birds--so I gets the fresh air, you see; and the fresh air is
+the life, sir.  There's the smell of the earth, too--'specially just as
+the plough turns it up--which is a fine thing; and the hedges and the
+grass are as sweet as sugar after a shower.  Anything with a green leaf
+is the thing, depend upon it, if you want to live healthy.  I never
+signed no pledge; and if a man asks me to take a glass of ale, I never
+says him no.  But I ain't got no barrel at home; and all the time I've
+been in this here place, I've never been to a public.  Gentlemen give me
+tips--of course they does; and much obliged I be; but I takes it to my
+missus.  Many's the time they've axed me to have a glass of champagne or
+brandy when we've had lunch under the hedge; but I says no, and would
+like a glass of beer best, which I gets, of course.  No; when I drinks,
+I drinks ale: but most in general I drinks no strong liquor.  Great
+coat!--cold weather!  I never put no great coat on this thirty year.
+These here woods be as good as a topcoat in cold weather.  Come off the
+open field with the east wind cutting into you, and get inside they firs
+and you'll feel warm in a minute.  If you goes into the ash wood you
+must go in farther, because the wind comes more between the poles."
+Fresh air, exercise, frugal food and drink, the odour of the earth and
+the trees--these have given him, as he nears his sixtieth year, the
+strength and vitality of early manhood.
+
+He has his faults: notably, a hastiness of temper towards his undermen,
+and towards labourers and wood-cutters who transgress his rules.  He is
+apt to use his ground-ash stick rather freely without thought of
+consequences, and has got into trouble more than once in that way.  When
+he takes a dislike or suspicion of a man, nothing will remove it; he is
+stubbornly inimical and unforgiving, totally incapable of comprehending
+the idea of loving an enemy.  He hates cordially in the true pagan
+fashion of old.  He is full of prejudices, and has some ideas which
+almost amount to superstitions; and, though he fears nothing, has a
+vague feeling that sometimes there is "summat" inexplicable in the dark
+and desolate places.  Such is this modern man of the woods.
+
+The impressions of youth are always strongest with us, and so it is that
+recollecting the scenes in which he passed his earlier days he looks
+with some contempt upon the style of agriculture followed in the
+locality; for he was born in the north, where the farms are sometimes of
+a great area, though perhaps not so rich in soil, and he cannot forgive
+the tenants here because they have not got herds of three or four
+hundred horned cattle.  Before he settled down in the south he had many
+changes of situation, and was thus brought in contact with a wonderful
+number of gentlemen, titled or otherwise distinguished, whose
+peculiarities of speech or appearance he loves to dwell upon.  If the
+valet sees the hero or the statesman too closely, so sometimes does the
+gamekeeper.  A great man must have moments when it is a relief to fling
+off the constant posturing necessary before the world; and there is
+freshness in the gamekeeper's unstudied conversation.  The keeper thinks
+that nothing reveals a gentleman's character so much as his "tips."
+
+"Gentlemen is very curious in tips," he says, "and there ain't nothing
+so difficult as to know what's coming.  Most in general them as be the
+biggest guns, and what you would think would come out handsome, chucks
+you a crown and no more; and them as you knows ain't much go in the way
+of money slips a sovereign into your fist.  There's a deal in the way of
+giving it too, as perhaps you wouldn't think.  Some gents does it as
+much as to say they're much obliged to you for kindly taking it.  Some
+does it as if they were chucking a bone to a dog.  One place where I
+was, the governor were the haughtiest man as ever you see.  When the
+shooting was done--after a great party, you never knowed whether he were
+pleased or not--he never took no more notice of you than if you were a
+tree.  But I found him out arter a time or two.  You had to walk close
+behind him, as if you were a spaniel; and by-and-by he would slip his
+hand round behind his back--without a word, mind--and you had to take
+what was in it, and never touch your hat or so much as `Thank you, sir.'
+It were always a five-pound note if the shooting had been good; but it
+never seemed to come so sweet as if he'd done it to your face."
+
+The keeper gets a goodly number of tips in the course of the year, from
+visitors at the great house, from naturalists who come now and then,
+from the sportsmen, and regularly from the masters of three packs of
+hounds; not to mention odd moneys at intervals in various ways, as when
+he goes round to deliver presents of game to the chief tenants on the
+estate or to the owner's private friends.  Gentlemen who take an
+interest in such things come out every spring to see the young broods of
+pheasants--which, indeed, are a pretty sight--and they always leave
+something behind them.  In the summer a few picnic parties come from the
+town or the country round about, having permission to enter the grounds.
+In the winter half a dozen young gentlemen have a turn at the
+ferreting; a great burrow is chosen, three or four ferrets put in at
+once without any nets, so that the rabbits may bolt freely, and then the
+shooting is like volleys of musketry fire.  For sport like this the
+young gentlemen tip freely.  After the rook-shooting party in the spring
+from the great house, with their rook-rifles and sometimes crossbows,
+have had the pick of the young birds, some few of the tenants are
+admitted to shoot the remainder--a task that spreads perhaps over two or
+even three days, and there is a good deal of liquor and silver going
+about.  Then gentlemen come to fish in the mere, having got the
+necessary permission, and they want bait and some attention, which the
+keeper's lad, being an adept himself, can render better than any one
+else; and so he too gets his share.  Besides which, being swift of foot,
+and with a shrewd idea which way the fox will run when the hunt is up,
+he is to the fore when a lady or some timid gentleman wants a gate
+opened--a service not performed in vain.  For breaking-in dogs also the
+keeper is often paid well; and, in short, he is one of those fortunate
+individuals whom all the world tips.
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO.
+
+HIS FAMILY AND CASTE.
+
+The interior of the cottage is exquisitely clean; it has that bright
+pleasant appearance which is only possible when the housewife feels a
+pride in her duties, and goes about them with a cheerful heart.  Not a
+speck of dust can be seen upon the furniture, amongst which is a large
+old-fashioned sofa: the window panes are clear and transparent--a
+certain sign of loving care expended on the place, as on the other hand
+dirty windows are an indication of neglect, so much so that the
+character of the cottager may almost be guessed from a glance at her
+glass.  The keeper's wife is a buxom vivacious dame, whose manners from
+occasional contact with the upper ranks--the ladies from the great house
+sometimes look in for a few minutes to chat with so old a servant of the
+family--are above what are usually found in her station.  She receives
+her callers--and they are many--with a quiet, respectful dignity:
+desirous of pleasing, yet quite at her ease.
+
+Across the back of the sofa there lies a rug of some beautiful fur which
+catches the eye, but which at first the visitor cannot identify.  Its
+stripes are familiar, and not unlike the tiger's, but the colour is not
+that of the forest tyrant.  She explains that this rug comes within her
+special sphere.  It is a carriage-rug of cat-skin; the skins carefully
+selected to match exactly, and cured and prepared in the same way as
+other more famous furs.  They have only just been sewn together, and the
+rug is now spread on the sofa to dry.  She has made rugs, she will tell
+you, entirely of black cat skins, and very handsome they looked; but not
+equal to this, which is wholly of the tabby.  Certainly the gloss and
+stripe, the soft warmth and feel to the hand, seem to rival many foreign
+and costly importations.  Besides carriage-rugs, the gamekeeper's wife
+has made others for the feet--some many-coloured, like Joseph's coat.
+
+All the cats to which these skins belonged were shot or caught in the
+traps set for vermin by her husband and his assistants.  The majority
+were wild--that is, had taken up their residence in the woods, reverting
+to their natural state, and causing great havoc among the game.
+Feasting like this and in the joys of freedom, many had grown to a truly
+enormous size, not in fat, as the domestic animal does, but in length of
+back and limb.  These afforded the best skins; perhaps out of eight or
+nine killed but two would be available or worth preserving.
+
+This gives an idea of the extraordinary number of cats which stray
+abroad and get their living by poaching.  They invariably gravitate
+towards the woods.  The instance in point is taken from an outlying
+district far from a town, where the nuisance is comparatively small; but
+in the preserves say from ten to twenty miles round London the cats thus
+killed must be counted by thousands.  Families change their homes, the
+cat is driven away by the new comer and takes to the field.  In one
+little copse not more than two acres in extent, and about twelve miles
+from Hyde Park Corner, fifteen cats were shot in six weeks, and nearly
+all in one spot--their favourite haunt.  When two or three wild or
+homeless animals take up their abode in a wood, they speedily attract
+half a dozen hitherto tame ones; and, if they were not destroyed, it
+would be impossible to keep either game or rabbits.
+
+She has her own receipts for preserving furs and feathers, and long
+practice has rendered her an adept.  Here are squirrels' skins also
+prepared; some with the bushy tail attached, and some without.  They
+vary in size and the colour of the tail, which is often nearly white, in
+others more deeply tinged with red.  The fur is used to line cloaks, and
+the tail is sometimes placed in ladies' hats.  Now and then she gets a
+badger-skin, which old country folk used to have made into waistcoats,
+said to form an efficacious protection for weak chests.  She has made
+rugs of several sewn together, but not often.
+
+In the store-room upstairs there are a few splendid fox-skins, some with
+the tails tipped with white, others tipped with black.  These are used
+for ladies' muffs, and look very handsome; the tail being occasionally
+curled round the muff.  This sounds a delicate matter, and dangerously
+near the deadly sin of vulpecide.  But it is not so.  In these extensive
+woods, with their broad fringes of furze and heath, the foxes now and
+then become inconveniently numerous, and even cub-hunting will not kill
+them off sufficiently, especially if a great "head" of game is kept up,
+for it attracts every species of beast of prey.
+
+Besides the damage to game, the concentration of too many foxes in one
+district is opposed to the interest of the hunt--first, because the
+attendant destruction of neighbouring poultry causes an unpleasant
+feeling; next, because when the meet takes place the plethora of foxes
+spoils the sport.  The day is wasted in "chopping" them at every corner;
+the pack breaks up into several sections, despite whip, horn, and voice;
+and a good ran across country cannot be obtained.  So that once now and
+then a judicious thinning-out is necessary; and this is how the skins
+come into the hands of the keeper's wife.  The heads go to ornament
+halls and staircases; so do the pads and occasionally the brush.  The
+teeth make studs, set in gold; and no part of Reynard is thrown away,
+since the dogs eagerly snap up his body.
+
+Once or twice she has made a mole-skin waistcoat for a gentleman.  This
+is a very tedious operation.  Each little skin has to be separately
+prepared, and when finished hardly covers two square inches of surface.
+Consequently it requires several scores of skins, and the work is a year
+or more about.  There is then the sewing together, which is not to be
+accomplished without much patience and skill.  The fur is beautifully
+soft and glossy, with more resemblance to velvet than is possessed by
+any other natural substance; and very warm.  Mittens for the wrists are
+also made of it, and skull-caps.  Mole-skin waistcoats used to be
+thought a good deal of, but are now only met with occasionally as a
+curiosity.
+
+The old wooden mole-trap is now almost extinct, superseded by the modern
+iron one, which anybody can set up.  The ancient contrivance, a cylinder
+of wood, could only be placed in position by a practised hand, and from
+his experience in this the mole-catcher--locally called "oont-catcher"--
+used to be an important personage in his way.  He is now fast becoming
+extinct also--that is, as a distinct handicraftsman spending his whole
+time in such trapping.  He was not unfrequently a man who had once
+occupied a subordinate place under a keeper, and when grown too feeble
+for harder labour, supported himself in this manner: contracting with
+the farmers to clear their fields by the season.
+
+Neither stoats' nor weasels' skins are preserved, except now and then
+for stuffing to put under a glass case, though the stoat is closely
+allied to the genuine ermine.  Polecats, too, are sometimes saved for
+the same purpose; in many woods they seem now quite extinct.  The otter
+skin is valuable, but does not often come under the care of the keeper's
+wife.  The keeper now and then shoots a grebe in the mere where the
+streamlet widens out into a small lake, which again is bordered by water
+meadows.  This bird is uncommon, but not altogether rare; sometimes two
+or three are killed in the year in this southern inland haunt.  He also
+shoots her some jays, whose wings--as likewise the black-and-white
+magpie--are used for the same decorative purposes.  Certain feathers
+from the jay are sought by the gentlemen who visit the great house, to
+make artificial flies for salmon-fishing.  Of kingfishers she preserves
+a considerable number for ladies' hats, and some for glass cases.  Once
+or twice she has been asked to prepare the woodpecker, whose plumage and
+harsh cry entitle him to the position of the parrot of our woods.
+Gentlemen interested in natural history often commission her husband to
+get them specimens of rare birds; and in the end he generally succeeds,
+though a long time may elapse before they cross his path.  For them she
+has prepared some of the rare owls and hawks.  She has a store of
+peacocks' feathers--every now and then people, especially ladies, call
+at the cottage and purchase these things.  Country housewives still use
+the hare's "pad" for several domestic purposes--was not the hare's foot
+once kept in the printing-offices?
+
+The keeper's wife has nothing to do with rabbits, but knows that their
+skins and fur are still bought in large quantities.  She has heard that
+geese were once kept in large flocks almost entirely for their feathers,
+which were plucked twice a year, she thinks; but this is not practised
+now, at least not in the south.  She has had snakes' skins, or more
+properly sloughs, for the curious.  It is very difficult to get one
+entire; they are fragile, and so twisted in the grass where the snake
+leaves them as to be generally broken.  Some country folk put them in
+their hats to cure headache, which is a very old superstition; but more
+in sport than earnest.  There are no deer now in the park.  There used
+to be a hundred years ago, and her husband has found several cast
+antlers in the wood.  The best are up at the great house, but there is
+one on her staircase.  Will I take a few chestnuts?  It is winter--the
+proper time--and these are remarkably fine.  No tree is apparently so
+capricious in its yield as the chestnut in English woods: the fruit of
+many is so small as to be worthless, or else it does not reach maturity.
+But these large ones are from a tree which bears a fine nut: her
+husband has them saved every year.  Here also are half-a-dozen truffles
+if I will accept them: most that are found go up to the great house; but
+of late years they have not been sought for so carefully, because coming
+in quantities from abroad.  These truffles are found, she believes, in
+the woods where the soil is chalky.  She used to gather many native
+herbs; but tastes have changed, and new seasonings and sauces have come
+into fashion.
+
+Out of doors in his work the assistant upon whom the gamekeeper places
+his chief reliance is his own son--a lad hardly taller than the gun he
+carries, but much older than would be supposed at first sight.
+
+It is a curious physiological fact that although open-air life is so
+favourable to health, yet it has the apparent effect of stunting growth
+in early youth.  Let two children be brought up together, one made to
+"rough" it out of doors, and the other carefully tended and kept within;
+other things being equal, the boy of the drawing-room will be taller and
+to all appearance more developed than his companion.  The labourer's
+children, for instance, who play in the lonely country roads and fields
+all day, whose parents lock their cottage doors when leaving for work in
+the morning so that their offspring shall not gain entrance and get into
+mischief, are almost invariably short for their age.  In their case
+something may be justly attributed to coarse and scanty food; but the
+children of working farmers exhibit the same peculiarity, and although
+their food is not luxurious in quality, it is certainly not stinted in
+quantity.  Some of the ploughboys and carters' lads seem scarcely fit to
+be put in charge of the huge cart-horses who obey their shouted orders,
+their heads being but a little way above the shafts--mere infants to
+look at.  Yet they are fourteen or fifteen years of age.  With these,
+and with the sons of farmers who in like manner work in the field, the
+period of development comes later than with town-bred boys.  After
+sixteen or eighteen, after years of hesitation as it were, they suddenly
+shoot up, and become great, hulking, broad fellows, possessed of immense
+strength.  So the keeper's boy is really much more a man than he
+appears, both in years and knowledge--meaning thereby that local
+intelligence, technical ability, and unwritten education which is the
+resultant of early practice and is quite distinct from book-learning.
+
+From his father he has imbibed the spirit of the woods and all the
+minutiae of his art.  First he learned to shoot; his highest ambition
+being satisfied in the beginning when permitted to carry the
+double-barrel home across the meadow.  Then he was allowed occasionally
+to fire off the charges left in after the day's work, before the gun was
+hung against the beam.  Next, from behind the fallen trunk of an oak he
+took aim at a sitting rabbit which had raised himself on his
+hind-quarters to listen suspiciously--resting the heavy barrels on the
+tree, and made nervous by the whispered instructions from the keeper
+kneeling on the grass out of sight behind, "Aim at his shoulder, lad, if
+he be sitting sidelong; if a' be got his back to 'ee aim at his poll."
+From this it was but a short step to be trusted with the single-barrel,
+and finally with the double; ultimately having one of his own and
+walking his own distinct rounds.
+
+He is now a keen shot, even better than his father; for it is often
+observed that at a certain age young beginners in most manual arts reach
+an excellence which in later years fails them.  Perhaps the muscles are
+more elastic, and respond instantaneously to the eye.  This mere boy at
+snap-shooting in the "rough" will beat crack sportsmen hollow.  At the
+trap with pigeons he would probably fail; but in a narrow lane where the
+rabbits, driven out by the ferrets, just pop across barely a yard of
+open ground, where even a good shot may miss repeatedly, he is "death"
+itself to the "bunnies."  So, too, with a wood-hare--i.e. those hares
+that always lie in the woods as others do in the open fields and on the
+uplands.  They are difficult to kill.  They slip quietly out from the
+form in the rough grass under the ashstole, and all you have for
+guidance is the rustling and, perhaps, the tips of the ears, the body
+hidden by the tangled dead ferns and "rowetty" stuff.  When you try to
+aim the barrel knocks against the ash-poles, which are inconveniently
+near together, or the branches get in the way, and the hare dodges round
+a tree, and your cartridge simply barks a bough and cuts a tall dead
+thistle in twain.  But the keeper's lad, who had waited for your fire,
+instantly follows, as it seems hardly lifting his gun to his shoulder,
+and the hare is stopped by the shot.
+
+Rabbit-shooting, also, in an ash wood like this is trying to the temper;
+they double and dodge, and if you wait, thinking that the brown rascals
+must presently cross the partially open space yonder, lo! just at the
+very edge up go their white tails and they dive into the bowels of the
+earth, having made for hidden burrows.  There is, of course, after all,
+nothing but a knack in these things.  Still it is something to have
+acquired the knack.  The lad, if you ask him, will proudly show off
+several gun tricks, as shooting left-handed, placing the butt at the
+left instead of the right shoulder and pulling the trigger with the left
+finger.  He will knock over a running rabbit like this; and at short
+distances can shoot with tolerable certainty from under the arm without
+coming to the "present," or even holding the gun out like a pistol with
+one hand.
+
+By slow degrees he has obtained an intimate acquaintance with every
+field on the place, and no little knowledge of natural history.  He will
+decide at once, as if by a kind of instinct, where any particular bird
+or animal will be found at that hour.
+
+He is more bitter than his father against poachers, and would like to
+see harder measures dealt out to them; but his chief use is in watching
+or checking the assistants, who act as beaters, ferreters, or keep up
+the banks and fences about the preserves, etc.  Without a doubt these
+men are very untrustworthy, and practise many tricks.  For instance,
+when they are set to ferret a bank, what is to prevent them, if the
+coast is clear, from hiding half a dozen dead rabbits in a burrow?
+digging has frequently to be resorted to, and thus they can easily cast
+earth over and conceal the entrance to a hole.  Many a wounded hare and
+pheasant that falls into the hands of the beaters never makes it
+appearance at the table of the sportsman; and doubtless they help
+themselves to the game captured in many a poacher's wire before giving
+notice of the discovery to the head man.
+
+Some of these assistants wear waistcoats of calfskin with the hair on
+it.  The hair is outside, and the roan-and-white colour has a curious
+appearance: the material is said to be very warm and durable.  Such
+waistcoats were common years ago; but of late the looms and spindles of
+the manufacturing districts have reduced the most outlying of the
+provinces to a nearly dead uniformity of shoddy.
+
+One pair of eyes cannot be everywhere at once; consequently the keeper,
+as his son grew up, found him a great help in this way: while he goes
+one road the lad goes the other, and the undermen never feel certain
+that some one is not about.  Perhaps partly for this reason the lad is
+not a favourite in the village, and few if any of the other boys make
+friends with him.  He is too loyal to permit of their playing trespass--
+he looks down on them as a little lower in the scale.  Do they ever
+speak, even in the humblest way, to the proprietor of the place?  In
+their turn they ostracise him after their fashion; so he becomes a
+silent, solitary youth, self-reliant, and old for his years.
+
+He is a daring climber: as after the hawk's nest, generally made in the
+highest elms or pines--if that species of tree is to be found--taking
+the young birds to some farmhouse where the children delight in living
+creatures.  Some who are not children, or are children of "a larger
+growth," like to have a tame hawk in the garden, clipping the wings so
+that it shall not get away.  Hawks have most amusing tricks, and in time
+become comparatively tame, at least to the person who feeds them.  The
+beauty of the hawk's eye can hardly be surpassed: full, liquid, and
+piercing.  In this way the keeper's boy often gets a stray shilling;
+also for young owls, which are still kept in some country houses, in the
+sheds or barns, to destroy the mice.  When the corn was threshed with
+the flail, and was consequently exposed to the ravages of these
+creatures (if undisturbed they multiply in such numbers as would
+scarcely be credited) owls were almost domestic birds, being domiciled
+in every barn.  Now they are more objects of curiosity, though still
+useful when large teams of horses are kept and require grain.
+
+The keeper's boy sells, too, young squirrels from time to time, and the
+eggs of the rarer birds.  In short, he has imbibed all the ways of the
+woods, and is an adept at everything, from "harling" a rabbit upwards.
+By-the-bye, what is the etymology of "harling," which seems to have the
+sense of entangling?  It is done by passing the blade of the knife
+between the bone of the thigh and the great sinew--where there is
+nothing but skin--and then thrusting the other foot through the hole
+thus made.  The rabbit or hare can then be conveniently carried by the
+loop thus formed, or slung on a stick or the gun-barrel across the
+shoulder.  Of course the "harling" is not done till the animal is dead.
+
+The book-learning of the keeper's boy is rather limited, for he was
+taught by the parish clerk and schoolmaster before the Education Acts
+were formulated.  Still, he can read, and pores over the weekly paper of
+rural sports, etc, taken for the guests at the great house and when out
+of date sent down to the keeper's cottage.  In fact, he shows a little
+too much interest in the turf columns to be quite satisfactory to his
+father, who is somewhat anxious about his acquaintance with the jockeys
+from the training-stables on the downs hard by--an acquaintance he
+discourages as tending to no good.  Like his father, he is never seen
+abroad without a pair of leathern gaiters, and, if not a gun, a stout
+gnarled ground-ash stick in his hand.
+
+The gamekeeper's calling naturally tends to perpetuate itself and become
+hereditary in his family.  The life is full of attraction to boys--the
+gun alone is hardly to be resisted; and, in addition, there are the
+animals and birds with which the _office_ is associated, and the
+comparative freedom from restraint.  Therefore one at least of his lads
+is sure to follow in his father's steps, and after a youth and early
+manhood spent out of doors in the woods it is next to impossible for him
+ever to quit the course he has taken.  His children, again, must come
+within reach of similar influences, and thus for a lengthened period
+there must be a predisposition towards this special occupation.
+
+Long service in one particular situation is not so common now as it used
+to be.  Men move about from place to place, but wherever they are they
+still engage in the same capacity; and once a gamekeeper always a
+gamekeeper is pretty nearly true.  Even in the present day instances of
+families holding the office for more than one or two generations on the
+same estate may be found; and years ago such was often the case.
+Occasionally the keeper's family has in this way by the slow passage of
+time become in a sense associated with that of his employer; many years
+of faithful service sensibly abridging the social gulf between master
+and servant.  The contrary holds equally true; and so at the present day
+short terms of service and constant changes are accompanied by a sharp
+distinction separating employer and employe.
+
+In such cases of long service the keeper holds a position more nearly
+resembling the retainer of the olden time than perhaps any other
+"institution" of modern life.  Pensioned off in his old age in the
+cottage where he was born, or which, at any rate, he first entered as a
+child, he potters about under his own vine and fig-tree--i.e. the pear
+and damson trees he planted forty years before--and is privileged now
+and then to give advice on matters arising out of the estate.  He can
+watch the young broods of pheasants still, and superintend the mixing of
+their food: his trembling hand, upon the back of which the corded sinews
+are so strongly marked now the tissue has wasted, and over which the
+blue veins wander, can set a trap when the vermin become too
+venturesome.
+
+He is yet a terror to evil-doers, and in no jot abates the dignity of
+more vigorous days; so that the superannuated ancients whose task it is
+to sweep the fallen leaves from the avenue and the walks near the great
+house, or to weed the gravel drive in feeble acknowledgment of the
+charitable dole they receive, fall to briskly when they see him coming
+with besom and rusty knife wherewith to "uck" out the springing grass.
+He daily gossips with the head gardener (nominal), as old or older than
+himself; but his favourite haunt is a spot on the edge of a fir
+plantation where lies a fallen "stick" of timber.  Here, sheltered by
+the thick foliage of the fir and the hawthorn hedge at his back from the
+wind, he can sit on the log, and keep watch over a descending slope of
+meadow bounding the preserves and crossed by footpaths, along which
+loiterers may come.  His sturdy son now sways the sceptre of ash over
+the old woods, and other descendants are employed about the place.
+
+Sometimes in the great house there may be seen the counterfeit
+presentment of such a retainer limned fifty years ago, with dog and gun,
+and characteristic background of trees.  His wife has perhaps survived
+till recently--strong and hale almost to the last; the most voluble
+gossip of the hamlet, full of traditions relating to the great house and
+its owners; a virago if crossed.  It is recorded that upon one occasion
+in her prime she confronted a couple of poachers, and, by dint of tongue
+and threats of assistance close at hand, forced them to retire.  It was
+at night that, her husband being from home and hearing shots in the
+wood, she sallied forth armed with a gun, faced the poachers, and
+actually drove them away, doubtless as much from fear of recognition as
+of bodily injury, though even that she was capable of inflicting, being
+totally fearless.
+
+Nothing can be more natural than that when a man has shown an earnest
+desire to give satisfaction and proved himself honest and industrious,
+his employer should exhibit an interest in the welfare of his family.
+Now and then a small farm may be found in the hands of a man descended
+from or connected with a keeper.  To successfully work a tenancy of such
+narrow limits it is necessary that the occupier should himself labour in
+the field from morn till dewy eve--the capacity to work being even more
+essential than capital; and so it happens that the smaller farms are
+occasionally held by men who have risen from the lower classes.  The
+sons of keepers also become gentlemen's servants, as grooms, etc, in or
+out of the house.
+
+A proposal was not long since made that gentlemen who had met with
+misfortune or were unable to obtain congenial employment should take
+service as gamekeepers--after the manner in which ladies were invited to
+become "helps."  The idea does not appear to have received much
+practical support, nor does it seem feasible looking at the altered
+relations of society in these days.  A gentleman "out of luck," and with
+a taste for outdoor life and no objection to work, could surely do far
+better in the colonies, where he could shoot for his "own hand," and in
+course of time achieve an independence, which he could never hope to
+attain as a gamekeeper.
+
+In the olden times, no doubt, younger brothers did become, in fact,
+gamekeepers, head grooms, huntsmen, etc, to the head of the family.
+There was less of the sense of servitude and loss of dignity when the
+feeling of clanship was prevalent, when the great house was regarded as
+the natural and proper resource of every cadet of the family.  But all
+this is changed.  And for a man of education to descend to trapping
+vermin, filling cartridges, and feeding pheasants all his life would be
+a palpable absurdity with Australia open to him and the virgin soil of
+Central Africa eager for tillage.
+
+Neither is every man's constitution capable of withstanding the wear and
+tear of a keeper's life.  I have delineated the more favourable side
+already; but it has its shadows.  Robust health, power of bearing
+fatigue, and above all of sustaining constant exposure in our most
+variable climate, are essential.  No labourer is so exposed as the
+keeper: the labourer does not work in continued wet, and he is sure of
+his night's rest.  The keeper is often about the best part of the night,
+and he cannot stay indoors because it rains.
+
+The woods are lovely in the sunshine of summer; they are full of charm
+when the leaves are bursting forth in spring or turning brown with the
+early autumn frosts; but in wet weather in the winter they are the most
+wretched places conceivable in which to stroll about.  The dead fern and
+the long grass are soaked with rain, and cling round the ankles with
+depressing tenacity.  Every now and then the feet sink into soddened
+masses of decaying leaves--a good deal, too, of the soil itself is soft
+and peaty, being formed from the decomposed vegetation of years; while
+the boughs against which the passer-by must push fly back and send a
+cold shower down the neck.  In fog as well as in rain the trees drip
+continuously; the boughs condense the mist and it falls in large drops--
+a puff of wind brings down a tropical shower.
+
+In warm moist weather the damp steam that floats in the atmosphere is
+the reverse of pleasant.  But a thaw is the worst of all, when the snow
+congealed on the branches and against the trunks on the windward side,
+slips and comes down in slushy, icy fragments, and the south-west or
+south-east wind, laden with chilling moisture, penetrates to the very
+marrow.  Even Robin Hood is recorded to have said that he could stand
+all kinds of weather with impunity, except the wind which accompanies a
+thaw.  Wet grass has a special faculty for saturating leather.  The very
+boots with which you may wade into a stream up to your ankles in perfect
+comfort are powerless to keep out the dew or raindrops on the
+grass-blades.  The path of the keeper is by no means always strewn with
+flowers.
+
+Probably the number of keepers has much increased of recent years, since
+the flood-tide of commercial prosperity set in.  Every successful
+merchant naturally purchases an estate in the country, and as naturally
+desires to see some game upon it.  This necessitates a keeper and his
+staff.  Then game itself--meaning live game--has become a marketable
+commodity, bought and sold very much as one might buy a standing crop of
+wheat.
+
+Owners of land, whose properties are hardly extensive enough to enable
+them to live in the state which is understood by the expression "country
+seat," frequently now resort to certain expedients to increase their
+incomes.  They maintain a head of game large in comparison with the
+acreage: of course this must be attended to by a resident keeper; and
+they add to the original mansion various attractive extra buildings--
+i.e. a billiard-room, conservatories, and a range of modern stabling.
+The object, of course, is to let the house, the home farm, and the
+shooting for the season; including facilities for following the hunt.
+The proprietor is consequently only at home in the latter part of the
+spring and in the summer--sometimes not even then.
+
+Again, there are large properties, copyhold, or held under long leases
+from corporate bodies, the tenants having the right to shoot.  Instead
+of exercising the power themselves, they let the shooting.  It consists
+mainly of partridges, hares, and rabbits; and one of their men looks
+after the game, combining the keeping a general watch with other duties.
+Professional men and gentlemen of independent income residing in county
+towns frequently take shooting of this kind.  The farmers who farm their
+own land often make money of their game in the same way.
+
+Gentlemen, too, combine and lease the shooting over wide areas, and of
+course find it necessary to employ keepers to look after their
+interests.  The upper class of tradesmen in county and provincial towns
+where any facilities exist now sometimes form a private club or party
+and rent the shooting over several farms, having a joint-stock interest
+in one or more keepers.  Poor land which used to be of very little value
+has, by the planting of covers and copses and the erection of a cottage
+for the keeper and a small "box" for temporary occupation, in many cases
+been found to pay well if easily accessible from towns.  Game, in short,
+was never so much sought after as at present; and the profession of
+gamekeeping is in no danger of falling into decay from lack of demand
+for the skill in woodcraft it implies.
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE.
+
+IN THE FIELDS.
+
+Much other work besides preventing poaching falls upon the keeper, such
+as arranging for the battue, stopping fox "earths" when the hounds are
+coming, feeding the young birds and often the old stock in severe
+weather, and even some labour of an agricultural character.
+
+A successful battue requires no little _finesse_ and patience exercised
+beforehand; weeks are spent in preparing for the amusement of a few
+hours.  The pheasants are sometimes accustomed to leave the wood in a
+certain direction chosen as specially favourable for the sport--some
+copses at a little distance are used as feeding places, so that the
+birds naturally work that way.  Much care is necessary to keep a good
+head of game together, not too much scattered about on the day fixed
+upon.  The difficulty is to prevent them from wandering off in the early
+morning; and men are stationed like sentinels at the usual points of
+egress to drive them back.  The beaters are usually men who have
+previously been employed in the woods and possess local knowledge of the
+ground, and are instructed in their duties long before: nothing must be
+left to the spur of the moment.  Something of the skill of the general
+is wanted to organise a great battue: an instinctive insight into the
+best places to plant the guns, while the whole body of sportsmen,
+beaters, keepers with ammunition, should move in concert.
+
+The gamekeeper finds his work fall upon him harder now than it used to
+do: first, sportsmen look for a heavier return of killed and wounded;
+next, they are seldom willing to take much personal trouble to find the
+game, but like it in a manner brought to them; and, lastly, he thinks
+the shooting season has grown shorter.  Gentlemen used to reside at home
+the greater part of the winter and spread their shooting over many
+months.  Now, the seaside season has moved on, and numbers are by the
+beach at the time when formerly they were in the woods.  Then others go
+abroad; the country houses now advertised as "to let" are almost
+innumerable.  Time was when the local squire would have thought it
+derogatory to his dignity to make a commodity of his ancient mansion;
+now there seems quite a competition to let, and absenteeism is a reality
+of English as well as Irish country life.  At least, such is the
+gamekeeper's idea, and he finds a confirmation of it in the sudden rush,
+as it were, made upon his preserves.  Gentlemen who once spent weeks at
+the great house, and were out with him every day till he grew to
+understand the special kind of sport which pleased them most, and could
+consequently give them satisfaction, are now hardly arrived before they
+are gone again.  With all his desire to find them game he is often
+puzzled, for game has its whims and fancies and will not accommodate
+itself to their convenience.
+
+Then the keeper thinks that shooting does not begin so early as it once
+did.  Partridges may be found in the market on the morning of the
+glorious First of September; but if you ask him how they get there, your
+reply is a pod and a wink.  Nobody gets up early enough in the morning
+for that now: very often the first day passes by without a single shot
+being fired.  The eagerness for the stubble and its joys is not so
+marked.  This last season the late harvest interfered very much with
+shooting; you cannot walk through wheat or barley, and while the crops
+are standing the partridges have too much cover.
+
+Many gentlemen again keep their pheasants till nearly Christmas: October
+goes by frequently without a bird being brought down in some preserves.
+Early in the new year, if the weather be mild, as it has been so often
+latterly, the birds begin to show signs of a disposition to pair off,
+and in consequence the guns are laid aside before the certificates
+expire.  So that the keeper thinks the actual shooting season has grown
+shorter and the sport is more concentrated, and taken in rushes, as it
+were.  This causes additional work and anxiety.  If the family are away
+they still require a regular and sometimes a large supply of game for
+the table, which he has to keep up himself--assistants could hardly be
+trusted: the opportunity is too tempting.
+
+Though a loyal and conscientious man, in his secret heart he does not
+like the hounds: and though of course he gets tipped for stopping the
+earths, yet it is a labour not exactly to his taste.  The essence of
+game preserving is quiet, repose; the characteristic of the hunt is
+noise, horn, whoop, whip, the cry of the hounds, and the crash of the
+bushes as the field takes a jump.  Students and bookworms like the quiet
+dust which settles in their favourite haunts--the housemaid's broom is
+fatal to retrospective thought: so the gamekeeper views the squadrons
+charging through his cherished copses, "poaching" up the greensward of
+the winding "drives," breaking down the fences, much as the artist views
+the sacrilegious broom "putting his place to rights."  Pheasant, and
+hare, and rabbit all are sent helter-skelter anywhere, and take a day or
+two to settle down again.
+
+Yet it is not so much the real genuine hunt that he dislikes: it is the
+loafers it brings together on foot.  Roughs from the towns, idle fellows
+from the villages, cobblers, tinkers, gipsies, the nondescript
+"residuum," all congregate in crowds, delighted at the chance of
+penetrating into the secret recesses of woods only thrown open two or
+three times a year.  It is impossible to stay the inroad--the gates are
+wide open, the rails pulled down, and trespass is but a fiction for the
+hour.  To see these gentry roaming at their ease in his woods is a
+bitter trial to the keeper, who grinds his teeth in silence as they pass
+him with a grin, perfectly aware of and enjoying his spleen.  Somehow or
+other these fellows always manage to get in the way just where the fox
+was on the point of breaking cover; if he makes a clear start and heads
+for the meadows, before he has passed the first field a ragged jacket
+appears over the hedge, and then the language of the huntsman is not
+always good to listen to.
+
+The work of rearing the young broods of pheasants is a trying and
+tedious one.  The keeper has his own specific treatment, in which he has
+implicit faith, and laughs to scorn the pheasant-meals and
+feeding-stuffs advertised in the papers.  He mixes it himself, and likes
+no one prying about to espy his secret, though in reality his success is
+due to watchful care and not to any particular nostrum.  The most
+favourable spot for rearing is a small level meadow, if possible without
+furrows, which has been fed off close to the ground and is situated high
+and dry, and yet well sheltered with wood all round.  Damp is a great
+enemy of the brood, and long grass wet with dew in the early morning
+sometimes proves fatal if the delicate young birds are allowed to drag
+themselves through it.
+
+Besides the coops, here and there bushes, cut for the purpose, are piled
+in tolerably large heaps.  The use of these is for the broods to run
+under if a hawk appears in the sky; and it is amusing to watch how soon
+the little creatures learn to appreciate this shelter.  In the spring
+the greater part of the keeper's time is occupied in this way: he spends
+hours upon hours in the hundred and one minutiae which ensure success.
+This breeding-time is _the_ great anxiety of the year: on it all the
+shooting depends.  He shakes his head if you hint that perhaps it would
+save trouble to purchase the pheasants ready for shooting from the
+dealers who now make a business of supplying them for the battue.  He
+looks upon such a practice as the ruin of all true woodcraft, and a
+proof of the decay of the present generation.
+
+In addition to the pheasants, the partridges, wild as they are, require
+some attention--the eggs have to be looked after.  The mowers in the
+meadows frequently lay their nests bare beneath the sweep of the scythe:
+the old bird sometimes sits so close as to have her legs cut off by the
+sharp steel.  Occasionally a rabbit, in the same way, is killed by the
+point of the blade as he lingers in his form.  The mowers receive a
+small sum for every egg they bring, the eggs being placed under brood
+hens, kept for the purpose.  But as a partridge's egg from one field is
+precisely like one from another field, the keeper may find, if he does
+not look pretty sharp after the mowers on the estate, that they have
+been bribed by a trifle extra to carry the eggs to another man at a
+distance.  A very unpleasant feeling often arises from suspicions of
+this kind.
+
+His agricultural labour consists in superintending the cultivation of
+the small squares left for the growth of grain in the centre of the
+copses, to feed and attract the pheasants, and to keep them from
+wandering.  These have to be dug up with the spade--there would be no
+room for using a plough--and spade-husbandry is rather slow work.  An
+eye has therefore to be kept on the labourers thus employed lest they
+get into mischief.  The grain (on the straw) is sometimes given to the
+birds laid across skeleton trestles, roughly made of stout ash sticks,
+so as to raise it above the ground and enable them to get at it better.
+
+Ash woods are cut every year, or rather they are mapped out into so many
+squares, the poles in which come to maturity in succession--while one is
+down another is growing up, and thus in a fixed course of years the
+entire wood is thrown and renovated.  A certain time has, of course, to
+be allowed for purchasers to remove their property, and, as the roads
+through the woods are often axle-deep in mud, in a wet spring it has
+frequently to be extended.  So many men being about, the keeper has to
+be about also: and then when at last the gates are nailed up, the cattle
+turned out to grass in the adjacent fields often break in and gnaw the
+young ash-shoots.  In this way a trespassing herd will throw back acres
+of wood for a whole year, and destroy valuable produce.  Properly
+speaking, this should come under the attention of the bailiff or steward
+of the demesne; but as the keeper and his men are so much more likely to
+discover the cattle first, they are expected to be on the watch.
+
+After spending so many years of his life among trees, it is natural that
+the keeper should feel a special interest, almost an affection for them.
+A branch ruthlessly torn down, a piece of bark stripped from the trunk
+with no possible object save destruction, a nail driven in--perhaps to
+break the teeth of the saw when at last the tree comes to be cut up into
+planks--these things annoy him almost as much as if the living wood were
+human and could feel.  For this reason, he too, like the members of the
+hunt, cordially detests the use of wire for fencing, now becoming so
+frequent.  It cuts into the trees, and checks their growth and spoils
+their symmetry, if it does not actually kill them.
+
+Sometimes the wire, which is stout and strong, is twisted right round
+the stem of a young oak, say a foot or more in diameter, which is thus
+made to play the part of a post.  A firmer support could not be found;
+but as the tree swells with the rising sap, and expands year by year,
+the iron girdle circling about it does not "give" or yield to this slow
+motion.  It bites into the bark, which in time curls over and so
+actually buries the metal in the growing wood.  Now this cannot but be
+injurious to the tree itself, and it is certainly unsightly.
+
+One wire is seldom thought enough.  Two or three are stretched along,
+and each of these causes an ugly scar.  If allowed to remain long
+enough, the young wood will solidify and harden about the wire, which
+then cannot be withdrawn; and in consequence when taken finally to the
+sawpit, some three or four feet of the very "butt" and best part of the
+trunk will be found useless.  No sawyer will risk his implement--which
+requires some hours' work to sharpen--in wood which he suspects to
+contain concealed iron.  So that, besides the injury to the appearance
+of the tree, there is a pecuniary loss.  Even when the wires are not
+twisted round, but merely rub against one side of the bark, the same
+scars are caused there, though not to such an extent.  Rough and strong
+as the bark seems to the touch, it speedily abrades under the constant
+pressure of the metal.
+
+The keeper thinks that all those owners of property who take a pleasure
+in their trees should see to this and prevent it.  There is nothing so
+detestable as this wire fencing in his idea.  You cannot even sit upon
+it for rest, as you can on the old-fashioned post and rails.  The
+convenient gaps which used to be found in every hedge at the corner are
+blocked now with an ugly rusty iron string stretched across, awkward to
+get over or under; while as for a horseman getting by, you cannot pull
+it down as you could "draw" a wooden rail, and if you try to uncoil it
+from the blackthorn stem to which it is attached the jagged end is
+tolerably certain to scrape the skin from your fingers.
+
+The keeper looks upon this simply as another sign of the idleness and
+dislike of taking trouble characteristic of the times.  To set up a line
+of posts and rails requires some little skill; a man must know his
+business to stop a gap with a single rail or pole, fixing the ends
+firmly in among the underwood; even to fit thorn bushes in properly, so
+as to effectually bar the way, needs some judgment: but anybody can
+stretch a wire along and twist it round a tree.  Hedge-carpentering was,
+in fact, a distinct business, followed by one or two men in every
+locality; but iron now supplants everything, and the hedges themselves
+are disappearing.
+
+When the hedgers and ditchers were put to work to cut a hedge--the turn
+of every hedge comes round once in so many years--they used to be
+instructed, if they came across a sapling oak, ash, or elm, to spare it,
+and cut away the bushes to give it full play.  But now they chop and
+slash away without remorse, and the young forest-tree rising up with a
+promise of future beauty falls before the billhook.  In time the
+full-grown oaks and elms of the hedgerow decay, or are felled; and in
+consequence of this careless destruction of the saplings there is
+nothing to fill their place.  The charm of English meadows consisted in
+no small degree in the stately trees, whose shadows lengthened with the
+declining sun and gave such pleasant shelter from the heat.  Soon,
+however, if the rising generation of trees is thus cut down, they must
+become bare, open, and unlovely.
+
+There is another mistake, often committed by owners of timber, who go to
+the other extreme, and in their intense admiration of trees refuse to
+permit the felling of a single one.  Now in the forest or the woodlands,
+away from the park or pleasure-grounds, the old hollow trees are things
+of beauty, and to cut them down for firewood seems an act of vandalism.
+But it is quite another thing with an avenue or those groups which dot
+the surface of a park.  Here, if a tree falls and there is no other to
+take its place, a gap is the result, which cannot be filled up, perhaps,
+under fifty or sixty years.
+
+Let any one stroll along beneath a stately avenue of elm or beech, such
+as are not difficult to find in rural districts, and are the pride and
+boast--and justly so--of this country, and, examining the trees with
+critical eye, what will he see?  Three or four elms, I will say, are
+passed, and are evidently sound; but the fifth--a careless observer
+might go by it without remarking anything unusual--is really rotten to
+the centre.  At the foot of the huge trunk, and growing out of it, is a
+bunch of sickly-looking fungi.  Thrust your walking-stick sharply
+against the black wood there and it penetrates easily, and with a little
+pushing goes in a surprising distance; the tree seems undermined with
+rottenness.  This decay really runs up the trunk perpendicularly: look,
+there are signs of it above at the knot-hole, thirty feet high, where
+more fungus is flourishing, as it always does in dead damp wood.  The
+rain soaks in there, and filtrates slowly down the trunk, whose very
+heart as it were is eaten away, while outside all is fair enough.
+
+Presently there arises a mighty wind, the tree snaps clean off twenty
+feet above the ground, and the upper part falls, a ponderous ruin,
+carrying with it one of the finest boughs of its nearest companion, and
+destroying its symmetry also.  When examined, it appears that the trunk
+is totally useless as timber: this noble-seeming elm is fit for nothing
+but fuel.  Or, perhaps, if there be water meadows on the estate, the
+farmers may be glad of it to act as a huge pipe to convey the
+fertilising stream across a ditch, or over a brook lying at a lower
+level.  For this purpose, of course, the rotten part is scooped out:
+often the trunk is sawn down the middle, so as to make a double length.
+
+But what a gap it has left in the great avenue!  In a minute the growth
+of a century gone, the delight of generations swept away, and no living
+man, hardly the heir in his cradle, can hope to see that unsightly gap
+filled up.
+
+The keeper does not hesitate to say that of the great trees in the
+avenues numbers stand in constant danger of such overthrow; and so it is
+that by slow degrees so many of the kings of the forest have disappeared
+without leaving successors.  No care is taken to plant fresh saplings,
+no care is taken to select and remove the trees which have passed the
+meridian of their existence, and the final result is the extinction of
+the avenue or group.  Perhaps the temper of the times is to blame for
+this neglect: men look only to the day and live fast.  There is a sense
+of uncertainty in the atmosphere of the age: no one can be sure that the
+acorns he plants will be permitted to reach their prime, the hoofs of
+the "iron horse" may trample them down as fresh populations grow.  So
+the avenues die out, and the keeper mourns to think that in the days to
+come their place will be vacant.
+
+Suddenly he pauses in his walk, stoops, and points out to me in the
+grass the white, smooth, round knob-like tops of several young mushrooms
+which are pushing their way up.  He carefully covers these with some
+pieces of dead bark and desiccated dung, so that none of "them lurching
+fellows as comes round shan't see 'em"--with a wink at his own cunning--
+so as to preserve them till they have grown larger.  He advises me never
+to partake of mushrooms unless certain that they have not grown under
+oak trees: he will have it that even the true edible mushroom is hurtful
+if it springs beneath the shadow of the oak.  And he is not singular in
+this belief.
+
+Chatting about trees, he points out one or two oaks, not at all rotten,
+but split half-way up the trunk--the split is perfectly visible--yet
+they have not been struck by lightning; and he cannot explain it.
+Looking back upon the wood as we leave it with intense pride in his
+trees, he gives me a rough version of the old story: how a knight of
+ancient days, who had done the king some great service, was rewarded
+with a broad tract of land which he was to hold for three crops.  He
+sowed acorns, and thus secured himself and descendants a tenure of
+almost 3,000 years, at least, according to Dryden:--
+
+  The monarch oak, the patriarch of trees,
+  Shoots, rising up, and spreads by slow degrees;
+  Three centuries he grows, and three he stays
+  Supreme in state, and in three more decays.
+
+The keeper wishes he had such an opportunity.  The knight, in his idea,
+reached the acme of wisdom with his three crops of nearly a thousand
+years each.
+
+His own kingdom may be said to begin with the park, and the land "in
+demesne" to quote the quaint language of the Domesday Book: a record not
+without its value as an outline picture of English scenery eight
+centuries ago, telling us that near this village was a wood, near that a
+stretch of meadow and a mill, here again arable land and corn waving in
+the breeze, and everywhere the park and domain of the feudal lords.  The
+beauty of the park consists in its "breadth" as an artist would say--the
+meadows with their green frames of hedges are cabinet pictures, lovely,
+but small; this is life size, a broad cartoon from the hand of Nature.
+The sward rises and rolls along in undulations like the slow heave of an
+ocean wave.  Besides the elms there is a noble avenue of limes, and
+great oaks scattered here and there, under whose ample shade the cattle
+repose in the heat of the day.
+
+In summer from out the leafy chambers of the limes there falls the
+pleasant sound of bees innumerable, the voice of whose trembling wings
+lulls the listening ear as the drowsy sunshine weighs the eyelid till I
+walk the avenue in a dream.  It leads out into the park--no formal
+gravel drive, simply a footpath on the sward between the flowering
+trees: a path that becomes less and less marked as I advance, and
+finally fades away, where the limes cease, in the broad level of the
+opening "greeny field."  These honey-bees seem to fly higher and to
+exhibit much more activity than the great humble-bee: here in the limes
+they must be thirty feet above the ground.  Wasps also frequently wing
+their way at a considerable elevation, and thus it is that the hive-bee
+and the wasp so commonly enter the upper windows of houses.  When its
+load of honey is completed, the bee, too, returns home in a nearly
+straight line, high enough in the air to pass over hedges and such
+obstacles without the labour of rising up and sinking again.
+
+The heavy humble-bee is generally seen close to the earth, and often
+goes down into the depths of the dry ditches, and may there be heard
+buzzing slowly along under the arch of briar and bramble.  He seems to
+lose his way now and then in the tangled undergrowth of the woods; and
+if a footstep disturbs and alarms him, it is amusing to see his
+desperate efforts to free himself hastily from the interlacing
+grass-blades and ferns.
+
+When the sap is rising, the bark of the smaller shoots of the lime-tree
+"slips" easily--i.e. it can be peeled in hollow cylinders if judiciously
+tapped and loosened by gentle blows from the back of a knife.  The
+ploughboys know this, and make whistles out of such branches, as they do
+also from the willow, and even the sycamore in the season when the sap
+comes up in its flood-tide.
+
+It is difficult to decide at what time of the year the park is in its
+glory.  The may-flower on the great hawthorn trees in spring may perhaps
+claim the pre-eminence, filling the soft breeze with exquisite odour.
+These here are trees, not bushes, standing separate, with thick gnarled
+stems so polished by the constant rubbing of cattle as almost to shine
+like varnish.  The may-bloom, pure white in its full splendour, takes a
+dull reddish tinge as it fades, when a sudden shake will bring it down
+in showers.  A flowering tree, I fancy, looks best when apart and not
+one of a row.  In the latter case you can only see two sides and not all
+round it.  Here tall horse-chestnut trees stand single--one great
+silvery candelabrum of blossom.  Wood-pigeons appear to have a liking
+for this tree.  Nor must the humble crab-tree be forgotten; a crab-tree
+in bloom is a lovely sight.
+
+The idea of a park is associated with peace and pleasure, yet even here
+there is one spot where the passions of men have left their mark.  As
+previously hinted, the gamekeeper, like most persons with little
+book-learning and who take their impressions from nature, is somewhat
+superstitious, and regards this place as "unkid"--i.e. weird, uncanny.
+One particular green "drive" into the wood opening on the park had
+always been believed to be a part of a military track used many ages
+ago, but long since ploughed up for the greater part of its length, and
+only preserved here by the accident of passing through a wood.  At last
+some labourers grubbing trees near the mouth of the drive came upon a
+number of human skeletons, close beneath the surface, and in their
+confused arrangement presenting every sign of hasty interment, as if
+after battle.  Since then the keeper avoids the spot; nor will he, hardy
+as he is, go near it at night; not even in the summer moonlight, when
+the night is merely a prolongation of the day.
+
+There is nothing unusual in such a discovery: skeletons are found in all
+manner of places.  I recollect seeing one dug out from the bank of a
+brook within two feet of the stream.  The place was perhaps in the olden
+time covered with forest (traces of forest are to be found everywhere,
+as in the names of hamlets), and therefore more concealed than at
+present.  Or, possibly, the stream, in the slow passage of centuries,
+may have worn its way far from its original bed.
+
+It is strange to think of, yet it is true enough, that, beautiful as the
+country is, with its green meadows and graceful trees, its streams and
+forests and peaceful homesteads, it would be difficult to find an acre
+of ground that has not been stained with blood.  A melancholy reflection
+this, that carries the mind backwards, while the thrush sings on the
+bough, through the nameless skirmishes of the Civil War, the cruel
+assassinations of the rival Roses, down to the axes of the Saxons and
+the ghastly wounds they made.  Everywhere under the flowers are the
+dead.
+
+Not this park in particular, but others as well form pages of history.
+The keeper, in fact, can claim an ancient origin for his office, dating
+back to the forester with a "mark" a year and a suit of green as his
+wages, and numbering in his predecessors Joscelin, the typical keeper in
+Scott's novel of "Woodstock," who aided the escape of King Charles.
+Ever since the days of the Norman King who loved the tall deer as if he
+were their father--in the words of his contemporary--and set store by
+the hares that they too should go free, the keeper has not ceased out of
+the land.
+
+There are always more small birds at the edge or just outside a wood
+than inside it; so that after leaving a meadow with blackbird, thrush,
+and finches merry in the hedges, the wood seems quite silent and
+deserted save by a solitary robin.  This is speaking of the smaller
+birds.  The great missel-thrush especially delights in the open space of
+the park dotted with groups of trees.  The missel-thrush is a lonely
+bird, and somehow seems like an outlaw--as if, though not precisely
+dangerous, he was looked upon with suspicion by the other birds, which
+will frequently quit a bush or tree directly he alights upon it.  Yet he
+builds near houses, and year after year in the same spot.  I knew a
+large yew-tree which stood almost in front and within a few yards of a
+sitting-room window in which the missel-thrush had regularly built its
+nest for twelve successive years.  These birds are singularly bold in
+defence of the nest, flying round and chattering at those who would
+disturb it.
+
+In the ha-ha wall of the park, which is made of loose stones or without
+mortar, the tomtit, or titmouse, has his nest.  He creeps in between the
+stones, following the crannies for a surprising distance.  Near here the
+partridges roost on the ground; they like an open space far from hedges,
+afraid, perhaps, of weasels and rats.  On the other side, where the wood
+comes up, if you watch quietly, the pheasants step in lordly pride out
+into the grass; so that there is no place without its especial class of
+life.
+
+Perhaps with the exception of our parks and hills, there is scarcely any
+portion of southern England now where a grand charge of cavalry could
+take place--scarcely any open champaign country fit for operations of
+that kind with horse.  In the Civil War even, how constantly we read of
+"lining the hedge with match," and now with enclosures everywhere the
+difficulty would apparently be great, despite good roads.
+
+Park-fed beef is thought by many to be superior, because the cattle run
+free--almost wild--the entire year through, winter and summer, and have
+nothing but their natural food, grass and hay: in strong contrast with
+the bullocks shut up in stalls and forced forward with artificial food.
+A great number of parks have been curtailed in size as land became more
+valuable--the best ground being selected and hedged off for purely
+agricultural purposes; so that it not uncommonly happens that the actual
+park is the poorest soil in the district, having for that reason
+remained longest in a condition nearly resembling the original state of
+the country.  So that when agitators of Communistic views lay stress
+upon the waste of land used for pleasure purposes they frequently
+declaim in utter ignorance of the facts, which are in exact opposition
+to their theories.
+
+Like animals and birds, plants have their favourite haunts: violets love
+a bank with a southern aspect, especially if there be a hedge at the
+back for further shelter.  Where you have by chance lighted upon a wild
+flower once you may generally reckon upon finding it again next year--
+such as the white variety of the bluebell or wild hyacinth, for which,
+unless you mark the place, you may search in vain amid the crowded blue
+bloom of the commoner sort.  The orchis, with its purple flower and dark
+green spotted leaf, in the virtue of whose roots as a love-potion the
+old people still believe, the strange-looking adder's tongue, the modest
+wild strawberry, with its tiny but piquant flavoured fruit, all have
+their special resorts.  Even the cowslips have their ways: by brooks
+sometimes a larger variety grows; nor is there a sweeter flower than its
+delicate yellow with small velvety brown spots, like moles on beauty's
+cheek.
+
+In autumn, when the leaves turn colour, the groups of trees in the park
+are more effective in an artistic point of view than those in the woods
+(unless overlooked from a hill close by, when it is like glancing along
+a roof of gold), because they stand out clear, and are not confused or
+lost in the general glow.  But it is evening now; and see--yonder the
+fox steals out from the cover, wending his way down into the meadows,
+where he will follow the furrows along their course, mousing as he goes.
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+HIS DOMINIONS:--THE WOODS--MEADOWS--AND WATER.
+
+There is a part of the wood where the bushes grow but thinly and the
+ash-stoles are scattered at some distance from each other.  It is on a
+steep slope--almost cliff--where the white chalk comes to the surface.
+On the edge above rise tall beech trees with smooth round trunks, whose
+roots push and project through the wall of chalk, and bend downwards,
+sometimes dislodging lumps of rubble to roll headlong among the bushes
+below.  A few small firs cling half-way up, and a tangled, matted mass
+of briar and bramble climbs nearly to them, with many a stout thistle
+flourishing vigorously.
+
+To get up this cliff is a work of some little difficulty: it is done by
+planting the foot on the ledges of rubble, or in the holes which the
+rabbits have made, holding tight to roots which curl and twist in
+fantastic shapes, or to the woodbine hanging in festoons from branch to
+branch.  The rubble under foot crumbles and slips, the roots tear up
+bodily from the thin soil, the branches bend, and the woodbine "gives,"
+and the wayfarer may readily descend much more rapidly than he desires.
+Not that serious consequences would ensue from a roll down forty feet of
+slope; but the bed of briar and bramble at the bottom is not so soft as
+it might be.  The rabbits seem quite at home upon the steepest spot;
+they may be found upon much higher and more precipitous chalk cliffs
+than this, darting from point to point with ease.
+
+Once at the summit under the beeches, and there a comfortable seat may
+be found upon the moss.  The wood stretches away beneath for more than a
+mile in breadth, and beyond, it winds the narrow mere glittering in the
+rays of the early spring sunshine.  The bloom is on the blackthorn, but
+not yet on the may; the hedges are but just awakening from their long
+winter sleep, and the trees have hardly put forth a sign.  But the rooks
+are busily engaged in the trees of the park, and away yonder at the
+distant colony in the elms of the meadows.
+
+The wood is restless with life: every minute a pigeon rises, clattering
+his wings, and after him another; and so there is a constant fluttering
+and motion above the ash-poles.  The number of wood-pigeons breeding
+here must be immense.  Later on, if you walk among the ash, you may find
+a nest every half-dozen yards.  It is formed of a few twigs making a
+slender platform, on which the glossy white egg is laid, and where the
+bird will sit till you literally thrust her off her nest with your
+walking-stick.  Such slender platforms, if built in the hedgerow, so
+soon as the breeze comes would assuredly be dashed to pieces; but here
+the wind only touches the tops of the poles, and causes them to sway
+gently with a rattling noise, and the frail nest is not injured.  When
+the pigeon or dove builds in the more exposed hedgerows the nest is
+stronger, and more twigs seem to be used, so that it is heavier.
+
+Boys steal these eggs by scores, yet it makes no difference apparently
+to the endless numbers of these birds, who fill the wood with their
+peculiar hoarse notes, which some country people say resemble the words
+"Take two cows, Taffy."  The same good folk will have it that when the
+weather threatens rain the pigeon's note changes to "Joe's toe bleeds,
+Betty."  The boys who steal the eggs have to swarm up the ash-poles for
+the purpose, and in so doing often stain their clothes with red marks.
+Upon the bark of the ash are innumerable little excrescences which when
+rubbed exude a small quantity of red juice.
+
+The keeper detests this bird's-nesting; not that he cares much about the
+pigeons, but because his pheasants are frequently disturbed just at the
+season when he wishes them to enjoy perfect quiet.  It is easy to tell
+from this post of vantage if any one be passing through the section of
+the wood within view, though they may be hidden by the boughs.  The
+blackbirds utter a loud cry and scatter; the pigeons rise and wheel
+about; a pheasant gets up with a scream audible for a long distance, and
+goes with swift flight skimming away just above the ash-poles; a pair of
+jays jabber round the summit of a tall fir tree, and thus the intruder's
+course is made known.  But the wind, though light, is still too cold and
+chilly as it sweeps between the beech trunks to remain at this
+elevation; it is warmer below in the wood.
+
+At the foot of the cliff a natural hollow has been further scooped out
+by labour of man, and shaped into a small cave large enough for three or
+four to sit in.  It is partly supported by strong wooden pillars, and at
+the mouth a hut of slabs, thickly covered by furze-faggots, has been
+constructed, with a door, and with roof thatched with reeds from the
+lake.  A rude bench runs round three sides; against the fourth some
+digging tools recline--strong spades and grub-axes for rooting out a
+lost ferret, left here temporarily for convenience.  The place, rough as
+it is, gives shelter, and, throwing the door open, there is a vista
+among the ash-poles and the hazel bushes overtopped with great fir trees
+and more distant oaks.  In the later spring this is a lovely spot, the
+ground all tinted with the shimmering colour of the bluebells, and the
+hazel musical with the voice of the nightingale.
+
+Outside the wood, where the downland begins to rise gradually there
+stretches a broad expanse of furze growing luxuriantly on the thin
+barren soil, and a mile or more in width.  It has a beauty of its own
+when in full yellow blossom--a yellow sea of flower, scenting the air
+with an almost overpowering odour as of a coarser pineapple, and full of
+the drowsy hum of the bees busy in the interspersed thyme.  It has
+another beauty later on when the thick undergrowth of heath is in bloom,
+and a pale purple carpet spreads around.  Here rabbits breed and sport,
+and hares hide, and the curious furze-chats fly to and fro; and lastly,
+but not leastly, my lord Reynard the Fox loves to take his ease, till he
+finally meets his fate in the jaws of clamouring hounds, or is
+assassinated with the aid of "villainous saltpetre."  He is not easily
+shot, and will stand a charge fired broadside at a short distance
+without the slightest injury or apparent notice, beyond a slight
+quickening of his pace.  His thick fur and tough skin turn the pellets.
+Even when mortally wounded, life will linger for hours.
+
+The ordinary idea of the fox is that of a flying frightened creature
+tearing away for bare existence; he is really a bold and desperate
+animal.  The keeper will tell you that once when for some purpose he was
+walking up a deep dry ditch his spaniel and retriever suddenly "chopped"
+a fox, and got him at bay in a corner, when he turned, and in an instant
+laid the spaniel helpless and dying and severely handled the retriever.
+Seeing his dogs so injured and the fox as it were under his feet, the
+keeper imprudently attempted to seize him, but could not retain his
+hold, and got the sharp white teeth clean through his hand.
+
+Though but once actually bitten, he recollects being snapped at
+viciously by another fox, whom he found in broad daylight asleep in the
+hollow of a double mound with scarcely any shelter and within sixty
+yards of a house.  Reynard was curled up on the ivy which in the hedges
+trails along the ground.  The keeper crawled up on the bank and stopped,
+admiring the symmetry of the creature, when, purposely breaking a twig,
+the fox was up in a second, and snarled and snapped at his face, then
+slipped into the ditch and away.  The fox is, in fact, quite as
+remarkable for boldness as for cunning.  Last summer I met a fine fox on
+the turnpike road and close to a tollgate, in the middle of the day.  He
+came at full speed with a young rabbit in his jaws, evidently but just
+captured, and did not perceive that he was observed till within twenty
+yards, when, with a single bound he cleared the sward beside the road,
+alighting with a crash in the bushes, carrying his prey with him.
+
+Hares will sometimes, in like manner, come as it were to meet people on
+country roads.  Is it that the eyes, being placed towards the side of
+the head, do not so readily catch sight of dangers in front as on the
+flanks, especially when the animal is absorbed in its purpose?  Hares
+are peculiarly fond of limping at dusk along lonely roads.
+
+Foxes, when they roam from the woods into the meadow-land, prefer to
+sleep during the day in those osier-beds which are found in the narrow
+corners formed by the meanderings of the brooks.  Between the
+willow-wands there shoots up a thick undergrowth of sedges, long coarse
+grass, and reeds; and in these the fox makes his bed, turning round and
+round till he has smoothed a place and trampled down the grass; then
+reclining, well sheltered from the wind.  A dog will turn round and
+round in the same way before he lies down on the hearthrug.
+
+These reeds sometimes grow to a great height, as much as ten or twelve
+feet.  Along the Thames they are used, bound in bundles, to pitch the
+barges; when the hull has been roughly coated with pitch, one end of the
+bundle of reeds (thickest end preferred) is set on fire and passed over
+it to make it melt and run into the chinks.  So, mayhap, the Saxon and
+Danish rovers may have used them to pitch the bottoms of their "ceols"
+when worn from constantly grounding on the shallows and eyots.
+
+Here in the furze too is the haunt of the badger.  This animal becomes
+rarer year after year--the disuse of the great rabbit-warrens being one
+cause; still he lingers, and may be traced in the rabbit "buries," where
+he enlarges a hole for his habitation, sleeps during the day, and comes
+forth in the gloaming.  In summer he digs up the wasps' nests, not, as
+has been supposed, for the honey, but for the white larvae they contain:
+the wasp secretes no honey at all, and her nest is simply a series of
+cells in which the grubs mature.  Some credit the fox with a fondness
+for the same food; and even the hornet's nest is said to be similarly
+ravaged.  It is the nest of the humble-bee which the badger roots up for
+the honey.  The humble-bee uses a tiny hole in a dry bank, sometimes a
+crack made by the heat in the earth, and really deposits true honey in
+the comb.  It is very sweet, like that of the hive-bee, but a little
+darker in colour and much less in quantity.  The haymakers search for
+these nests along the hedgerows in their dinner-hour, and eat the honey.
+There seem to be several sub-species of humble-bee, differing in size
+and habit.  One has its nest as deep as possible in a hole; another
+makes a nest with scarcely any protection beyond the thick moss of the
+bank, almost on the surface of the ground.  The badger's hole has before
+it a huge quantity of sand, which he has thrown out, and upon which the
+imprint of his foot will be found, a mark, perhaps, more like the spoor
+of the large game of tropical forests than that left by any other
+English animal.  When seen it can ever afterwards be instantly
+identified by the most careless observer.
+
+In the meadows lower down, bounding the wood, the hay is gone or is
+piled in summer ricks, which lean one one way and another the other, and
+upon whose roofs, sloping at an obtuse angle, the green snakes lie
+coiled in the sunshine.  Often when the waggon comes, and the little
+rick is loaded, the "pitch" of hay on the prong as it is flung up
+carries with it a snake whirling in the air.  He falls on the sward and
+is instantly pounced upon by the farmer's dog, who worries him, seizes
+him by the middle and shakes him, while the snake twists and hisses in
+vain.  Some dogs will not touch snakes, others seem to enjoy destroying
+them; but it is noticeable that a dog which previously has passed or
+avoided snakes, if once he kills one, never passes another without
+slaughtering it.  A slime from the snake's skin froths over the dog's
+jaws, and the sight is very unpleasant.
+
+I have often tried to discover how the snakes get upon these summer
+ricks.  Solomon could not understand the "way of a serpent upon the
+rock," and the way of a common snake up the summer rick seems almost as
+inexplicable.  Though the roof or "top" is often very much out of the
+proper conical shape, and sometimes sinks down nearly to a level, the
+sides for a height of three or four feet are generally perpendicular,
+affording no projection of any kind whatever; hay is slippery, and the
+rick is, of course, too large for the snake to encircle it.  Yet there
+they are commonly found to the intense alarm of the labouring women, who
+never can get over their dislike of snakes, though they see them so
+frequently.  The only way I can imagine by which they climb up is by
+means of the holes, or galleries, used by field-mice.  In summer ricks
+there are sometimes many mice, and in pursuit of these the snake may
+find its way up through their "runs."  Toads are also occasionally found
+on these ricks, and it is not exactly clear how they get there either;
+but their object is plain--i.e. the insects which swarm on the hay.
+
+The thick hedgerows of these woodland meads are full of trees, and
+others stand out in groups in the grass, some of them hollow.  Elms
+often become hollow, and so do oaks; the latter have such large cavities
+sometimes that one or more persons may easily crouch therein.  This is
+speaking of an ordinary-sized tree; there are many instances of
+patriarchs of the forest within whose capacious trunks a dozen might
+stand upright.
+
+These hollow trees, according to woodcraft, ought to come down by the
+axe without further loss of time.  Yet it is fortunate that we are not
+all of us, even in this prosaic age, imbued with the stern utilitarian
+spirit; for a decaying tree is perhaps more interesting than one in full
+vigour of growth.  The starlings make their nests in the upper
+knot-holes; or, lower down, the owl feeds her young; and if you chance
+to pass near, and are not aware of the ways of owls, you may fancy that
+a legion of serpents are in the bushes, so loud and threatening is the
+hissing noise made by the brood.  The woodpecker comes for the insects
+that flourish on the dying giant; so does the curious little
+tree-climber, running up the trunk like a mouse; and in winter, when
+insect-life is scarce, it is amusing to watch there the busy tomtit.  He
+hangs underneath a dead branch, head downwards, as if walking on a
+ceiling, and with his tiny but strong bill chips off a fragment of the
+loose dead bark.  Under this bark, as he well knows, woodlice and all
+kinds of creeping things make their home.  With the fragment he flies to
+an adjacent twig, small enough to be grasped by his claws and so give
+him a firm foothold.  There he pecks his morsel into minute pieces and
+lunches on the living contents.  Then, with a saucy chuckle of delight
+in his own cleverness, he returns to the larger bough for a fresh
+supply.  As the bough decays the bark loosens, and is invaded by insects
+which when it was green could not touch it.
+
+For the acorns the old oak still yields come rooks, pigeons, and stately
+pheasants, with their glossy feathers shining in the autumn sun.
+Thrushes carry wild hedge-fruit up on the broad platform formed by the
+trunk where the great limbs divide, and, pecking it to pieces, leave the
+seeds.  These take root in the crevices which widen out underneath into
+a mass of soft decaying "touchwood;" and so from the crown of the tree
+there presently streams downwards long trailing briars, bearing in June
+the sweet wild roses and in winter red oval fruit.  Ivy comes creeping
+up, and in its thick warm coverts nests are built.  Below, among the
+powdery "touchwood" which lines the floor of this living hut, great
+fungi push their coloured heads up to the light.  And here you may take
+shelter when the rain comes unexpectedly pattering on the leaves, and
+listen as it rises to a roar within the forest.  Sometimes wild bees
+take up their residence in the hollow, slowly filling it with comb,
+buzzing busily to and fro; and then it is not to be approached so
+carelessly, though so ready are all creatures to acknowledge kindness
+that ere now I have even made friends with the inhabitants of a wasp's
+nest.
+
+A thick carpet of dark green moss grows upon one side of the tree, and
+over it the tall brake fern rears its yellow stem.  In the evening the
+goat-sucker or nightjar comes with a whirling phantom-like flight,
+wheeling round and round: a strange bird, which will roost all day on a
+rail, blinking or sleeping in the daylight, and seeming to prefer a rail
+or a branch without leaves to one that affords cover.  Here also the
+smaller bats flit in the twilight, and, if you stand still, will pursue
+their prey close to your head, wheeling about it so that you may knock
+them down with your hand if you wish.  The labouring people call the bat
+"bat-mouse."  Here also come many beetles; and sometimes on a summer's
+day the swallows will rest from their endless flight on the dying upper
+branches, for they too like a bough clear or nearly clear of leaves.
+All the year through the hollow tree is haunted by every kind of living
+creature, and therefore let us hope it may yet be permitted to linger
+awhile safe from the axe.
+
+The lesser roots of the elm are porous like cane, and are sometimes
+smoked as cigars by the ploughboys.  The leaf of the coltsfoot, which
+grows so luxuriously in many places and used to be regularly gathered
+and dried by the lower classes for the pipe, is now rarely used since
+the commoner tobaccos have become universally accessible.
+
+Often and often, when standing in a meadow gateway partly hidden by the
+bushes, watching the woodpecker on the ant-hills, of whose eggs, too,
+the partridges are so fond (so that a good ant year, in which their
+nests are prolific, is also a good partridge year) you may, if you are
+still, hear a slight faint rustle in the hedge, and by-and-by a weasel
+will steal out.  Seeing you he instantly pauses, elevates his head, and
+steadily gazes: move but your eyes and he is back in the hedge; remain
+quiet, still looking straight before you as if you saw nothing, and he
+will presently recover confidence, and actually cross the gateway almost
+under you.
+
+This is the secret of observation: stillness, silence, and apparent
+indifference.  In some instinctive way these wild creatures learn to
+distinguish when one is or is not intent upon them in a spirit of
+enmity; and if very near, it is always the eye they watch.  So long as
+you observe them, as it were, from the corner of the eyeball, sideways,
+or look over their heads at something beyond, it is well.  Turn your
+glance full upon them to get a better view, and they are gone.
+
+When waiting in a dry ditch with a gun on a warm autumn afternoon for a
+rabbit to come out, sometimes a bunny will suddenly appear at the mouth
+of a hole which your knee nearly touches.  He stops dead, as if
+petrified with astonishment, sitting on his haunches.  His full dark eye
+is on you with a gaze of intense curiosity; his nostrils work as if
+sniffing; his whiskers move; and every now and then he thumps with his
+hind legs upon the earth with a low dull thud.  This is evidently a sign
+of great alarm, at the noise of which any other rabbit within hearing
+instantly disappears in the "bury."  Yet there your friend sits and
+watches you as if spell-bound, so long as you have the patience neither
+to move hand or foot nor to turn your eye.  Keep your glance on a frond
+of the fern just beyond him, and he will stay.  The instant your eye
+meets his or a finger stirs, he plunges out of sight.
+
+It is so also with birds.  Walk across a meadow swinging a stick, even
+humming, and the rooks calmly continue their search for grubs within
+thirty yards; stop to look at them, and they rise on the wing directly.
+So, too, the finches in the trees by the roadside.  Let the wayfarer
+pass beneath the bough on which they are singing, and they will sing on,
+if he moves without apparent interest; should he pause to listen, their
+wings glisten in the sun as they fly.
+
+The meadows lead down to the shores of the mere, and the nearest fields
+melt almost insensibly into the green margin of the water, for at the
+edge it is so full of flags, and rushes, and weeds as at a distance to
+be barely distinguishable there from the sward.  As we approach, the
+cuckoo sings passing over head; "she cries as she flies" is the common
+country saying.
+
+I used to imagine that the cuckoo was fond of an echo, having noticed
+that a particular clump of trees overhanging some water, the opposite
+bank of which sent back a clear reply, was a specially favourite resort
+of that bird.  The reduplication of the liquid notes, as they travelled
+to and fro, was peculiarly pleasant: the water, perhaps, lending, like a
+sounding-board, a fulness and roundness to her song.  She might possibly
+have fancied that another bird was answering; certainly she "cried" much
+longer there than in other places.  Morning after morning, and about the
+same time--eleven o'clock--a cuckoo sang in that group of trees, from
+noting which I was led to think that perhaps the cuckoo, though
+apparently wandering aimlessly about, really has more method and
+regularity in her habits than would seem.
+
+Country people will have it that cuckoos are growing scarcer every year,
+and do not come in the numbers they formerly did; and, whether it be the
+chance of unfavourable seasons or other causes, it is certainly the fact
+in some localities.  I recollect seeing as many as four at once in a
+tall elm--a tree they love--all crying and gurgling, as it were, in the
+throat together; this was some years since, and that district is now
+much less frequented by these birds.
+
+There was a superstition that where or in whatever condition you
+happened to be when you heard the cuckoo the first time in the spring,
+so you would remain for the next twelvemonth; for which reason it was a
+misfortune to hear her first in bed, since it might mean a long illness.
+This, by-the-by, may have been a pleasant fable invented to get
+milkmaids up early of a morning.
+
+The number of coarse fish in the brook which flows out of the shallow
+mere bounding one edge of the keeper's domain of woods has, he thinks,
+very much decreased of recent years.  When he first came here the stream
+seemed full of fish, notwithstanding very little care had till then been
+taken with their preservation.  They used to net it once now and then,
+and he has seen a full hundredweight of fair-sized jack, perch, tench,
+etc, taken out of the water in a very short time, besides quantities of
+smaller fry which were put back again.  But although the brook, so far
+as his jurisdiction goes, has since been comparatively well preserved,
+yet he feels certain the fish have diminished.
+
+There are no chemical works to account for this with the subtle poison
+of their waste, neither are there mills to prevent the fish coming up--
+perhaps it would be better if there were some mills, as they would stop
+the fish going down.  I have noticed that where old water-wheels have
+ceased working the fish have almost disappeared.  This, of course, may
+be but a purely local phenomenon, but it is certainly the case in some
+districts.  Comparatively little wheat now is ground in rural places;
+the greater portion is carried away to the towns and turned into flour
+by steam.  So that in walking up a brook you will now and then come upon
+an ancient mill whose business has departed: the fabric itself is
+tenanted by two or three cottage families, and their garden covers the
+site of the old mill-pond.  In the depths of that pool there were
+formerly plenty of fish, with deep, dark spots in which to hide.  Their
+natural increase was not swept away by floods; neither could they
+wander, because of the dam and grating.  They were also under the eye of
+the miller, and so preserved.  But when the dam was levelled and the
+stream allowed to follow its course, this resting-place, so to say, was
+abolished, and the fish dispersed were lost or captured.
+
+Upon the particular brook which I have now in view there are no mills;
+but there used to be several large ponds--distinct from the stream, yet
+communicating by a narrow channel.  These likewise sheltered the fish,
+and were favourable to their propagation.  Improvements, however, have
+swept them away; they are filled up, every inch of ground having become
+valuable for agricultural purposes.  Then there were vast ditches
+running up beside the hedgerows, and ending in the brook; perfect
+storehouses these of all aquatic life.  Fish used to go up them for
+shelter (they were as deep or deeper than the brook itself, and it was a
+good jump for a man across) and to feed on the insects blown off the
+overhanging trees and bushes or brought down by the streamlet draining
+the field above.  Wild duck made their nests among the rushes, sitting
+there while their beautiful consorts, the mallards, swam lonely in the
+mere.  Moorhens were busy in the weeds, or came out to feed upon the
+sward.
+
+Such great ditches are now filled up, and drains take their place.  It
+is better so, no doubt, in a purely utilitarian sense, but the fish
+haunt the spot no more.  Some of the reaches of the brook, where the
+ground was flat and boggy, used to resemble a long narrow lake,
+extremely shallow, with the deeper current running yards away from the
+shore: and here the snipe came in the winter.  But the banks are now
+made up higher by artificial means, and the marsh is dry.  All these
+changes diminish those aquatic nooks and corners in which fish love to
+linger.
+
+Finally came the weed said to have been imported from America, pushing
+its way up-stream, and filling it with an abominable mass of vegetable
+matter that no fish could enter.  Hereabouts, however, this pest has of
+late shown signs of exhaustion--it does not grow with its former vigour,
+and its progress seems checked.  The brook, after winding for several
+miles, the lower course being beyond the keeper's boundaries, empties
+itself into a canal; before the canal was made it ran much further, and
+itself increased in volume almost to a river.  Now this canal is fished
+day and night by people on the tow-path: there is nominally a close
+time, but no one observes it, and the riparian owners, having discovered
+that they had a right so to do, net it mercilessly.  The consequence is
+that the fish which go down the stream and enter the canal are speedily
+destroyed, while the canal on its part sends no fish to the upper
+waters.  This is how the decrease of fish is accounted for, and it is
+the same with perhaps half-a-dozen other brooks in the same locality,
+all of which now fall into the canal, which is so incessantly plied with
+rod and net and nightline that little escapes.
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+SOME OF HIS SUBJECTS: DOGS, RABBITS, "MICE, AND SUCH SMALL DEER."
+
+When a dog, young and yet unskilled, follows his master across the
+meadows, it often happens that he meets with difficulties which sorely
+try the capacity of the inexperienced brain.  The two come to a broad
+deep brook.  The man glances at the opposite bank, and compares in his
+mind the distance to the other side with other distances he has
+previously leaped.  The result is not quite satisfactory; somehow a
+latent doubt develops itself into a question of his ability to spring
+over.  He cranes his neck, looks at the jump sideways to get an angular
+measurement, retires a few paces to run, shakes his head, deliberates,
+instinctively glances round as if for assistance or advice, and
+presently again advances to the edge.  No; it will not do.  He recalls
+to mind the division of space into yards, feet, and inches, and
+endeavours to apply it without a rule to the smooth surface of the
+water.  He can judge a yard on the grass, because there is something to
+fix the eye on--the tall bennet or the buttercup yonder; but the water
+affords no data.
+
+On second thoughts, yes--even the smooth flowing current has its marks.
+Here, not far from the steep bank, is a flag, bowed or broken, whose
+pennant-like tongue of green floats just beneath the surface, slowly
+vibrating to and fro, as you wave your hand in token of farewell.  This
+is mark one--say three feet from the shore.
+
+Somewhat farther there is a curl upon the water, not constant, but
+coming every few seconds in obedience to the increase or decrease of the
+volume of the stream, which there meets with some slight obstacle out of
+sight.  For, although the water appears level and unvarying, it really
+rises and sinks in ever so minute a degree with a rhythmic alternation.
+If you will lie down on the sward, you may sometimes see it by fixing a
+steady gaze upon the small circular cave where the gallery of a
+water-rat opens on this the Grand Canal of his Venice.  Into it there
+rises now and again a gentle swell--barely perceptible--a faint pulse
+rising and falling.  The stream is slightly fuller and stronger at one
+moment than another; and with each swell the curl, or tiny whirlpool,
+rotates above the hidden irregularity of the bottom.  If you sit by the
+dam higher up the brook, and watch the arch of the cataract rolling
+over, it is perhaps more visible.  Every now and then a check seems to
+stay the current momentarily: and at night, when it is perfectly still,
+listening to the murmur of the falling water from a distance.  Under the
+apple-trees in the garden it runs a scale--now up, then down; each
+variation of volume changing the musical note.  This faint undulation is
+more visible in some brooks than others.
+
+A third mark is where a branch, as it was carried along, grounded on a
+shallow spot; and one mast, as it were, of the wreck protruding upwards,
+catches the stray weeds as they swim down and holds them.  Thus, step by
+step, the mind of the man measures the distance, and assures him that it
+is a little beyond what he has hitherto attempted; yet will not extra
+exertion clear it?--for having once approached the brink, shame and the
+dislike of giving up pull him forward.  He walks hastily twenty yards up
+the brook, then as many the other way, but discovers no more favourable
+spot; hesitates again; next carefully examines the tripping place, lest
+the turf, undermined, yield to the sudden pressure, as also the landing,
+for fear of falling back.  Finally he retires a few yards, and pauses a
+second and runs.  Even after the start, uncertain in mind and but half
+resolved, it is his own motion which impels the will, and he arrives on
+the opposite shore with a sense of surprise.  Now comes the dog, and
+note his actions; contrast the two, and say which is instinct, which is
+mind.
+
+The dog races to the bank--he has been hitherto hunting in a hedge and
+suddenly misses his master--and, like his lord, stops short on the
+brink.  He has had but little experience in jumping as yet; water is not
+his natural element, and he pauses doubtfully.  He looks across
+earnestly, sniffs the air as if to smell the distance, then whines in
+distress of mind.  Presently he makes a movement to spring, checks it,
+and turns round as if looking for advice or encouragement.  Next he runs
+back a short way as if about to give it up; returns, and cranes over the
+brink; after which he follows the bank up and down, barking in
+excitement, but always coming back to the original spot.  The lines of
+his face, the straining eye, the voice that seems struggling to
+articulate in the throat, the attitude of the body, all convey the idea
+of intense desire which fear prevents him from translating into action.
+There is indecision--uncertainty--in the nervous grasp of the paws on
+the grass, in the quick short coursings to and fro.  Would infallible
+instinct hesitate?  He has no knowledge of yards, feet and inches--yet
+he is clearly trying to judge the distance.  Finally, just as his master
+disappears through a gateway, the agony of his "mind" rises to the
+highest pitch.  He advances to the very brink--he half springs, stays
+himself, his hinder paws slip down the steep bank, he partly loses his
+balance, and then makes a great leap, lights with a splash in
+mid-stream, and swims the remainder with ease.  There is, at least, a
+singular coincidence in the outward actions of the two.
+
+The gamekeeper, with dogs around him from morning till night, associated
+with them from childhood, has no doubts upon the matter whatever, but
+with characteristic decision is perfectly certain that they think and
+reason in the same way as human beings, though of course in a limited
+degree.  Most of his class believe, likewise, in the reasoning power of
+the dog: so do shepherds; and so, too, the labourers who wait on and
+feed cattle are fully persuaded of their intelligence, which, however,
+in no way prevents them throwing the milking-stool at their heads when
+unruly.  But the concession of reason is no guarantee against ill-usage,
+else the labourer's wife would escape.
+
+The keeper, without thinking it perhaps, affords a strong illustration
+of his own firm faith in the mind of the dog.  His are taught their
+proper business thoroughly; but there it ends.  "I never makes them
+learn no tricks," says he, "because I don't like to see 'em made fools
+of."  I have observed that almost all those whose labour lies in the
+field, and who go down to their business in the green meadows, admit the
+animal world to a share in the faculty of reason.  It is the cabinet
+thinkers who construct a universe of automatons.
+
+No better illustration of the two modes of observation can be found than
+in the scene of Goethe's "Faust" where Faust and Wagner walking in the
+field are met by a strange dog.  The first sees something more than a
+mere dog; he feels the presence of an intelligence within the outward
+semblance--in this case an evil intelligence, it is true, but still a
+something beyond mere tail and paws and ears.  To Wagner it is a dog and
+nothing more--that will sit at the feet of his master and fawn on him if
+spoken to, who can be taught to fetch and carry or bring a stick; the
+end, however, proves different.  So one mind sees the outside only;
+another projects itself into the mind of the creature, be it dog or
+horse or bird.
+
+Experience certainly educates the dog as it does the man.  After long
+acquaintance and practice in the field we learn the habits and ways of
+game--to know where it will or not be found.  A young dog in the same
+way dashes swiftly up a hedge, and misses the rabbit that, hearing him
+coming, doubles back behind a tree or stole; an old dog leaves nothing
+behind him, searching every corner.  This is acquired knowledge.
+Neither does all depend upon hereditary predisposition as exhibited in
+the various breeds--the setter, the pointer, the spaniel, or greyhound--
+and their especial drift of brain; their capacity is not wholly confined
+to one sphere.  They possess an initiating power--what in man is called
+originality, invention, discovery: they make experiments.
+
+I had a pointer that exhibited this faculty in a curious manner.  She
+was weakly when young, and for that reason, together with other
+circumstances, was never properly trained: a fact that may perhaps have
+prevented her "mind" from congealing into the stolidity of routine.  She
+became an outdoor pet, and followed at heel everywhere.  One day some
+ponds were netted, and of the fish taken a few chanced to be placed in a
+great stone trough from which cattle drank in the yard--a common thing
+in the country.  Some time afterwards, the trough being foul, the fish--
+they were roach, tench, perch, and one small jack--were removed to a
+shallow tub while it was being cleansed.  In this tub, being scarcely a
+foot deep though broad, the fish were of course distinctly visible, and
+at once became an object of the most intense interest to the pointer.
+She would not leave it; but stood watching every motion of the fish,
+with her head now on one side now on the other.  There she must have
+remained some hours, and was found at last in the act of removing them
+one by one and laying them softly, quite unhurt, on the grass.
+
+I put them back into the water, and waited to see the result.  She took
+a good look, and then plunged her nose right under the surface and
+half-way up the neck completely submerging the head, and in that
+position groped about on the bottom till a fish came in contact with her
+mouth and was instantly snatched out.  Her head must have been under
+water each time nearly a minute, feeling for the fish.  One by one she
+drew them out and placed them on the ground, till only the jack
+remained.  He puzzled her, darting away swift as an arrow and seeming to
+anticipate the enemy.  But after a time he, too, was captured.
+
+They were not injured--not the mark of a tooth was to be seen--and swam
+as freely as ever when restored to the water.  So soon as they were put
+in again the pointer recommenced her fishing, and could hardly be got
+away by force.  The fish were purposely left in the tub.  The next day
+she returned to the amusement, and soon became so dexterous as to pull a
+fish out almost the instant her nose went under water.  The jack was
+always the most difficult to catch, but she managed to conquer him
+sooner or later.  When returned to the trough, however, she was done--
+the water was too deep.  Scarcely anything could be imagined apparently
+more opposite to the hereditary intelligence of a pointer than this; and
+certainly no one attempted to teach her, neither did she do it for food.
+It was an original motion of her own: to what can it be compared but
+mind proceeding by experiment?  They can also adjust their conduct to
+circumstances, as when they take to hunting on their own account: they
+then generally work in couples.
+
+If a spaniel, for instance, one of those allowed to lie loose about
+farmhouses, takes to hunting for herself, she is almost always found to
+meet a canine friend at a little distance from the homestead.  It is
+said that spaniels when they go off like this never bark when on the
+heels of a rabbit, as they would do if a sportsman was with them and the
+chase legitimate.  This suppression of what must be an almost
+uncontrollable inclination shows no little intelligence.  If they gave
+tongue, they would be certainly detected, and as certainly thrashed.  To
+watch the sneaking way in which a spaniel will come home after an
+unlawful expedition of this kind is most amusing.  She makes her
+appearance on the road or footpath so as not to look as if coming from
+the hedges, and enters at the back; or if any movement be going on, as
+the driving of cattle, she will join in it, displaying extraordinary
+zeal in assisting: anything to throw off suspicion.
+
+Of all sport, if a man desires to widen his chest, and gain some idea of
+the chase as it was in ancient days, let him take two good greyhounds
+and "uncouple at the timorous flying hare," following himself on foot.
+A race like this over the elastic turf of the downs, inhaling with
+expanded lungs air which acts on the blood as strong drink on the brain,
+stimulating the pulse, and strengthening every fibre of the frame, is
+equal to another year of life.  Coursing for the coursing's sake is
+capital sport.  A hare when sorely tried with the hot breath from the
+hounds' nostrils on his flanks, will sometimes puzzle them by dashing
+round and round a rick.  Then in sweeping circles the trio strain their
+limbs, but the hare, having at the corners the inner side and less
+ground to cover, easily keeps just ahead.  This game lasts several
+minutes, till presently one of the hounds is sharp enough to dodge back
+and meet the hare the opposite way.  Even then his quick eye and ready
+turn often give him another short breathing space by rushing away at a
+tangent.
+
+Rabbits, although of "low degree" in comparison with the pheasant,
+really form an important item in the list of the keeper's charges.
+Shooting generally commences with picking out the young rabbits about
+the middle or towards the end of the hay harvest, according as the
+season is early or late.  Some are shot by the farmers, who have the
+right to use a gun, earlier than this, while they still disport in the
+mowing grass.  It requires experience and skill to select the young
+rabbit just fit for table from the old bucks, the does which may yet
+bring forth another litter, and those little bunnies that do not exceed
+the size of rats.
+
+The grass conceals the body of the animal, and nothing is visible beyond
+the tips of the ears; and at thirty yards distance one pair of ears is
+very like another pair.  The developed ear is, however, less pointed
+than the other; and in the rabbit of a proper size they are or seem to
+be wider apart.  The eye is also guided by the grass itself and the
+elevation of the rabbit's head above it when lifted in alarm at a chance
+sound: if the animal is full grown of course the head stands higher.  In
+motion the difference is at once seen; the larger animal's back and
+flanks show boldly, while the lesser seems to slip through the grass.
+By these signs, and by a kind of instinct which grows upon one when
+always in the field, it is possible to distinguish between them even in
+tall grass and in the gloaming.
+
+This sort of shooting, if it does not afford the excitement of the
+pheasant battue, or require the alertness necessary in partridge
+killing, is not without its special pleasures.  These are chiefly to be
+attributed to the genial warmth of the weather at that season, when the
+reapers have only just begun to put the tall corn to the edge of their
+crooked swords, and one can linger by the hedge-side without dread of
+wintry chills.
+
+The aftermath in which the rabbits feed is not so tall as the mowing
+grass, and more easy and pleasant to walk through, though it is almost
+devoid of flowers.  Neither does it give so much shelter; and you must
+walk close to the hedge, gliding gently from bush to bush, the slower
+the better.  Rabbits feed several times during the day--i.e. in the very
+early morning, next about eleven o'clock, again at three or four, and
+again at six or seven.  Not that every rabbit comes out to nibble at
+those hours, but about that time some will be seen moving outside the
+buries.
+
+As you stroll beside the hedge, brushing the boughs, a rabbit feeding
+two hundred yards away will lift his head inquiringly from the grass.
+Then stop, and remain still as the elm tree hard by.  In a minute or
+two, reassured, the ears perked up so sharply fall back, and he feeds
+again.  Another advance of ten or twenty yards, and up go the ears--you
+are still till they drop once more.  The rabbit presently turns his back
+towards you, sniffing about for the tenderest blades; this is an
+opportunity, and an advance of forty or fifty paces perhaps is
+accomplished.  Now, if you have a rook-rifle you are near enough; if a
+smooth-bore, the same system of stalking must be carried farther yet.
+If you are patient enough to wait when he takes alarm, and only to
+advance when he feeds, you are pretty sure to "bag" him.
+
+Sometimes, when thus gliding with stealthy tread, another rabbit will
+suddenly appear out of the ditch within easy reach; it is so quiet he
+never suspected the presence of an enemy.  If you pause and keep quite
+still, which is the secret of all stalking, he will soon begin to feed,
+and the moment he turns his back towards you up goes the gun; not
+before, because if he sees your arm move he will be off to the ditch.
+True, a snap-shot might be made as he runs, which at first sight would
+appear more sportsmanlike than "potting;" but it is not so, for it is
+ten chances to one that you do not kill him dead on the spot in the
+short distance he has to traverse.  Perhaps the hind legs will be
+broken; well, then he will drag them along behind him, using the fore
+paws with astonishing rapidity and power.  Before the second barrel can
+be emptied he will gain the shelter of the fern that grows on the edge
+of the bank and dive into a burrow, there to die in misery.  So that it
+is much better to steadily "pot" him.  Besides which, if a rabbit dies
+in a burrow all the other animals in that particular burrow desert it
+till nature's scavengers have done their work.  A dog cannot well be
+taken while stalking--not that dogs will not follow quietly, but because
+a rabbit, catching sight of a dog, is generally stricken with panic even
+if a hundred yards away, and bolts immediately.
+
+I have seen a rabbit whose back was broken by shot drag itself ten yards
+to the ditch.  If the forelegs are broken, then he is helpless: all the
+kicks of the hind legs only tumble him over and over without giving him
+much progress.  The effects of shot are very strange, and sometimes
+almost inexplicable: as when a hare which has received a pellet through
+the edge of the heart runs a quarter of a mile before dropping.  It is
+noticed that hares and rabbits, hit in the vital organs about the heart,
+often run a considerable distance, and then, suddenly in the midst of
+their career, roll head over heels dead.  Both hares and rabbits are
+occasionally killed with marks of old shot wounds, but not very often,
+and they are but of a slight character--the pellets are found just under
+the skin, with a kind of lump round them.  Shot holes through the ears
+are frequently seen, of course doing no serious harm.
+
+Now and then a rabbit hit in the head will run round and round in
+circles, making not the slightest attempt to escape.  The first time I
+saw this, not understanding it, I gave the creature the second barrel;
+but next time I let the rabbit do as he would.  He circled round and
+round, going at a rapid pace.  I stood in his way, and he passed between
+my legs.  After half a dozen circles the pace grew slower.  Finally, he
+stopped, sat up quite still for a minute or so, and then drooped and
+died.  The pellet had struck some portion of the brain.
+
+I once, while looking for snipe with charges of small shot in the
+barrels, roused a fine hare, and fired without apparent effect.  But
+after crossing about half of the field with a spaniel tearing behind, he
+began to slacken speed, and I immediately followed.  The hare dodged the
+spaniel admirably, and it was with the utmost difficulty I secured him
+(refraining from firing the second barrel on purpose).  He had been
+stopped by one single little pellet in the great sinew of the hind leg,
+which had partly cut it through.  Had it been a rabbit he would
+certainly have escaped into a bury, and there, perhaps died, as shot
+wounds frequently fester: so that in stalking rabbits, or waiting for
+them behind a tree or bush, it is much better to take a steady aim at
+the head, and so avoid torturing the creature.
+
+"Potting" is hardly sport, yet it has an advantage to those who take a
+pleasure in observing the ways of bird and animal.  There is just
+sufficient interest to induce one to remain quiet and still, which is
+the prime condition of seeing anything; and in my own case the rabbits
+so patiently stalked have at last often gone free, either from their own
+amusing antics, or because the noise of the explosion would disturb
+something else under observation.  In winter it is too cold; then you
+step quietly and yet briskly up to a fence or a gateway, and glance
+over, and shoot at once; or with the spaniels hunt the bunnies from the
+fern upon the banks, yourself one side of the hedge and the keeper the
+other.
+
+In excavating his dwelling, the rabbit, thoughtless of science,
+constructs what may be called a natural auditorium singularly adapted
+for gathering the expiring vibrations of distant sound.  His round
+tunnel bored in a sandy bank is largest at the opening, like the mouth
+of a trumpet, and contracts within--a form which focusses the
+undulations of the air.  To obtain the full effect the ear should listen
+some short way within; but the sound, as it is thrown backwards after
+entering, is often sufficiently marked to be perceptible when you listen
+outside.  The great deep ditches are dry in summer; and though shooting
+be not the object, yet a gun for knocking over casual vermin is a
+pleasant excuse for idling in a reclining position shoulder-high in
+fern, hidden like a skirmisher in such an entrenchment.  A mighty root
+bulging from the slope of the bank forms a natural seat.  There is a
+cushion of dark green moss to lean against, and the sand worked out from
+the burrows--one nearly on a level with the head and another lower
+down--has here filled up the ditch to some height, making a footstool.
+
+In the ditch lie numbers of last year's oak leaves, which so sturdily
+resist decay.  All the winter and spring they were soaked by the water
+from the "land-springs"--as those which only run in wet weather are
+called--draining into it, and to that water they communicated a peculiar
+flavour, slightly astringent.  Even moderate-sized streamlets become
+tainted in the latter part of the autumn by the mass of leaves they
+carry down, or filter through, in woodland districts.  Often the
+cottagers draw their water from a small pool filled by such a ditch, and
+coated at the bottom with a thick layer of decomposing leaves.  The
+taste of this water is strong enough to overcome the flavour of their
+weak tea, yet they would rather use such water than walk fifty yards to
+a brook.  It must, however, be admitted that the brooks at that time are
+also tinctured with leaf, and there seems to be no harm in it.
+
+Out from among these dead leaves in the ditch protrudes a crooked branch
+fallen long since from the oak, and covered with grey lichen.  On the
+right hand a tangled thicket of bramble with its uneven-shaped stems
+closes the spot in, and on the left a stole of hazel rises with the
+parasitical "hardy fern" fringing it near the earth.  The outer bark of
+the hazel is very thin; it is of a dark mottled hue; bruise it roughly,
+and the inner bark shows a bright green.  The lowly ivy creeps over the
+bank--its leaves with five angles, and variegated with grey streaks.
+Through the hawthorn bushes above comes a faint but regular sound--it is
+the parting fibres of the grass-blades in the meadow on the other side
+as the cows tear them apart, steadily eating their way onwards.  The
+odour of their breath floats heavy on the air.  The sun is sinking, and
+there is a hush and silence.
+
+But the rabbit-burrow here at my elbow is not silent; it seems to catch
+and heighten faint noises from a distance.  A man is walking slowly home
+from his work up the lane yonder; the fall of his footsteps is
+distinctly rendered by the hole here.  The dull thuds of a far-off
+mallet or "bitel" (beetle) driving in a stake are plainly audible.  The
+thump-thump of a horse's hoofs cantering on the sward by the roadside,
+though deadened by the turf, are reproduced or sharpened.  Most distinct
+of all comes the regular sound of oars against the tholepins or rowlocks
+of a boat moving on the lake many fields away.  So that in all
+probability to the rabbit his hole must be a perfect "Ear of Dionysius,"
+magnifying a whisper--unless, indeed, its turns and windings confuse the
+undulations of sound.  It is observable that before the rabbit ventures
+forth he stays and listens just within the entrance of his burrow, where
+he cannot _see_ any danger unless absolutely straight before him--a
+habit that may have unconsciously grown up from the apparent resonance
+of sound there.
+
+Sitting thus silently on the root of the oak, presently I hear a slight
+rustling among the dead leaves at the bottom of the ditch.  They heave
+up as if something was pushing underneath; and after a while, as he
+comes to the heap of sand thrown out by the rabbits, a mole emerges, and
+instantly with a shiver, as it were, of his skin throws off the
+particles of dust upon his fur as a dog fresh from the water sends a
+shower from his coat.  The summer weather having dried the clay under
+the meadow turf and made it difficult to work, he has descended into the
+ditch, beneath which there is still a certain moistness, and where he
+can easily bore a tunnel.
+
+It is rather rare to see a mole above ground; fortunately for him he is
+of diminutive size, or so glossy a fur would prove his ruin.  As it is,
+every other old pollard willow tree along the hedge is hung with
+miserable moles, caught in traps, and after death suspended--like
+criminals swinging on a gibbet--from the end of slender willow boughs.
+Moles seem to breed in the woods: first perhaps because they are less
+disturbed there, next because under the trees the earth is usually
+softer, retains its moisture longer, and is easier to work.  From the
+woods their tracks branch out, ramifying like the roads which lead from
+a city.  They have in addition main arteries of traffic, king's
+highways, along which they will journey one after the other; so that the
+mole-catcher, if he can discover such a road, slaughters many in
+succession.  The heaps they throw up are awkward in mowing grass, the
+scythe striking against them; and in consequence of complaints of their
+rapid multiplication in the woods the keeper has to employ men to reduce
+their numbers.  It is curious to note how speedily the mole buries
+himself in the soil; it is as if he suddenly dived into the earth.
+
+Another slight rustling--a pause, and it is repeated; this time on the
+bank, among the dry grass.  It is mice; they have a nervous habit of
+progressing in sharp, short stages.  They rush forward seven or eight
+inches with lightning-like celerity--a dun streak seems to pass before
+your eye; then they stop short a moment or two, and again make another
+dash.  This renders it difficult to observe them, especially as a single
+dead brown leaf is sufficient to hide one.  It is so silent that they
+grow bold, and play their antics freely, darting to and fro, round and
+under the stoles, chasing each other.  Sometimes they climb the bushes,
+running along the upper surface of the boughs that chance to be nearly
+horizontal.  Once on a hawthorn branch in a hedge I saw a mouse
+descending with an acorn; he was, perhaps, five feet from the ground,
+and how and from whence he had got his burden was rather puzzling at
+first.  Probably the acorn, dropping from the tree, had been caught and
+held in the interlacing of the bush till observed by the keen, if tiny,
+eyes below.
+
+Mice have a magical way of getting into strange places.  In some
+farmhouses they still use the ancient, old-fashioned lanterns made of
+tin--huge machines intended for a tallow candle, and with plates of thin
+translucent horn instead of glass.  They are not wholly despicable;
+since if set on the ground and kicked over by a recalcitrant cow in the
+sheds, the horn does not break as glass would.  These lanterns, having a
+handle at the top, are by it hung up to the beam in the kitchen; and
+sometimes to the astonishment of the servants in the quiet of the
+evening, they are found to be animated by some motive power, swinging to
+and fro and partly turning round.  A mouse has got in--for the grease;
+but how? that is the "wonderment," as the rustic philosophers express
+it; for, being hung from the beam, eight or nine feet from the
+stone-flagged floor, there seems no way of approach for the mouse except
+by "walking" on the ceiling or along and partly underneath the beam
+itself.  If so, it would seem to be mainly by the propulsive power
+exerted previous to starting on the trip--just as a man can get a little
+way up the perpendicular side of a rick by running at it.  Occasionally,
+no doubt, the mouse has entered when the lantern has been left opened
+while lighted on the ground, and so got shut in; but mice have been
+found in lanterns cobwebbed from long disuse.
+
+Suddenly there peeps out from the lower rabbit-hole the stealthy reddish
+body of a weasel.  I instinctively reach for the gun leaning against the
+bank, and immediately the spell is broken.  The mice rush to their
+holes, the weasel darts back into the bowels of the earth, a rabbit that
+has quietly slipped out unseen into the grass bounds with eager haste to
+cover, and out of the oak overhead there rises, with a great clatter of
+wings, a wood-pigeon that had settled there.
+
+When the pale winter sunshine falls upon the bare branches of an avenue
+of elms--such as so often ornament parks--they appear lit up with a
+faint rosy colour, which instantly vanishes on the approach of a shadow.
+This shimmering mirage in the boughs seems due to the myriads of lesser
+twigs, which at the extremities have a tinge of red, invisible at a
+distance till the sunbeams illuminate the trees.  Beyond this passing
+gleam of colour, nothing relieves the blackness of the January
+landscape, except here and there the bright silvery bark of the birch.
+
+For several seasons now in succession the thrush has sung on the
+shortest days, as though it were spring; a little later, in the early
+mornings, the blackbird joins, filling the copse with a chorus at the
+dawn.  But, if the wind turns to east or north, the rooks perch on the
+oaks in the hedgerows in the middle of the day, puffing out their
+feathers and seeming to abandon all search for food as if seized with
+uncontrollable melancholy.  Hardy as these birds are, a long frost kills
+them in numbers, principally by slow starvation.  They die during the
+night, dropping suddenly from their roosting-place on the highest boughs
+of the great beech- rees, with a thud distinctly heard in the silence of
+the woods.  The leaves of the beech decay so gradually as to lie in
+heaps beneath for months, filling up the hollows, so that an unwary
+passer-by may plunge knee-deep in leaves.  Rooks when feeding usually
+cross the field facing the wind, perhaps to prevent the ruffling of
+their feathers.
+
+Wood-pigeons have apparently much increased in numbers of recent years;
+they frequent sheltered spots where the bushes diminish the severity of
+the frost.  Sometimes on the hills at a lonely farmhouse, where the
+bailiff has a long-barrelled ancient fowling-piece, he will lay a train
+of grain for them, and with a double charge of shot, kill many at a
+time.
+
+Men have boasted of shooting twenty at once.  But with an ordinary gun
+it is not credible; and the statement, without wilful exaggeration, may
+arise from confusion in counting, for it is a fact that some of the
+older uneducated country labourers cannot reckon correctly.  It is not
+unusual in parishes to hear of a cottage woman who has had twenty
+children.  Upon investigation the real number is found to be sixteen or
+seventeen, yet nothing on earth will convince the mother that she has
+not given birth to a score.  They get hazy in figures when exceeding a
+dozen.
+
+A pigeon is not easily brought down--the quills are so stiff and strong
+that the shot, if it comes aslant, will glance off.  Many pigeons roost
+in the oaks of the hedges, choosing by preference one well hung with
+ivy, and when it is a moonlit night afford tolerable sport.  It requires
+a gun on each side of the hedge.  A stick flung up awakes the birds;
+they rise with a rush and clatter, and in the wildness of their flight
+and the dim light are difficult to hit.  There is a belief that pigeons
+are partially deaf.  If stalked in the daytime they take little heed of
+footsteps or slight noises which would alarm other creatures; but, on
+the other hand, they are quick of eye, and are gone directly anything
+suspicious appears in sight.  You may get quite under them and shoot
+them on the bough at night.  It is not their greater wakefulness but the
+noise they make in rising which renders them good protectors of
+preserves; it alarms other birds and can be heard at some distance.
+
+When a great mound and hedgerow is grubbed up, the men engaged in the
+work often anticipate making a considerable bag of the rabbits, whose
+holes riddle it in every direction, thinking to dig them out even of
+those innermost chambers whence the ferret has sometimes been unable to
+dislodge them.  But this hope is almost always disappointed; and when
+the grub-axe and spade have laid bare the "buries" only recently teeming
+with life, not a rabbit is found.  By some instinct they have discovered
+the approach of destruction, and as soon as the first few yards of the
+hedge are levelled secretly depart.  After a "bury" has been ferreted it
+is some time before another colony takes possession: this is seemingly
+from the intense antipathy of the rabbit to the smell of the ferret.
+Even when shot at and pressed by dogs, a rabbit in his hasty rush will
+often pass a hole which would have afforded instant shelter because it
+has been recently ferreted.
+
+At this season the labourers are busy with "beetle" (pronounced
+"bitel")--a huge mallet--and iron wedges, splitting the tough elm-butts
+and logs for firewood.  In old times a cottager here and there with a
+taste for astrology used to construct an almanack by rule of thumb,
+predicting the weather for the ensuing twelve months from the first
+twelve days of January.  As the wind blew on those days so the
+prevailing weather of the months might be foretold.  The aged men,
+however, say that in this divination the old style must be adhered to,
+for the sequence of signs and omens still follows the ancient reckoning,
+which ought never to have been interfered with.
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX.
+
+HIS ENEMIES--BIRDS AND BEASTS OF PREY--TRESPASSERS.
+
+There are other enemies of game life besides human poachers whose
+numbers must be kept within bounds to ensure successful sport.  The
+thirst of the weasel for blood is insatiable, and it is curious to watch
+the persistency with which he will hunt down the particular rabbit he
+has singled out for destruction.  Through the winding subterranean
+galleries of the "buries" with their cross-passages, "blind" holes and
+"pop" holes (i.e. those which end in undisturbed soil, and those which
+are simply bored from one side of the bank to the other, being only used
+for temporary concealment), never once in the dark close caverns losing
+sight or scent of his victim, he pursues it with a species of eager
+patience.  It is generally a long chase.  The rabbit makes a dash ahead
+and a double or two, and then halts, usually at the mouth of a hole:
+perhaps to breathe.  By-and-by the weasel, baffled for a few minutes,
+comes up behind.  Instantly the rabbit slips over the bank outside and
+down the ditch for a dozen yards, and there enters the "bury" again.
+The weasel follows, gliding up the bank with a motion not unlike that of
+the snake; for his body and neck are long and slender and his legs
+short.  Apparently he is not in haste, but rather lingers over the
+scent.  This is repeated five or six times, till the whole length of the
+hedgerow has been traversed--sometimes up and down again.  The chase may
+be easily observed by any one who will keep a little in the background.
+Although the bank be tenanted by fifty other rabbits, past whose
+hiding-place the weasel must go, yet they scarcely take any notice.  One
+or two whom he has approached too closely bolt out and in again; but as
+a mass the furry population remain quiet, as if perfectly aware that
+they are not yet marked out for slaughter.
+
+At last, having exhausted the resources of the bank the rabbit rushes
+across the field to a hedgerow, perhaps a hundred yards away.  Here the
+wretched creature seems to find a difficulty in obtaining admittance.
+Hardly has he disappeared in a hole before he comes out again, as if the
+inhabitants of the place refused to give him shelter.  For many animals
+have a strong tribal feeling, and their sympathy, like that of man in a
+savage state, is confined within their special settlement.
+
+With birds it is the same: rooks, for instance, will not allow a strange
+pair to build in their trees, but drive them off with relentless beak,
+tearing down the half-formed nest, and taking the materials to their own
+use.  The sentiment, "If Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth,
+what good shall my life do me?" appears to animate the breasts of
+gregarious creatures of this kind.  Rooks intermarry generation after
+generation; and if a black lover brings home a foreign bride they are
+forced to build in a tree at some distance.  Near large rookeries
+several such outlying colonies may be seen.
+
+The rabbit, failing to find a cover, hides in the grass and dry rushes;
+but across the meadow, stealing along the furrow, comes the weasel; and,
+shift his place how he may, in the end, worn out and weary, bunny
+succumbs, and the sharp teeth meet in the neck behind the ear, severing
+the vein.  Often in the end the rabbit runs to earth in a hole which is
+a _cul-de-sac_, with his back towards the pursuer.  The weasel, unable
+to get at the poll, which is his desire, will mangle the hinder parts in
+a terrible manner--as will the civilised ferret under similar
+conditions.  Now and then the rabbit, scratching and struggling, fills
+the hole in the rear with earth, and so at the last moment chokes off
+his assailant and finds safety almost in the death-agony.  In the woods,
+once the rabbit is away from the "buries," the chase really does
+resemble a hunt; from furze-bush to bracken, from fern to rough grass,
+round and round, backwards, doubling, to and fro, and all in vain.
+
+At such times, eager for blood, the weasel will run right across your
+path, almost close enough to be kicked.  Pursue him in turn, and if
+there be no hedge or hole near, if you have him in the open, he will
+dart hither and thither right between your legs, uttering a sharp short
+note of anger and alarm, something composed of a tiny bark and a scream.
+He is easily killed with a stick when you catch him in the open, for he
+is by no means swift; but if a hedge be near it is impossible to secure
+him.
+
+Weasels frequently hunt in couples, and sometimes more than two will
+work together.  I once saw five, and have heard of eight.  The five I
+saw were working a sandy bank drilled with holes, from which the rabbits
+in wild alarm were darting in all directions.  The weasels raced from
+hole to hole and along the sides of the bank exactly like a pack of
+hounds, and seemed intensely excited.  Their manner of hunting resembles
+the motions of ants; these insects run a little way very swiftly, then
+stop, turn to the right or left, make a short detour, and afterwards on
+again in a straight line.  So the pack of weasels darted forward,
+stopped, went from side to side, and then on a yard or two, and repeated
+the process.  To see their reddish heads thrust for a moment from the
+holes, then withdrawn to reappear at another, would have been amusing
+had it not been for the reflection that their frisky tricks would
+assuredly end in death.  They ran their quarry out of the bank and into
+a wood, where I lost sight of them.  The pack of eight was seen by a
+labourer returning down a woodland lane from work one afternoon.  He
+told me he got into the ditch, half from curiosity to watch them, and
+half from fear--laughable as that may seem--for he had heard the old
+people tell stories of men in the days when the corn was kept for years
+in barns, and so bred hundreds of rats, being attacked by those vicious
+brutes.  He said they made a noise, crying to each other, short sharp
+snappy sounds; but the pack of five I myself saw hunted in silence.
+
+Stoats, though not so numerous as weasels, probably do quite as much
+injury, being larger, swifter, stronger, and very bold, sometimes
+entering sheds close to dwelling-houses.  The labouring people--at
+least, the elder folk--declare that they have been known to suck the
+blood of infants left asleep in the cradle upon the floor, biting the
+child behind the ear.  They hunt in couples also--seldom in larger
+numbers.  I have seen three at work together, and with a single shot
+killed two out of the trio.  In elegance of shape they surpass the
+weasel, and the colour is brighter.  Their range of destruction seems
+only limited by their strength: they attack anything they can manage.
+
+The keeper looks upon weasel and stoat as bitter foes, to be ruthlessly
+exterminated with shot and gin.  He lays to their charge deadly crimes
+of murder, the death of rabbits, hares, birds, the theft and destruction
+of his young broods, even occasional abstraction of a chicken close to
+his very door, despite the dogs chained there.  They are not easily
+shot, being quick to take shelter at the sight of a dog, and when hard
+hit with the pellets frequently escaping, though perhaps to die.  Both
+weasel and stoat, and especially the latter, will snap viciously at the
+dog that overtakes them, even when sore wounded, always aiming to fix
+their teeth in his nose, and fighting savagely to the last gasp.  The
+keeper slays a wonderful number in the course of a year, yet they seem
+as plentiful as ever.  He traps perhaps more than he shoots.
+
+It is not always safe to touch a stoat caught in a trap; he lies
+apparently dead, but lift him up, and instantly his teeth are in your
+hand, and it is said such wounds sometimes fester for months.  Stoats
+are tough as leather: though severely nipped by the iron fangs of the
+gin, struck on the head with the butt of the gun, and seemingly quite
+lifeless, yet, if thrown on the grass and left, you will often find on
+returning to the place in a few hours' time that the animal is gone.
+Warned by experiences of this kind, the keeper never picks up a stoat
+till "settled" with a stick or shot, and never leaves him till he is
+nailed to the shed.  Stoats sometimes emit a disgusting odour when
+caught in a trap.  The keeper has no mercy for such vermin, though he
+thinks some of his feathered enemies are even more destructive.
+
+Twice a year the hawks and other birds of prey find a great feast spread
+before them; first, in the spring and early summer, when the hedges and
+fields are full of young creatures scarcely able to use their wings, and
+again in the severe weather of winter when cold and hunger have
+enfeebled them.
+
+It is difficult to understand upon what principle the hawk selects his
+prey.  He will pass by with apparent disdain birds that are within easy
+reach.  Sometimes a whole cloud of birds will surround and chase him out
+of a field; and he pursues the even tenour of his way unmoved, though
+sparrow and finch almost brush against his talons.  Perhaps he has the
+palate of an epicure, and likes to vary the dish of flesh torn alive
+from the breast of partridge, chicken, or mouse.  He does not eat all he
+kills; he will sometimes carry a bird a considerable distance and then
+drop the poor thing.  Only recently I saw a hawk, pursued by twenty or
+thirty finches, and other birds across a ploughed field, suddenly drop a
+bird from his claws as he passed over a hedge.  The bird fell almost
+perpendicularly, with a slight fluttering of the wings, just sufficient
+to preserve it from turning-head-over-heels, and on reaching the hedge
+could not hold to the first branches, but brought up on one near the
+ground.  It was a sparrow, and was not apparently hurt--simply
+breathless from fright.
+
+All kinds of birds are sometimes seen with the tail feathers gone: have
+they barely escaped in this condition from the clutches of the hawk?
+Blackbirds, thrushes, and pigeons are frequently struck: the hawk seems
+to lay them on the back, for if he is disturbed that is the position his
+victim usually remains in.  Though hawks do not devour every morsel, yet
+as a rule nothing is found but the feathers--usually scattered in a
+circle.  Even the bones disappear: probably ground vermin make away with
+the fragments.
+
+The hawk is not always successful in disabling his prey.  I have seen a
+partridge dashed to the ground, get up again, and escape.  The bird was
+flying close to the ground when struck; the hawk alighted on the grass a
+few yards further in a confused way as if overbalanced, and before he
+could reach the partridge the latter was up and found shelter in a thick
+hedge.
+
+The power to hover or remain suspended in one place in the air does not,
+as some have supposed, depend upon the assistance of the wind, against
+which the hawk inclines the plane of his wings like an artificial kite.
+He can accomplish the feat when the air is quite still and no wind
+stirring.  Nor is he the only bird capable of doing this, although the
+others possess the power in a much less degree.  The common lark
+sometimes hovers for a few moments low down over the young green corn,
+as if considering upon what spot to alight.  The flycatcher contrives to
+suspend itself momentarily, but it is by a rapid motion of the wings,
+and is done when the first snap at the insect has failed.  It is the
+rook that hovers by the assistance of the wind as he rises with his
+broad, flat wings over a hedge and meets its full force, which
+counterpoises his onward impetus and sustains him stationary, sometimes
+compelling him to return with the current.
+
+Hawks have a habit of perching on the tops of bare poles or dead trees,
+and are there frequently caught in the gin the keeper sets for them.
+The cuckoo, which so curiously resembles the hawk, has the same habit,
+and will perch on a solitary post in the middle of a field, or on those
+upright stones sometimes placed for the cattle to rub themselves
+against.  Though "wild as a hawk" is a proverbial phrase, yet hawks are
+bold enough to enter gardens, and even take their prey from the ivy
+which grows over the gable of the house.  The destruction they work
+among the young partridges in early summer is very great.  The keeper is
+always shooting them, yet they come just the same, or nearly; for, if he
+exterminates them one season, others arrive from a distance.  He is
+particularly careful to look out for their nests, so as to kill both the
+old birds and to prevent their breeding.  There is little difficulty in
+finding the nest (which is built in a high tree) when the young get to
+any size; their cry is unmistakable and audible at some distance.
+
+Against sparrow-hawk and kestrel, and the rarer kinds that occasionally
+come down from the mountains of the north or the west--the magazines of
+these birds--the keeper wages ceaseless war.
+
+So too with jay and magpie; he shoots them down whenever they cross his
+path, unless, as is sometimes the case, specially ordered to save the
+latter.  For the magpie of recent years has become much less common.
+Though still often seen in some districts, there are other localities
+where this odd bird is nearly extinct.  It does not seem to breed now,
+and you may ask to be shown a nest in vain.  A magpie's nest in an
+orchard that I knew of was thought so great a curiosity that every now
+and then people came to see it from a distance.  In other places the
+bird may be frequently met with, almost always with his partner; and so
+jays usually go in couples, even in winter.
+
+The jay is a handsome bird, whose chatter enlivens the plantations, and
+whose bright plumage contrasts pleasantly with the dull green of the
+firs.  A pair will work a hedge in a sportsmanlike manner, one on one
+side, the second on the other; while the tiny wren, which creeps through
+the bushes as a mouse through the grass, cowers in terror, or slips into
+a knot-hole till the danger is past.  When the husbandman has sown his
+field with the drill, hardly has he left the gateway before a legion of
+small birds pours out from the hedgerows and seeks for the stray seeds.
+Then you may see the jay hop out among them with an air of utter
+innocence, settling on the larger lumps of clay for convenience of view,
+swelling out his breast in pride of beauty, jerking his tail up and
+down, as if to say, Admire me.  With a sidelong hop and two flaps of the
+wing, he half springs, half glides to another coign of vantage.  The
+small birds, sparrows, chaffinches, greenfinches--instantly scatter
+swiftly right and left, not rising, but with a hasty run for a yard or
+so.  They know well his murderous intent, and yet are so busy they only
+put themselves just out of reach, aware that, unlike the hawk, he cannot
+strike at a distance.  This game will continue for a long time; the jay
+all the while affecting an utter indifference, yet ever on the alert
+till he spies his chance.  It is the young or weakly partridges and
+pheasants that fall to the jay and magpie.
+
+The keeper also destroys owls--on suspicion.  Now and then some one
+argues with the keeper, assuring him that they do not touch game, but
+this he regards as pure sentimentalism.  "Look at his beak," is his
+steady reply.  "Tell me that that there bill weren't made to tear a
+bird's breast to bits?  Just see here--all crooked and pointed: why, an
+owl have got a hooked bill like an eagle.  It stands to reason as he
+must be in mischief."  So the poor owls are shot and trapped, and nailed
+to the side of the shed.
+
+But upon the crow the full vials of the keeper's wrath are poured, and
+not without reason.  The crow among birds is like the local professional
+among human poachers: he haunts the place and clears everything--it
+would be hard to say what comes amiss to him.  He is the impersonation
+of murder.  His long, stout, pointed beak is a weapon of deadly power,
+wielded with surprising force by the sinewy neck.  From a tiny callow
+fledgling, fallen out of the thrush's nest, to the partridge or a
+toothsome young rabbit, it is all one to him.  Even the swift leveret is
+said sometimes to fall a prey, being so buffeted by the sooty wings of
+the assassin and so blinded by the sharp beak striking at his eyes as to
+be presently overcome.  For the crow has a terrible penchant for the
+morsel afforded by another's eyes: I have seen the skull of a miserable
+thrush, from which a crow rose and slowly sailed away, literally split
+as if by a chisel--doubtless by the blow that destroyed its sight.
+Birds that are at all diseased or weakly, as whole broods sometimes are
+in wet unkindly seasons, rabbits touched by the dread parasite that
+causes the fatal "rot," the young pheasant straying from the coop, even
+the chicken at the lone farmstead, where the bailiff only lives and is
+in the fields all day--these are the victims of the crow.
+
+Crows work almost always in pairs--it is remarkable that hawks, jays,
+magpies, crows, nearly all birds of prey, seem to remain in pairs the
+entire year--and when they have once tasted a member of a brood, be it
+pheasant, partridge, or chicken, they stay till they have cleared off
+the lot.  Slow of flight and somewhat lazy of habit, they will perch for
+hours on a low tree, croaking and pruning their feathers; they peer into
+every nook and corner of the woodlands, not like the swift hawk, who
+circles over and is gone and in a few minutes is a mile away.  So that
+neither the mouse in the furrow nor the timid partridge cowering in the
+hedge can escape their leering eyes.
+
+Therefore the keeper smites them hip and thigh whenever he finds them;
+and if he comes across the nest, placed on the broad top of a
+pollard-tree--not in the branches, but on the trunk--sends his shot
+through it to smash the eggs.  For if the young birds come to maturity
+they will remain in that immediate locality for months, working every
+hedge and copse and ditch with cruel pertinacity.  In consequence of
+this unceasing destruction the crow has become much rarer of late, and
+its nest is hardly to be found in many woods.  They breed in the
+scattered trees of the meadows and fields, especially where no regular
+game preservation is attempted, and where no keeper goes his rounds.
+Even to this day a lingering superstition associates this bird with
+coming evil; and I have heard the women working in the fields remark
+that such and such a farmer then lying ill would not recover, for a crow
+had been seen to fly over his house but just above the roof-tree.
+
+Trespassers give him a good deal of trouble, for a great wood seems to
+have an irresistible attraction for all sorts of semi-Bohemians, besides
+those who come for poaching purposes.  The keeper thinks it much more
+difficult to watch a wood like this, which is continuous and all in one,
+than it is to guard a number of detached plantations, though in the
+aggregate they may cover an equal area.  It is impossible to see into it
+any distance; to walk round it is a task of time.  A poacher may slink
+from tree to tree and from thicket to thicket, and, unless the dogs
+chance to sniff him out, may lie hidden in tangled masses of fern and
+bramble, while the keeper passes not ten yards away.  But plantations
+laid out in regular order with broad open spaces, sometimes with small
+fields between, do not afford anything like cover for human beings.  If
+a man is concealed in one of these copses, and finds that the keeper or
+his assistants are about to go through it, he must move or be caught;
+and in moving he has to pass across an open space, and is nearly sure to
+be detected.  In a continuous wood of large extent, if he hears the
+keepers coming he has but to slip as rapidly and silently as possible to
+one side, and often has the pleasure to see them pass right over the
+spot where only recently he was lying.
+
+Therefore, although a wood is much more beautiful from an artistic point
+of view, with its lovely greens in spring and yellow and browns in
+autumn, its shades and recesses and fern-strewn glades, yet if a
+gentleman desires to imitate the monarch who laid out the New Forest and
+plant wood, and his object be simply game, the keeper is of opinion that
+the somewhat stiff and trim plantations are preferable.  They are
+generally of fir; and fir is the most difficult of trees to slip past,
+being decidedly of an obstructive turn.  The boughs grow so close to the
+ground that unless you crawl you cannot go under them.  The trunks--
+unlike those of many other trees--will flourish so near together that
+the extremities of the branches touch and almost interweave, and they
+are rough and unpleasant to push through.  To shoot or trap, or use a
+net or other poacher's implement, is very difficult in a young fir
+plantation, because of this thickness of growth; so that in a measure
+the tree itself protects the game.  Then the cover afforded is warm and
+liked by the birds; and so for many reasons the fir has become a great
+favourite, notwithstanding that it is of very little value when finally
+cut down.
+
+For fox preserving firs are hardly so suitable, because the needles, or
+small sharp leaves, quite destroy all undergrowth--not only by the
+turpentine they contain, but by forming a thick mat, as it were, upon
+the earth.  This mass of needles takes years, to all appearance, to
+decay, and no young green blade or shoot can get through it; besides
+which the fir-boughs above make a roof almost impenetrable to air and
+light, the chief necessities of a plant's existence.  Foxes like a close
+warm undergrowth, such as furze, sedges when the ground is dry, the
+underwood that springs up between the ash-stoles.  Although constantly
+out of doors--if such a phrase be allowable--foxes seem to dislike cold
+and draught, as do weasels and all their kind, notably ferrets.  But for
+pure game preserving, and for convenience of watching, the keeper thinks
+the detached plantations of fir preferable.  Doubtless he is
+professionally right; and yet somehow a great wood seems infinitely more
+English and appeals to the heart far more powerfully, with its noble
+oaks and beeches and ash trees, its bramble-thickets and brake, and
+endless beauties which a life of study will not exhaust.
+
+But the semi-Bohemians detested by the keeper do not prowl about the
+confines of a wood with artistic views; their objects are extremely
+prosaic, and though not always precisely injurious, yet they annoy him
+beyond endurance.  He is like a spider in the centre of a vast spreading
+web, and the instant the most outlying threads--in this case represented
+by fences--are broken he is all agitation till he has expelled the
+intruder.  Men and boys in the winter come stealing into the wood where
+the blackthorn thickets are for sloes, which are reputed to be improved
+by the first frosts, and are used for making sloe gin, etc.  Those they
+gather they sell, of course; and although the pursuit may be perfectly
+harmless in itself, how is the keeper to be certain that, if opportunity
+offered, these gentry would not pounce upon a rabbit or anything else?
+Others come for the dead wood; and it does on the face of it seem hard
+to deny an old woman who has worked all her days in the field a bundle
+of fallen branches rotting under the trees.  The accumulations of such
+dead sticks in some places are astonishing: the soil under the ash-poles
+must slowly rise from the mass of decaying wood and ultimately become
+greatly enriched by this natural manure.
+
+When a hard clay soil is revealed by the operations for draining a
+meadow, and the crust of black or reddish mould on which the sweet green
+grass flourishes is seen to be but spade-deep, the idea naturally occurs
+that that thin crust must have been originated by some similar process
+to what is now going on in the ash wood.  Those six or nine inches of
+mould perhaps represent several centuries of forest.  But if the keeper
+admits the old woman shivering over her embers in the cottage to pick up
+these dead boughs, how can he tell what further tricks others may be up
+to?  The privilege has often been offered and as often abused, until at
+last it has been finally withdrawn--not only because of the poaching
+carried on under the cloak of picking up dead wood, but because the
+intruders tore down fine living branches from the trees and spoiled and
+disfigured them without mercy.  Sometimes gentlemen go to the expense of
+having wood periodically gathered and distributed among the poor, which
+is a considerate system and worthy of imitation where possible.
+
+Occasionally men come to search for walking-sticks, for which there is
+now a regular trade.  Just at present "natural" sticks--that is, those
+cut from the stem with the bark on--are rather popular, both for walking
+and for umbrella handles, which causes this kind of search to be
+actively prosecuted.  The best "natural" sticks are those which when
+growing were themselves young trees, sprung up direct from seed or
+shoots--saplings, which are stronger and more pliant than those cut from
+a stole or pollard.  To cut such a stick as this is equivalent to
+destroying a future tree, and of course a good deal of mischief may be
+easily done in a short time.
+
+Another kind of ash stick which is in demand is one round which there
+runs a spiral groove.  This spiral is caused by the bine of honeysuckle
+or woodbine, and in some cases by wild hops.  These climbing plants grow
+in great profusion when they once get fixed in the soil, and twist their
+tendrils or "leaders" round and round the tall, straight, young
+ash-poles with so tight a grasp as to partly strangle the stick and form
+a deep screw-like groove in it.  When well polished, or sometimes in its
+rough state, such a stick attracts customers; and so popular is this
+"style" of thing that the spiral groove is frequently cut by the lathe
+in more expensive woods than ash.  Wild hops are common in many places,
+and will almost destroy a hedge or a little copse by the power with
+which they twine their coils about stem and branch.  Young oak saplings,
+in the same way, are frequently cut; and the potential tree which might
+have grown large enough to form part of a ship's timbers is sold for a
+shilling.
+
+Holly is another favourite wood for sticks, and fetches more money than
+oak or ash, on account of its ivory-like whiteness when peeled.  To get
+a good stick with a knob to it frequently necessitates a considerable
+amount of cutting and chopping, and does far more damage than the loss
+of the stick itself represents.  Neither blackthorn nor crab-tree seem
+so popular as they once were for this purpose.
+
+In the autumn scores of men, women, and children scour the hedges and
+woods for acorns, which bring a regular price per bushel or sack,
+affording a valuable food for pigs.  Others seek elderberries to sell
+for making wine, and for a few weeks a trade is done in blackberries.
+Chair-menders and basket-makers frequent the shore of the little mere or
+lake looking for bulrushes or flags: the old rush-bottomed chairs are
+still to be found in country houses, and require mending; and
+flag-baskets are much used.
+
+Hazel-nuts and filberts perhaps cause more trouble than all the rest;
+this fruit is now worth money, and in some counties the yield of nuts is
+looked forward to in the same way as any other crop--as in Kent, where
+cob-nuts are cultivated, and where the disorderly hop-pickers are great
+thieves.  I have heard of owners of copses losing ten or fifteen pounds'
+worth of nuts by a single raid.  Here, in this wood, no attempt is made
+to obtain profit from the fruit, yet it gives rise to much trouble.  The
+nut-stealers take no care in pulling down the boughs, but break them
+shamefully, destroying entire bushes; and for this reason in many
+places, where nutting was once freely permitted, it is now rigidly
+repressed.  Just before the nuts become ripe they are gathered by men
+employed on the place, and thrown down in sackfuls, making great heaps
+by the public footpaths--ocular evidence that it is useless to enter the
+wood a-nutting.
+
+The keeper thinks that these trespassers grow more coarsely mischievous
+year by year.  He can recollect when the wood in a measure was free and
+open, and, provided a man had not got a gun or was not suspected of
+poaching, he might roam pretty much at large; while the resident
+labouring people went to and fro by the nearest short cut they could
+find.  But whether the railways bring rude strangers with no respect for
+the local authorities, or whether "tramps" have become more numerous, it
+is certain that only by constant watchfulness can downright destruction
+be prevented.  It is not only the game preserved within that closes
+these beautiful woodlands to the public, but the wanton damage to tree
+and shrub, the useless, objectless mischief so frequently practised.
+For instance, a column of smoke, curling like a huge snake round the
+limbs of a great tree and then floating away from the topmost branches,
+is a singular spectacle, so opposed to the ordinary current of ideas as
+to be certain of attracting the passer-by.  It is the work, of course,
+of some mischievous lout who has set fire to the hollow interior of the
+tree.
+
+Such a tree, as previously pointed out, is the favourite resort of bird
+and insect-life.  The heedless mischief of the bird-keeping boys, or the
+ploughlads rambling about on Sunday, destroys this Hotel de Ville of the
+forest or hedgerow, the central house of assembly of the birds.  To
+light a fire seems one of the special delights of these lads, and
+sometimes of men who should have learned better; and to light it in a
+hollow tree is the highest flight of genius.  A few handfuls of withered
+grass and dead fern, half a dozen dry sticks, a lucifer-match, and the
+thing is done.  The hollow within the tree is shaped like an inverted
+funnel, large at the bottom and decreasing upwards, where at the pointed
+roof one thin streak of daylight penetrates.  This formation is
+admirably adapted to "draw" a fire at the bottom, and so, once lit, it
+is not easily put out.  The "touchwood" smoulders and smokes immensely,
+and a great black column rises in the air.  So it will go on smouldering
+and smoking for days till nothing but a charred stump be left.  Now and
+then there is sufficient sap yet remaining in the bark and outer ring of
+wood to check the fire when it reaches it; and finally it dies out,
+being unable to burn the green casing of the trunk.  Even then, so
+strong is the vital force, the oak may stand for years and put forth
+leaves on its branches--leaves which, when dead, will linger, loth to
+fall, almost through the winter, rustling in the wind, till the buds of
+spring push them off.
+
+Graver mischief is sometimes committed with the lucifer-match, and with
+more of the set purpose of destruction.  In the vast expanse of furze
+outside the wood on the high ground the huntsmen are almost certain of a
+find, and, if they can get between the fox and the wood, of a rattling
+burst along the edge of the downs; no wonder, therefore, that both they
+and the keeper set store by this breadth of "bush."  To this great
+covert more than once some skulking scoundrel has set fire, taking good
+care to strike his match well to windward, so that the flames might
+drive across the whole, and to chose a wind which would also endanger
+the wood.  Now nothing flares up with such a sudden fierceness as furze,
+and there is no possibility of stopping it.  With a loud crackling and
+swaying of pointed tongues of flame visible miles away even at noontide,
+and a cloud of smoke, the rift rolls on, licking up grass and fern and
+heath; and its hot breath goes before it, and the blast rises behind it.
+As on the beach the wave seems to break at the foot and then in an
+instant the surf runs away along the sand, so from its first start the
+flame widens out right and left with a greedy eagerness, and what five
+minutes ago was but a rolling bonfire is now a wall of fire a quarter of
+a mile broad, and swelling as it goes.
+
+Then happens on a lesser scale exactly the same thing that travellers
+describe of the burning prairies of the Far West--a stampede of the
+thousands of living creatures, bird and beast: rabbits, hares, foxes,
+weasels, stoats, badgers, wild cats, all rushing in a maddened frenzy of
+fear they know not whither.  Often, with a strange reversal of instinct,
+so to say, they will crowd together right in the way of the flames,
+huddling in hundreds where the fire must pass, and no effort of voice or
+presence of man will drive them away.  The hissing, crackling fire
+sweeps over, and in an instant all have perished.  No more miserable
+spectacle can be witnessed than the terror of these wretched creatures.
+Birds seem to fly into the smoke and are suffocated--they fall and are
+burned.  Hares, utterly beside themselves, wilt rush almost into the
+arms of the crowd that assembles, and, of course, picks up what it can
+seize.  The flames blacken and scorch the firs and trees on the edge of
+the wood, and the marks of their passage are not obliterated for years.
+
+Apart from the torture of animals, the damage to sport--both hunting and
+shooting--is immense, and takes long to remedy; for although furze and
+fern soon shoot again, yet animal life is not so quickly repaired.
+Sometimes a few sheep wandering from the downs are roasted alive in this
+manner; and one or more dogs from the crowd watching are sure to run
+into the flames, which seem to exercise a fascination over some canine
+minds.  The keeper's wrath bubbles up years afterwards as he recalls the
+scene, and it would not be well for the incendiary if he fell into his
+hands.  But the mischief can be so easily done that it is rarely these
+rascals are captured.
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN.
+
+PROFESSIONAL POACHERS.--THE ART OF WIRING GAME.
+
+There are three kinds of poachers, the local men, the raiders coming in
+gangs from a distance, and the "mouchers"--fellows who do not make
+precisely a profession of it, but who occasionally loiter along the
+roads and hedges picking up whatever they can lay hands on.
+Philologists may trace a resemblance between the present provincial word
+"mouching" and Shakespeare's "mitcher," who ate blackberries.  Of the
+three probably the largest amount of business is done by the local men,
+on the principle that the sitting gamester sweeps the board.  They
+therefore deserve first consideration.
+
+It is a popular belief that the village poacher is an idle, hang-dog
+ne'er-do-well, with a spice of sneaking romance in his disposition--the
+Bohemian of the hamlet, whose grain of genius has sprouted under
+difficulties, and produced weeds instead of wheat.  This is a complete
+fallacy, in our day at least.  Poaching; is no longer an amusement, a
+thing to be indulged in because
+
+  It's my delight of a shiny night
+  In the season of the year;
+
+but a hard, prosaic business, a matter of _pounds, shillings, pence_,
+requiring a long-headed, shrewd fellow, with a power of silence, capable
+of a delicacy of touch which almost raises poaching into a fine art.
+The real man is often a sober and to all appearance industrious
+individual, working steadily during the day at some handicraft in the
+village, as blacksmithing, hedge-carpentering--i.e. making posts and
+rails, etc--cobbling, tinkering, or perhaps in the mill; a somewhat
+reserved, solitary workman of superior intelligence and frequently
+advanced views as to the "rights of labour."  He has no appetite for
+thrilling adventure; his idea is simply money, and he looks upon his
+night-work precisely as he does upon his day-labour.
+
+His great object is to avoid suspicion, knowing that success will be
+proportionate to his skill in cloaking his operations; for in a small
+community, when a man is "suspect," it is comparatively easy to watch
+him, and a poacher knows that if he is watched he must sooner or later
+be caught.  Secrecy is not so very difficult; for it is only with
+certain classes that he need practise concealment: his own class will
+hold their peace.  If a man is seen at his work in the day, if he is
+moderate in his public-house attendance, shows himself at church, and
+makes friends with the resident policeman (not as a confederate, but to
+know his beat and movements), he may go on for years without detection.
+
+Perhaps the most promising position for a man who makes a science of it
+is a village at the edge of a range of downs, generally fringed with
+large woods on the lower slopes.  He has then ground to work
+alternately, according to the character of the weather and the changes
+of the moon.  If the weather be wet, windy, or dark from the absence of
+the moon, then the wide open hills are safe; while, on the other hand,
+the woods are practically inaccessible, for a man must have the eyes of
+a cat to see to do his work in the impenetrable blackness of the
+plantations.  So that upon a bright night the judicious poacher prefers
+the woods, because he can see his way, and avoids the hills, because,
+having no fences to speak of, a watcher may detect him a mile off.
+
+Meadows with double mounds and thick hedges may be worked almost at any
+time, as one side of the hedge is sure to cast a shadow, and instant
+cover is afforded by the bushes and ditches.  Such meadows are the happy
+hunting-grounds of the poacher for that reason, especially if not far
+distant from woods, and consequently overrun with rabbits.  For, since
+the price of rabbits has risen so high, they are very profitable as
+game, considering that a dozen or two may be captured without noise and
+without having to traverse much space--perhaps in a single hedge.
+
+The weather most unsuitable is that kind of frost which comes on in the
+early morning, and is accompanied with some rime on the grass--a duck's
+frost, just sufficient to check fox-hunting.  Every footstep on grass in
+this condition when the sun comes out burns up as black as if the sole
+of the boot were of red-hot iron, and the poacher leaves an indelible
+trail behind him.  But as three duck's frosts usually bring rain, a
+little patience is alone necessary.  A real, downright six weeks' frost
+is, on the contrary, very useful--game lie close.  But a deep snow is
+not welcome; for, although many starved animals may be picked up, yet it
+quite suspends the operations of the regular hand: he can neither use
+wire, net, nor ferret.
+
+Windy nights are disliked, particularly by rabbit-catchers, who have to
+depend a great deal upon their sense of hearing to know when a rabbit is
+moving in the "buries," and where he is likely to "bolt," so as to lay
+hands on him the instant he is in the net.  But with the "oak's
+mysterious roar" overhead, the snapping of dead branches, and the moan
+of the gale as it rushes through the hawthorn, it is difficult to
+distinguish the low, peculiar thumping sound of a rabbit in his
+catacomb.  The rabbit is not easily dislodged in rain; for this animal
+avoids getting wet as much as possible: he "bolts" best when it is dry
+and still.
+
+A judicious man rarely uses a gun, for the reason that noise is
+inconvenient, and a gun is an awkward tool to carry concealed about the
+person even when taken to pieces.  There is a certain prejudice in rural
+places against a labouring man possessing a gun; it is sure to draw
+suspicion upon him.  A professional poacher is pre-eminently a trapper,
+relying chiefly upon the dexterous employment of the snare.  If he does
+shoot, by preference he chooses a misty day, knowing that the sound of
+the report travels scarcely half the usual distance through fog; and he
+beats the meadows rather than the preserves, where the discharge would
+instantly attract attention, while in the meadows or ploughed fields it
+may pass unnoticed as fired by a farmer with leave to kill rabbits.
+
+When the acorns are ripe and the pheasants wander great distances from
+the plantations along the hedgerows is his best time for shooting; no
+keepers at that period can protect them.  He also observes where the
+partridges which roost on the ground assemble nightly as it grows dark,
+easily ascertaining the spot by their repeated calls to each other, and
+sometimes knocks over three or four at a shot.
+
+Occasionally, also, early in the season, before the legitimate sportsman
+perhaps has stepped into the stubble, and while the coveys are large, he
+sees a good chance, and with two or even three ounces of shot makes
+havoc among them.  He invariably fires at his game sitting, first,
+because he cannot lose an opportunity, and, next, because he can kill
+several at once.  He creeps up behind a hedge, much as the sportsman in
+Rubens' picture in the National Gallery is represented, stooping to get
+a view, himself unseen, at the brown birds on the ground.  With the
+antique firelock such a practice was necessary; but nothing in our day
+so stamps a man a poacher as this total denial of "law" to the game.
+
+When the pheasant is shot his next difficulty is with the feathers.  The
+fluffy, downy under-feathers fly in all directions, scattering over the
+grass, and if left behind would tell an unmistakable tale.  They must
+therefore be collected as far as possible, and hidden in the ditch.  The
+best pockets for carrying game are those made in the tails of the coat,
+underneath: many poachers' coats are one vast pocket behind the lining.
+
+When there is special clanger of being personally overhauled and
+searched, or when the "bag" is large, the game is frequently hidden in a
+rabbit-hole, taking care to fence the hole some distance inside with a
+stout stick across it, the object of which is that if the keeper or a
+sportsman should pass that way his dogs, scenting the game, will
+endeavour to scratch out the earth and get in after it.  This the cross
+stick will prevent, and the keeper will probably thrash his dog for
+refusing to obey when called off.
+
+A great deal of poaching used to be accomplished by nets, into which
+both partridges and pheasants were driven.  If skilfully alarmed--that
+is, not too much hurried--these birds will run a long way before rising,
+and, if their tracks are known, may be netted in considerable numbers.
+But of recent years, since pheasants especially have become so costly a
+luxury to keep, the preserves and roosting-places have been more
+effectually watched, and this plan has become more difficult to put in
+practice.  In fact, the local man thinks twice before he puts his foot
+inside a preserve, and, if possible, prefers to pick up outside.  If a
+preserve is broken into the birds are at once missed, and there is a hue
+and cry; but the loss of outsiders is not immediately noticed.
+
+The wire is, perhaps, the regular poacher's best implement, and ground
+game his most profitable source of income.  Hares exist in numbers upon
+the downs, especially near the localities where the great coursing
+meetings are held, where a dozen may be kicked out of the grass in five
+minutes.  In these districts of course the downs are watched; but hares
+cannot be kept within bounds, and wander miles and miles at night,
+limping daintily with their odd gait (when undisturbed) along the lanes
+leading into the ploughed fields on the lower slopes and plains.  The
+hills--wide and almost pathless, and practically destitute of fences--
+where the foot leaves no trail on the short grass and elastic turf, are
+peculiarly favourable to illicit sport.
+
+Though apparently roaming aimlessly, hares have their regular highways
+or "runs;" and it is the poacher's business to discover which of these
+narrow paths are most beaten by continuous use.  He then sets his wire,
+as early in the evening as compatible with safety to himself, for hares
+are abroad with the twilight.
+
+Long practice and delicate skill are essential to successful snaring.
+First, the loop itself into which the hare is to run his head must be of
+the exact size.  If it be too small he will simply thrust it aside; if
+too large his body will slip through, and his hind leg will be captured:
+being crooked, it draws the noose probably.  Then if caught by the hind
+leg, the wretched creature, mad with terror, will shriek his loudest;
+and a hare shrieks precisely like a human being in distress.  The sound,
+well understood by the watchers, will at once reveal what is going
+forward.  But there may be no watchers about; and in that case the
+miserable animal will tug and tug during the night till the wire
+completely bares the lower bone of the leg, and in the morning, should
+any one pass, his leaps and bounds and rolls will of course be seen.
+Sometimes he twists the wire till it snaps, and so escapes--but probably
+to die a lingering death, since the copper or brass is pretty sure to
+mortify the flesh.  No greater cruelty can be imagined.  The poacher,
+however, is very anxious to avoid it, as it may lead to detection; and
+if his wire is properly set the animal simply hangs himself, brought up
+with a sudden jerk which kills him in two seconds, and with less pain
+than is caused by the sting of the sportsman's cartridge.
+
+Experience is required to set the loop at the right height above the
+ground.  It is measured by placing the clenched fist on the earth, and
+then putting the extended thumb of the other open hand upon it,
+stretching it out as in the action of spanning, when the tip of the
+little finger gives the right height for the lower bend of the loop--
+that is, as a rule; but clever poachers vary it slightly to suit the
+conformation of the ground.  A hare carries his head much higher than
+might be thought; and he is very strong, so that the plug which holds
+the wire must be driven in firmly to withstand his first convulsive
+struggle.  The small upright stick whose cleft suspends the wire across
+the "run" must not be put too near the hare's path, or he will see it,
+and it must be tolerably stiff, or his head will push the wire aside.
+Just behind a "tussocky" bunch of grass is a favourite spot to set a
+noose; the grass partially conceals it.
+
+The poacher revisits his snares very early in the morning, and if he is
+judicious invariably pulls them up, whether successful or not, because
+they may be seen in the day.  Half the men who are fined by the
+magistrates have been caught by keepers who, having observed wires, let
+them remain; but keep a watch and take the offenders red-handed.  The
+professional poacher never leaves his wires set up all day, unless a
+sudden change of weather and the duck's frost previously mentioned
+prevent him from approaching them, and then he abandons those particular
+snares for ever.  For this reason he does not set up more than he can
+easily manage.  If he gets three hares a night (wholesale price _2
+shillings 6 pence_ each) he is well repaid.  Rabbits are also wired in
+great numbers.  The loop is a trifle smaller, and should be just a span
+from the ground.
+
+But the ferret is the poacher's chief assistant in rabbiting: it takes
+two men, one on each side of the "bury," and a ferret which will not
+"lie in"--i.e. stay in the hole and feast till overcome with sleep.
+Ferrets differ remarkably in disposition, and the poacher chooses his
+with care; otherwise, if the ferret will not come out the keepers are
+certain to find him the next day hunting on his own account.  Part of
+the secret is to feed him properly, so that he may have sufficient
+appetite to hunt well and yet be quickly satisfied with a taste of
+blood.  Skill is essential in setting up the nets at the mouth of the
+holes; but beyond the mere knack, easily acquired, there is little to
+learn in ferreting.
+
+The greatest difficulty with any kind of game is to get home unobserved
+with the bag.  Keepers are quite aware of this; and in the case of large
+estates, leaving one or two assistants near the preserves, they patrol
+the by-ways and footpaths, while the police watch the cross-roads and
+lanes which lead to the villages.  If a man comes along at an
+exceptionally early hour with coat-pockets violently bulging, there is a
+_prima facie_ case for searching him.  One advantage of wiring or
+netting over the gun is here very noticeable: anything shot bleeds and
+stains the pocket--a suspicious sign even when empty; strangulation
+leaves no traces.
+
+Without a knowledge of the policeman's beat and the keeper's post the
+poacher can do nothing on a large scale.  He has, however, no great
+trouble in ascertaining these things; the labourers who do not
+themselves poach sympathise warmly and whisper information.  There is
+reason to think that men sometimes get drunk, or sufficiently so to
+simulate intoxication very successfully, with the express purpose of
+being out all night with a good excuse, and so discovering the
+policeman's ambuscade.  Finding a man whom he knows to be usually sober
+overtaken with drink in a lonely road, where he injures none but
+himself, the policeman good-naturedly leads him home with a caution
+only.
+
+The receivers of game are many and various.  The low beer-shop keepers
+are known to purchase large quantities.  Sometimes a local pork-butcher
+in a small way buys and transmits it, having facilities for sending
+hampers, etc, unsuspected.  Sometimes the carriers are the channel of
+communication; and there is no doubt the lower class of game dealers in
+the provincial towns get a good deal in this way.  The London dealer,
+who receives large consignments at once, has of course no means of
+distinguishing poached from other game.  The men who purchase the
+rabbits ferreted by the keepers during the winter in the woods and
+preserves, and who often buy 100 pounds worth or more in the season,
+have peculiar opportunities for conveying poached animals, carefully
+stowed for them in a ditch on their route.  This fact having crept out
+has induced gentlemen to remove these rabbit contracts from local men,
+and to prefer purchasers from a distance, who must take some time to get
+acquainted with the district poachers.
+
+The raiders, who come in gangs armed with guns and shoot in the
+preserves, are usually the scum of manufacturing towns, led or guided by
+a man expelled through his own bad conduct from the village, and who has
+a knowledge of the ground.  These gangs display no skill; relying on
+their numbers, arms, and known desperation of character to protect them
+from arrest, as it does in nine cases out of ten.  Keepers and policemen
+cannot be expected to face such brutes as these fellows; they do
+sometimes, however, and get shattered with shot.
+
+The "mouchers" sneak about the hedgerows on Sundays with lurcher dogs,
+and snap up a rabbit or a hare; they do not do much damage except near
+great towns, where they are very numerous.  Shepherds, also,
+occasionally mouch--their dogs being sometimes very expert; and
+ploughmen set wires in the gateways or gaps where they have noticed the
+track of a hare, but it is only for their own eating, and is not of much
+consequence in comparison with the work of the real local professional.
+These regular hands form a class which are probably more numerous now
+than ever; the reasons are--first, the high value of game and the
+immense demand for it since poultry has become so dear, and, secondly,
+the ease of transmission now that railways spread into the most outlying
+districts and carry baskets or parcels swiftly out of reach.  Poaching,
+in fact, well followed, is a lucrative business.
+
+Some occasional poaching is done with no aid but the hand, especially in
+severe weather, which makes all wild animals "dummel," in provincial
+phrase--i.e. stupid, slow to move.  Even the hare is sometimes caught by
+hand as he crouches in his form.  It requires a practised eye, that
+knows precisely where to look among the grass, to detect him hidden in
+the bunch under the dead, dry bennets.  An inexperienced person chancing
+to see a hare sitting like this would naturally stop short in walking to
+get a better view; whereupon the animal, feeling that he was observed,
+would instantly make a rush.  You must persuade the hare that he is
+unseen; and so long as he notices no start or sign of recognition--his
+eye is on you from first entering the field--he will remain still,
+believing that you will pass.
+
+The poacher, having marked his game, looks steadily in front of him,
+never turning his head, but insensibly changes his course and quietly
+approaches sidelong.  Then, in the moment of passing, he falls quick as
+lightning on his knee, and seizes the hare just behind the poll.  It is
+the only place where the sudden grasp would hold him in his convulsive
+terror--he is surprisingly powerful--and almost ere he can shriek (as he
+will do) the left hand has tightened round the hind legs.  Stretching
+him to his full length across the knee, the right thumb, with a peculiar
+twist, dislocates his neck, and he is dead in an instant.  There is
+something of the hangman's knack in this, which is the invariable way of
+killing rabbits when ferreted or caught alive; and yet it is the most
+merciful, for death is instantaneous.  It is very easy to sprain the
+thumb while learning the trick.
+
+A poacher will sometimes place his hat gently on the ground, when first
+catching sight of a sitting hare, and then stealthily approach on the
+opposite side.  The hare watches the hat, while the real enemy comes up
+unawares, or, if both are seen, he is in doubt which way to dash.  On a
+dull, cold day hares will sit till the sportsman's dogs are nearly on
+them, almost till he has to kick them out.  At other times in the same
+locality they are, on the contrary, too wild.  Occasionally a labourer,
+perhaps a "fogger," crossing the meadows with slow steps, finds a rabbit
+sitting in like manner among the grass or in a dry furrow.  Instantly he
+throws himself all a-sprawl upon the ground, with the hope of pinning
+the animal to the earth.  The manoeuvre, however, frequently fails, and
+the rabbit slips away out of his very hands.
+
+The poacher is never at rest; there is no season when his marauding
+expeditions cease for awhile; he acknowledges no "close time" whatever.
+Almost every month has its appropriate game for him, and he can always
+turn his hand to something.  In the very heat of the summer there are
+the young rabbits, for which there is always a sale in the towns, and
+the leverets, which are easily picked up by a lurcher dog.
+
+I have known a couple of men take a pony and trap for this special
+purpose, and make a pleasant excursion over hill and dale, through the
+deep country lanes, and across the open down land, carrying with them
+two or three such dogs to let loose as opportunity offers.  Their
+appearance as they rattle along is certainly not prepossessing; the
+expression of their canine friends trotting under the trap, or peering
+over the side, stamps them at the first glance as "snappers up of
+unconsidered trifles;" but you cannot arrest these gentlemen peacefully
+driving on the "king's highway" simply because they have an ugly look
+about them.  From the trap they get a better view than on foot; standing
+up they can see over a moderately high hedge, and they can beat a rapid
+retreat if necessary, with the aid of a wiry pony.  Passing by some
+meadows, they note a goodly number of rabbits feeding in the short
+aftermath.  They draw up by a gateway, and one of them dismounts.  With
+the dogs he creeps along behind the hedge (the object being to get
+between the bunnies and their holes), and presently sends the dogs on
+their mission.  The lurchers are tolerably sure of catching a couple--
+young rabbits are neither so swift nor so quick at doubling as the older
+ones.  Before the farmer and his men, who are carting the summer ricks
+in an adjacent field, can quite comprehend what the unusual stir is
+about yonder, the poachers are off, jogging comfortably along, with
+their game hidden under an old sack or some straw.
+
+Their next essay is among the ploughed fields, where the corn is
+ripening and as yet no reapers are at work, so that the coast is almost
+clear.  Here they pick up a leveret, and perhaps the dogs chop a weakly
+young partridge, unable to fly well, in the hedge.  The keeper has just
+strolled through the copses bordering on the road, and has left them, as
+he thinks, safe.  They watch his figure slowly disappearing in the
+distance from a bend of the lane, and then send the dogs among the
+underwood.  In the winter men will carry ferrets with them in a trap
+like this.
+
+The desperate gangs who occasionally sweep the preserves, defying the
+keepers in their strength of numbers and prestige of violence, sometimes
+bring with them a horse and cart, not so much for speed of escape as to
+transport a heavy bag of game.  Such a vehicle, driven by one man, will,
+moreover, often excite no suspicion though it may be filled with
+pheasants under sacks and hay.  A good deal of what may be called casual
+poaching is also done on wheels.
+
+Some of the landlords of the low beer-houses in the country often
+combine with the liquor trade the business of dealing in pigs, calves,
+potatoes, etc, and keep a light cart, or similar conveyance.  Now, if
+any one will notice the more disreputable of these beer-houses, they
+will observe that there are generally a lot of unkempt, rough-looking
+dogs about them.  These, of course, follow their master when he goes on
+his short journeys from place to place; and they are quite capable of
+mischief.  Such men may not make a business of poaching, yet if in
+passing a preserve the dogs stray and bring back something eatable, why,
+it is very easy to stow it under the seat with the potatoes.  Sometimes
+a man is bold enough to carry a gun in this way--to jump out when he
+sees a chance and have a shot, and back and off before any one knows
+exactly what is going on.
+
+Somehow there always seems to be a market for game out of season: it is
+"passed" somewhere, just as thieves pass stolen jewellery.  So also
+fish, even when manifestly unfit for table, in the midst of spawning
+time, commands a ready sale if overlooked by the authorities.  It is
+curious that people can be found to purchase fish in such a condition;
+but it is certain that they do.  In the spring, when one would think
+bird and beast might be permitted a breathing space, the poacher is as
+busy as ever after eggs.  Pheasant and partridge eggs are largely bought
+and sold in the most nefarious manner.  It is suspected that some of the
+less respectable breeders who rear game birds like poultry for sale, are
+not too particular of whom they purchase eggs; and, as we have before
+observed, certain keepers are to blame in this matter also.
+
+Plovers' eggs, again, are an article of commerce in the spring; they are
+protected now by law, but it is to be feared that the enactment is to a
+great extent a dead letter.  The eggs of the peewit, or lapwing, as the
+bird is variously called, are sought for with great perseverance, and
+accounted delicacies.  These birds frequent commons where the grass is
+very rough, and interspersed with bunches of rushes, marshy places, and
+meadows liable to be flooded in the winter.  The nest on the ground is
+often made in the depression left by a horse's hoof in the soft earth--
+any slight hole, in fact; and it is so concealed, or rather differs so
+little from the appearance of the general sward around, as to be easily
+passed unnoticed.  You may actually step on it, and so smash the eggs,
+before you see it.
+
+Aware that the most careful observation may fail to find what he wants,
+the egg-stealer adopts a simple but effective plan by which he ensures
+against omitting to examine a single foot of the field.  Drop a
+pocket-knife or some such object in the midst of a great meadow, and you
+will find the utmost difficulty in discovering it again, when the grass
+is growing tall as in spring.  You may think that you have traversed
+every inch, yet it is certain that you have not; the inequalities of the
+ground insensibly divert your footsteps, and it is very difficult to
+keep a straight line.  What is required is something to fix the eye--
+what a sailor would call a "bearing."  This the egg-stealer finds in a
+walking-stick.  He thrusts the point into the earth, and then slowly
+walks round and round it, enlarging the circle every time, and thus
+sweeps every inch of the surface with his eye.  When he has got so far
+from the stick as to feel that his steps are becoming uncertain, he
+removes it, and begins again in another spot.  A person not aware of
+this simple trick will search a field till weary and declare there is
+nothing to be found; another, who knows the dodge, will go out and
+return in an hour with a pocketful of eggs.
+
+On those clear, bright winter nights when the full moon is almost at the
+zenith, and the "definition" of tree and bough in the flood of light
+seems to equal if not to exceed that of the noonday, some poaching used
+to be accomplished with the aid of a horsehair noose on the end of a
+long slender wand.  There are still some districts in the country more
+or less covered with forest, and which on account of ancient rights
+cannot be enclosed.  Here the art of noosing lingers; the loop being
+insidiously slipped over the bird's head while at roost.  By constant
+practice a wonderful dexterity may be acquired in this trick; men will
+snare almost any bird in broad daylight.  With many birds a favourite
+place for a nest is in a hollow tree, access being had by a decayed
+knot-hole, and they are sometimes noosed as they emerge.  A thin
+flexible copper wire is said to be substituted for large game.  This
+method of capture peculiarly suits the views of the ornithologist, with
+whom it is an object to avoid the spoiling of feathers by shot.
+
+Every now and then a bird-catcher comes along decoying the finches from
+the hedges, for sale as cage-birds in London.  Some of these men,
+without any mechanical assistance, can imitate the "call" note of the
+bird they desire to capture so as to deceive the most practised ear.
+These fellows are a great nuisance, and will completely sweep a lane of
+all the birds whose song makes them valuable.  In this way some
+localities have been quite cleared of goldfinches, which used to be
+common.  The keepers, of course, will not permit them on private
+property; but in all rural districts there are wide waste spaces--as
+where two or more roads meet--broad bands of green sward running beside
+the highway, and the remnants of what in former days were commons; and
+here the bird-catcher plies his trade.  It so happens that these very
+waste places are often the most favourite resorts of goldfinches, for
+instance, who are particularly fond of thistledown, and thistles
+naturally chiefly flourish on uncultivated land.  These men, and the
+general class of loafers, have a wholesome dread of gamekeepers, who
+look on them with extreme suspicion.
+
+The farmers and rural community at large hardly give the gamekeeper his
+due as a protection against thieves and mischievous rascals.  The
+knowledge that he may at any time come round the corner, even in the
+middle of the night, has a decidedly salutary effect upon the minds of
+those who are prowling about.  Intoxicated louts think it fine fun to
+unhinge gates, and let cattle and horses stray abroad, to tear down
+rails, and especially to push the coping-stones off the parapets of the
+bridges which span small streams.  They consider it clever to heave
+these over with a splash into the water, or to throw down half a dozen
+yards of "dry wall."  In many places fields are commonly enclosed by the
+roadside with such walls, which are built of a flat stone dug just
+beneath the surface, and used without mortar.  There are men who make a
+business of building these walls; it requires some skill and patience to
+select the stones and fit them properly.  They serve the purpose very
+well, but the worst is that if once started the process of destruction
+is easy and quick.  Much more serious offences than these are sometimes
+committed, as cutting horses with knives, and other mutilations.  The
+fact that the fields are regularly perambulated by keepers and their
+assistants night and day cannot but act as a check upon acts of this
+kind.
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT.
+
+THE FIELD DETECTIVE--FISH-POACHING.
+
+The footpaths through the plantations and across the fields have no
+milestones by which the pedestrian can calculate the distance traversed;
+nor is the time occupied a safe criterion, because of the varying nature
+of the soil--now firm and now slippery--so that the pace is not regular.
+But these crooked paths--no footpath is ever straight--really represent
+a much greater distance than would be supposed if the space from point
+to point were measured on a map.  So that the keeper as he goes his
+rounds, though he does not rival the professional walker, in the course
+of a year covers some thousands of miles.  He rarely does less than ten,
+and probably often twelve miles a day, visiting certain points twice--
+i.e. in the morning and evening--and often in addition, if he has any
+suspicions, making _detours_.  It is easy to walk a mile in a single
+field of no great dimensions when it is necessary to go up and down each
+side of four long hedgerows, and backwards and forwards, following the
+course of the furrows.
+
+The keeper's eye is ever on the alert for the poacher's wires; and where
+the grass is tall to discover these is often a tedious task, since he
+may go within a few yards and yet pass them.  The ditches and the great
+bramble-bushes are carefully scanned, because in these the poacher often
+conceals his gun, nets, or game, even when not under immediate
+apprehension of capture.  The reason is that his cottage may perhaps be
+suddenly searched: if not by authority, the policeman on some pretext or
+other may unexpectedly lift the latch or peer into the outhouses, and
+feathers and fur are apt to betray their presence in the most unexpected
+manner.  One single feather, one single fluffy little piece of fur
+overlooked, is enough to ruin him, for these are things of which it is
+impossible to give an acceptable explanation.
+
+In dry weather the poacher often hides his implements: especially is
+this the case after a more than usually venturesome foray, when he knows
+that his house is tolerably certain to be overhauled and all his motions
+watched.  A hollow tree is a common resource--the pollard willow
+generally becomes hollow in its old age--and with a piece of the
+decaying "touchwood" or a strip of dead bark his tools are ingeniously
+covered up.  Under the eaves of sheds and outhouses the sparrows make
+holes by pulling out the thatch and roost in these sheltered places in
+severe weather, warmly protected from the frost; other small birds, as
+wrens and tomtits, do the same; and the poacher avails himself of these
+holes to hide his wires.
+
+A gun has been found before now concealed in a heap of manure, such as
+are frequently seen in the corners of the fields.  These heaps sometimes
+remain for a year or more in order that the materials may become
+thoroughly decomposed, and the surface is quickly covered with a rank
+growth of weeds.  The poacher, choosing the side close to the hedge,
+where no one would be likely to go, excavated a place beneath these
+weeds, (partly filled it in with dry straw, and laid his gun on this.  A
+rough board placed over it shielded it from damp; and the aperture was
+closed with "bull-polls"--that is, the rough grass of the furrows
+chopped up (not unlike the gardener's "turves")--and thrown on the
+manure-heap to decay.  If the keeper detects anything of this kind he
+allows it to stay undisturbed, but sets a watch, and so surprises the
+owner of the treasure.
+
+The keeper is particularly careful to observe the motions of the
+labourers engaged in the fields; especially at luncheon-time, when men
+with a hunch of bread and a slice of bacon--kept on the bread with a
+small thumb-piece of crust, and carved with a pocket-knife--are apt to
+ramble round the hedges, of course with the most innocent of motives,
+admiring the beauties of nature.  Slowly wandering like this, they cast
+a sidelong glance at their wire, set up in a "drock"--i.e. a bridge over
+a ditch formed of a broad flat stone--which chances to be a favourite
+highway of the rabbits.  Nowadays, in this age of draining, short barrel
+drains of brick or large glazed pipes are often let through thick banks;
+these are dry for weeks together, and hares slip through them.  A wire
+or trap set here is quite out of ordinary observation; and the keeper,
+who knows that he cannot examine every inch of ground, simplifies the
+process by quietly noting the movements of the men.  As he passes and
+repasses a field where they are at work day after day, and understands
+agricultural labour, he is aware that they have no necessity to visit
+hedgerows and mounds a hundred yards distant, and should he see anything
+of that kind the circle of his suspicions gradually narrows till he hits
+the exact spot and person.
+
+The gateways and gaps receive careful attention--unusual footmarks in
+the mud are looked for.  Sometimes he detects a trace of fur or
+feathers, or a bloodstain on the spars or rails, where a load of rabbits
+or game has been hung for a few minutes while the bearer rested.  The
+rabbit-holes in the banks are noted: this becomes so much a matter of
+habit as to be done almost unconsciously and without effort as he walks;
+and anything unusual--as the sand much disturbed, the imprint of a boot,
+the bushes broken or cut away for convenience of setting a net--is seen
+in an instant.  If there be any high ground--woods are often on a
+slope--the keeper has here a post whence to obtain a comprehensive
+survey, and he makes frequent use of this natural observatory,
+concealing himself behind a tree trunk.
+
+The lanes and roads and public footpaths that cross the estate near the
+preserves are a constant source of uneasiness.  Many fields are
+traversed by a perfect network of footpaths, half of which are of very
+little use but cannot be closed.  Nothing causes so much ill-will in
+rural districts as the attempt to divert or shut up a track like this.
+Cottagers are most tenacious of these "rights," and will rarely exchange
+them for any advantage.  "There always wur a path athwert thuck mead in
+the ould volk's time" is their one reply endlessly reiterated; and the
+owner of the property, rather than make himself unpopular, desists from
+persuasion.  The danger to game from these paths arises from the
+impossibility of stopping a suspicious character at once.  If he breaks
+through a hedge it is different; but the law is justly jealous of the
+subject's liberty on a public footpath, and you cannot turn him back.
+
+Neither is it of any use to search a man whose tools, to a moral
+certainty, are concealed in some hedge.  With his hands in his pockets,
+and a short pipe in his mouth, he can saunter along the side of a
+preserve if only a path, as is often the case, follows the edge; and
+by-and-by it grows dusk, and the keeper or keepers cannot be everywhere
+at once.  There is nothing to prevent such fellows as these from
+sneaking over an estate with a lurcher dog at their heels--a kind of dog
+gifted with great sagacity, nearly as swift as a greyhound, and much
+better adapted for picking up the game when overtaken, which is the
+greyhound's difficulty.  They can be taught to obey the faintest sign or
+sound from their owners.  If the latter imagine watchers to be about,
+the lurcher slinks along close behind, keeping strictly to the path.
+Presently, if the poacher but lifts his finger, away dashes the dog, and
+will miss nothing he comes across.  The lurcher has always borne an evil
+repute, which of course is the due not of the dog but of his master.  If
+a man had to get his living by the chase in Red Indian fashion, probably
+this would be the best breed for his purpose.  Many shepherds' dogs now
+have a cross of the lurcher in their strain, and are good at poaching.
+
+Sunday is the gamekeeper's worst day; the idle, rough characters from
+the adjacent town pour out into the country, and necessitate extra
+watchfulness.  On Sunday the keeper, out of respect to the day, does not
+indeed carry his gun, but he works yet harder than on week-days.  While
+the chimes are ringing to church he is on foot by the edge of the
+preserves.  He has to maintain a sort of surveillance over the
+beer-houses in the village, which is done with the aid of the district
+policeman, for they are not only the places where much of the game is
+sold, but the rendezvous of those who are planning a raid.
+
+If the policeman notices an unusual stir, or the arrival of strange men
+without any apparent business, he acquaints the keeper, who then takes
+care to double his sentinels, and personally visit them during the
+night.  This night-work is very trying after his long walks by day.  A
+great object is to be about early in the morning--just before the dawn:
+that is the time when the poachers return to examine their wires.  By
+day he often varies his rounds so as to appear upon the scene when least
+expected; and has regular trysting places, where his assistants meet him
+with their reports.
+
+The gipsies, who travel the road in caravans, give him endless trouble;
+they are adepts at poaching, and each van is usually accompanied by a
+couple of dogs.  The movements of these people are so irregular that it
+is impossible to be always ready for them.  They are suspected of being
+recipients of poached game, purchasing it from the local professionals.
+Under pretence of cutting skewer-wood, often called dogwood, which they
+split and sharpen for the butchers they wander across the open downs
+where it grows, camping in wild, unfrequented places, and finding plenty
+of opportunities for poaching.  Down land is most difficult to watch.
+
+Then the men who come out from the towns, ostensibly to gather primroses
+in the early spring, or ferns, which they hawk from door to door; and
+the watercress men, who are about the meadows and brooks twice a year,
+in spring and autumn, require constant supervision.  An innocent-looking
+basket or small sack-bag of mushrooms has before now, when turned upside
+down, been discovered to contain a couple of rabbits or a fine young
+leveret.  This detective work is, in fact, never finished.  There is no
+end to the tricks and subterfuges practised, and with all his experience
+and care the gamekeeper is frequently outwitted.
+
+The relations between the agricultural labourers and the keeper are not
+of the most cordial character; in fact, there is a ceaseless distrust
+upon the one hand and incessant attempts at over-reaching upon the
+other.  The ploughmen, the carters, shepherds, and foggers have so many
+opportunities as they go about the fields, and they never miss the
+chance of a good dinner or half-a-crown when presented to them.  Higher
+wages have not in the slightest degree diminished poaching, regular or
+occasional; on the contrary, from whatever cause, there is good reason
+to believe it on the increase.  If a labourer crossing a field sees a
+hare or rabbit crouching in his form, what is to prevent him from
+thrusting his prong like a spear suddenly through the animal and pinning
+him to the turf?  There are plenty of ways of hiding dead game, under
+straw or hay, in the thick beds of nettles which usually spring up
+outside or at the back of a cowshed.
+
+Why does the keeper take such a benevolent interest in the progress of
+spade-husbandry, as exemplified in allotment gardens near the village,
+which allotments are generally in a field set apart by the principal
+landowner for the purpose?  In person or by proxy the keeper is very
+frequently seen looking over the close-cropped hedge which surrounds the
+spot, and now and then he takes a walk up and down the narrow paths
+between the plots.  His dog sniffs about among the heaps of rubbish or
+under the potato-vines.  The men at work are remarkably civil and
+courteous to the gentleman in the velveteen jacket, who, on his side, is
+equally chatty with them; but both in their hearts know very well the
+why and wherefore of this interest in agriculture.  Almost all kinds of
+game are attracted by gardens, presupposing, of course, that they are
+situated at a distance from houses, as these allotments are.  There is a
+supply of fresh, succulent, food of various kinds: often too, after a
+large plot has been worked for garden produce, the tenant will sow it
+for barley or beans or oats, on the principle of rotation; and these
+small areas of grain have a singular fascination for pheasants, and
+hares linger in them.
+
+Rabbits, if undisturbed, are particularly fond of garden vegetables.  In
+spring and early summer they will make those short holes in which they
+bring forth their young under the potato-vines, finding the soil easy to
+work, dry, and the spot sheltered by the thick green stems and leaves.
+Both rabbits and hares do considerable damage if they are permitted the
+run of the place unchecked.  The tenants of the allotments, however,
+instead of driving them off, are anxious that they should come sniffing
+and limping over the plots in the gloaming, and are strongly suspected
+of allowing crops specially pleasing to game to remain in the ground
+till the very latest period in order that they may snare it.
+
+Much kindly talk has been uttered over allotments, and undoubtedly they
+are a great encouragement to the labourer; yet even this advantage is
+commonly abused.  The tenants have no ground of complaint as to damage
+to their crops, because the keeper, at a word from them, would lose not
+a moment of time in killing or driving away the intruder; and as an
+acknowledgment of honesty and in reparation of the mischief, if any, a
+couple of rabbits would be presented to the man who carried the
+complaint.  But the labourer, if he spies the tracks of a hare running
+into his plot of corn, or suspects that a pheasant is hiding there,
+carefully keeps that knowledge to himself.  He knows that a pheasant, if
+you can get close enough to it before it rises, is a clumsy bird, and
+large enough to offer a fair mark, and may be brought down with a stout
+stick dexterously thrown.  As very probably the pheasant is a young one
+and (not yet having undergone its baptism of fire) only recently
+regularly fed, it is almost tame and may be approached without
+difficulty.  This is why the keeper just looks round the allotment
+gardens now and then, and lets his dogs run about; for their noses are
+much more clever at discovering hidden fur or feathers than his eyes.
+
+In winter if the weather be severe, hares and rabbits are very bold, and
+will enter gardens though attached to dwelling-houses.  Sometimes when a
+vast double-mound hedge is grubbed, the ditches each side are left, and
+the interior space is ultimately converted into an osier-bed, osiers
+being rather profitable at present.  But before these are introduced it
+is necessary that the ground be well dug up, for it is full of roots and
+the seeds of weeds, which perhaps have lain dormant for years, but now
+spring up in wonderful profusion.  In consideration of cleansing the
+soil, and working it by digging, burning the weeds and rubbish, etc, the
+farmer allows one or two of his labourers to use it as a garden for the
+growth of potatoes, free of rent, for say a couple of years.  Potatoes
+are a crop which flourish in fresh-turned soil, and so they do very well
+over the arrangement.  But unfortunately as they dig and weed, etc, in
+the evenings after regular work, they have an excuse for their presence
+in the fields, and perhaps near preserves at a tempting period of the
+twenty-four hours.  The keeper, in short, is quite aware that some sly
+poaching goes on in this way.
+
+Another cause of unpleasantness between him and the cottagers arises
+from the dogs they maintain, generally curs, it is true, and not to all
+appearance capable of harm.  But in the early summer a mongrel cur can
+do as much mischief as a thoroughbred dog.  Young rabbits are easily
+overtaken when not much larger than rats, and at other seasons, when the
+game has grown better able to take care of itself, any kind of dog
+rambling loose in the woods and copses frightens it and unsettles it to
+an annoying degree.  Consequently, when a dog once begins to trespass,
+it is pretty sure to disappear for good--it is not necessary to indicate
+how--and though no actual evidence can be got against the keeper, he is
+accused of the destruction of the ugly, ill-bred "pet."  If a dog
+commences to hunt on his own account, he can only be broken of the habit
+by the utmost severity; and so it sometimes happens that other dogs
+besides those of the cottagers come to an untimely end by shot and gin.
+
+The keeper being a man with some true sense of sport, dislikes shooting
+dogs, though compelled to do so occasionally; he never fires at his own,
+and candidly admits that he hates to see a sportsman give way to anger
+in that manner.  The custom of "peppering" with shot a dog for
+disobedience or wildness, which was once very common in the field, has
+however gone a great deal into disuse.
+
+Shepherds, who often have to visit their flocks in the night--as at this
+season of the year, while lambing is in progress--who, in fact,
+sometimes sleep in the fields in a little wooden house on wheels built
+for the purpose, are strongly suspected of tampering with the hares
+scampering over the turnips by moonlight.  At harvest-time many strange
+men come into the district for the extra wages of reaping.  They rarely
+take lodgings--which, indeed, they might find some difficulty in
+obtaining--but in the warm summer weather sleep in the outhouses and
+sheds, with the permission of the owner.  Others camp in the open in the
+corner of a meadow, where the angle made by meeting hedges protects them
+from the wind, crouching round the embers of the fire which boils the
+pot and kettle.  This influx of strangers is not without its attendant
+anxiety to the keeper, who looks round now and then to see what is going
+on.
+
+Despite the ill-will in their hearts, the labourers are particularly
+civil to the keeper; he is, in fact, a considerable employer of labour--
+not on his own account--but in the woods and preserves.  He can often
+give men a job in the dead of winter, when farm work is scarce and the
+wages paid for it are less; such as hedge-cutting, mending the gaps in
+the fences, cleaning out ditches or the watercourses through the wood.
+
+Then there is an immense amount of ferreting to be done, and there is
+such an instinctive love of sport in every man's breast, that to assist
+in this work is almost an ambition; besides which, no doubt the chances
+afforded of an occasional private "bag" form a secret attraction.  One
+would imagine that there could be but little pleasure in crouching all
+day in a ditch, perhaps ankle-deep in ice-cold water, with flakes of
+snow driving in the face, and fingers numbed by the biting wind as it
+rushes through the bare hawthorn bushes, just to watch a rabbit jump out
+of a hole into a net, and to break his neck afterwards.  Yet so it is;
+and some men become so enamoured of this slow sport as to do nothing
+else the winter through; and as of course their employment depends
+entirely upon the will of the keeper, they are anxious to conciliate
+him.
+
+Despite therefore of missing cur dogs and straying cats which never
+return, the keeper is treated with marked deference by the cottagers.
+He is, nevertheless, fully aware of the concealed ill-will towards him;
+and perhaps this knowledge has contributed to render him more morose,
+and sharper of temper, and more suspicious of human nature than he would
+otherwise have been; for it never improves a man's character to have to
+be constantly watching his fellows.
+
+The streams are no more sacred from marauders than the woods and
+preserves.  The brooks and upper waters are not so full of fish as
+formerly, the canal into which they fall being netted so much; and
+another cause of the diminution is the prevalence of fish-poaching,
+especially for jack, during the spawning season and afterwards.  Though
+the keepers can check this within their own boundaries, it is not of
+much use.
+
+Fish-poaching is simple and yet clever in its way.  In the spawning time
+jack fish, which at other periods are apparently of a solitary
+disposition, go in pairs, and sometimes in trios, and are more tame than
+usual.  A long slender ash stick is selected, slender enough to lie
+light in the hand and strong enough to bear a sudden weight.  A loop and
+running noose are formed of a piece of thin copper wire, the other end
+of which is twisted round and firmly attached to the smaller end of the
+stick.  The loop is adjusted to the size of the fish--it should not be
+very much larger, else it will not draw up quick enough, nor too small,
+else it may touch and disturb the jack.  It does not take much practice
+to hit the happy medium.  Approaching the bank of the brook quietly, so
+as not to shake the ground, to the vibrations of which fish are
+peculiarly sensitive, the poacher tries if possible to avoid letting his
+shadow fall across the water.
+
+Some persons' eyes seem to have an extraordinary power of seeing through
+water, and of distinguishing at a glance a fish from a long swaying
+strip of dead brown flag, or the rotting pieces of wood which lie at the
+bottom.  The ripple of the breeze, the eddy at the curve, or the sparkle
+of the sunshine cannot deceive them; while others, and by far the
+greater number, are dazzled and see nothing.  It is astonishing how few
+persons seem to have the gift of sight when in the field.
+
+The poacher, having marked his prey in the shallow yonder, gently
+extends his rod slowly across the water three or four yards higher up
+the stream, and lets the wire noose sink without noise till it almost or
+quite touches the bottom.  It is easier to guide the noose to its
+destination when it occasionally touches the mud, for refraction
+distorts the true position of objects in water, and accuracy is
+important.  Gradually the wire swims down with the current, just as if
+it were any ordinary twig or root carried along, such as the jack is
+accustomed to see, and he therefore feels no alarm.  By degrees the loop
+comes closer to the fish, till with steady hand the poacher slips it
+over the head, past the long vicious jaws and gills, past the first
+fins, and pauses when it has reached a place corresponding to about
+one-third of the length of the fish, reckoning from the head.  That end
+of the jack is heavier than the other, and the "lines" of the body are
+there nearly straight.  Thus the poacher gets a firm hold--for a fish,
+of course, is slippery--and a good balance.  If the operation is
+performed gently the jack will remain quite still, though the wire rubs
+against his side: silence and stillness have such a power over all
+living creatures.  The poacher now clears his arm and, with a sudden
+jerk, lifts the fish right out of the stream and lands him on the sward.
+
+So sharp is the grasp of the wire that it frequently cuts its way
+through the scales, leaving a mark plainly visible when the jack is
+offered for sale.  The suddenness and violence of the compression seem
+to disperse the muscular forces, and the fish appears dead for the
+moment.  Very often, indeed, it really is killed by the jerk.  This
+happens when the loop either has not passed far enough along the body or
+has slipped and seized the creature just at the gills.  It then garottes
+the fish.  If, on the other hand, the wire has been passed too far
+towards the tail, it slips off that way, the jack falling back into the
+water with a broad white band where the wire has scraped the scales.
+Fish thus marked may not unfrequently be seen in the stream.  The jack,
+from its shape, is specially liable to capture in this manner; long and
+well balanced, the wire has every chance of holding it.  This poaching
+is always going on; the implement is so easily obtained and concealed.
+The wire can be carried in the pocket, and the stick may be cut from an
+adjacent copse.
+
+The poachers observe that after a fish has once escaped from an attempt
+of the kind it is ever after far more difficult of capture.  The first
+time the jack was still and took no notice of the insidious approach of
+the wire gliding along towards it; but the next--unless a long interval
+elapses before a second trial--the moment it comes near he is away.  At
+each succeeding attempt, whether hurt or not, he grows more and more
+suspicious, till at last to merely stand still or stop while walking on
+the bank is sufficient for him; he is off with a swish of the tail to
+the deeper water, leaving behind him a cloud, so to say, of mud swept up
+from the bottom to conceal the direction of his flight.  For it would
+almost seem as if the jack throws up this mud on purpose; if much
+disturbed he will quite discolour the brook.  The wire does a good deal
+to depopulate the stream, and is altogether a deadly implement.
+
+But a clever fish-poacher can land a jack even without a wire, and with
+no better instrument than a willow stick cut from the nearest osier-bed.
+The willow, or withy as it is usually called, is remarkably pliant, and
+can be twisted into any shape.  Selecting a long slender wand, the
+poacher strips it of leaves, gives the smaller end a couple of twists,
+making a noose and running knot of the stick itself.  The mode of using
+it is precisely similar to that followed with a wire, but it requires a
+little more dexterity, because, of course, the wood, flexible as it is,
+does not draw up so quickly or so closely as the metal, neither does it
+take so firm a grip.  A fish once caught by a wire can be slung about
+almost anyhow, it holds so tightly.  The withy noose must be jerked up
+the instant it passes under that part of the jack where the weight of
+the fish is balanced--the centre of gravity; if there is an error in
+this respect it should be towards the head, rather than towards the
+tail.  Directly the jack is thrown out upon the sward he must be seized,
+or he will slip from the noose, and possibly find his way back again
+into the water.  With a wire there is little risk of that; but then the
+withy does not cut its way into the fish.
+
+This trick is often accomplished with the common withy--not that which
+grows on pollard-trees, but in osier-beds; that on the trees is brittle.
+But a special kind is sought for the purpose, and for any other
+requiring extreme flexibility.  It is, I think, locally called the stone
+osier, and it does not grow so tall as the common sorts.  It will tie
+like string.  Being so short, for poaching fish it has to be fastened to
+a thicker and longer stick, which is easily done; and some prefer it to
+wire because it looks more natural in the water and does not alarm the
+fish, while, should the keeper be about, it is easily cut up in several
+pieces and thrown away.  I have heard of rabbits, and even hares, being
+caught with a noose of this kind of withy, which is as "tough as wire;"
+and yet it seems hardly possible, as it is so much thicker and would be
+seen.  Still, both hares and rabbits, when playing and scampering about
+at night, are sometimes curiously heedless, and foolish enough to run
+their necks into anything.
+
+With such a rude implement as this some fish-poachers will speedily land
+a good basket of pike.  During the spawning season, as was observed
+previously, jack go in pairs, and now and then in trios, and of this the
+poacher avails himself to take more than one at a haul.  The fish lie so
+close together--side by side just at that time--that it is quite
+practicable, with care and judgment, to slip a wire over two at once.
+When near the bank two may even be captured with a good withy noose:
+with a wire a clever hand will make a certainty of it.  The keeper says
+that on one occasion he watched a man operating just without his
+jurisdiction, who actually succeeded in wiring three jacks at once and
+safely landed them on the grass.  They were small fish, about a pound to
+a pound and a half each, and the man was but a few minutes in
+accomplishing the feat.  It sometimes happens that after a heavy flood,
+when the brook has been thick with suspended mud for several days, so
+soon as it has gone down fish are more than usually plentiful, as if the
+flood had brought them up-stream: poachers are then particularly busy.
+
+Fresh fish--that is, those who are new to that particular part of the
+brook--are, the poachers say, much more easily captured than those who
+have made it their home for some time.  They are, in fact, more easily
+discovered; they have not yet found out all the nooks and corners, the
+projecting roots and the hollows under the banks, the dark places where
+a black shadow falls from overhanging trees and is with difficulty
+pierced even by a practised eye.  They expose themselves in open places,
+and meet an untimely fate.
+
+Besides pike, tench are occasionally wired, and now and then even a
+large roach; the tench, though a bottom fish, in the shallow brooks may
+be sometimes detected by the eye, and is not a difficult fish to
+capture.  Every one has heard of tickling trout: the tench is almost
+equally amenable to titillation.  Lying at full length on the sward,
+with his hat off lest it should fall into the water, the poacher peers
+down into the hole where he has reason to think tench may be found.
+This fish is so dark in colour when viewed from above that for a minute
+or two, till the sight adapts itself to the dull light of the water, the
+poacher cannot distinguish what he is searching for.  Presently, having
+made out the position of the tench, he slips his bared arm in slowly,
+and without splash, and finds little or no trouble as a rule in getting
+his hand close to the fish without alarming it: tench, indeed, seem
+rather sluggish.  He then passes his fingers under the belly and gently
+rubs it.  Now it would appear that he has the fish in his power, and has
+only to grasp it.  But grasping is not so easy; or rather it is not so
+easy to pull a fish up through two feet of superincumbent water which
+opposes the quick passage of the arm.  The gentle rubbing in the first
+place seems to soothe the fish, so that it becomes perfectly quiescent,
+except that it slowly rises up in the water, and thus enables the hand
+to get into proper position for the final seizure.  When it has risen up
+towards the surface sufficiently far--the tench must not be driven too
+near the surface, for it does not like light and will glide away--the
+poacher suddenly snaps as it were; his thumb and fingers, if he possibly
+can manage it, closing on the gills.  The body is so slimy and slippery
+that there alone a firm hold can be got, though the poacher will often
+flick the fish out of water in an instant so soon as it is near the
+surface.  Poachers evidently feel as much pleasure in practising these
+tricks as the most enthusiastic angler using the implements of
+legitimate sport.
+
+No advantage is thought too unfair to be taken of fish; nothing too
+brutally unsportsmanlike.  I have seen a pike killed with a prong as he
+lay basking in the sun at the top of the water.  A labourer stealthily
+approached, and suddenly speared him with one of the sharp points of the
+prong or hayfork he carried: the pike was a good sized one too.
+
+The stream, where not strictly preserved, is frequently netted without
+the slightest regard to season.  The net is stretched from bank to bank,
+and watched by one man, while the other walks up the brook thirty or
+forty yards, and drives the fish down the current into the bag.  With a
+long pole he thrashes the water, making a good deal of splash, and
+rousing up the mud, which fish dislike and avoid.  The pole is thrust
+into every hiding-place, and pokes everything out.  The watcher by the
+net knows by the bobbing under of the corks when a shoal of roach and
+perch, or a heavy pike, has darted into it, and instantly draws the
+string and makes his haul.  In this way, by sections at a time, the
+brook, perhaps for half a mile, is quite cleared out.  Jack, however,
+sometimes escape; they seem remarkably shrewd and quick to learn.  If
+the string is not immediately drawn when they touch the net, they are
+out of it without a moment's delay: they will double back up-stream
+through all the splashing and mud, and some will even slide as it were
+between the net and the bank if it does not quite touch in any place,
+and so get away.
+
+In its downward course the brook irrigates many water meadows, and to
+drive the stream out upon them there are great wooden hatches.
+Sometimes a gang of men, discovering that there is a quantity of fish
+thereabouts, will force down a hatch which at once shuts off or greatly
+diminishes the volume of water flowing down the brook, and then rapidly
+construct a dam across the current below it with the mud of the shore.
+Above this dam they thrash the water with poles and drive all the fish
+towards it, and then make a second dam above the first so as to enclose
+them in a short space.  In the making of these dams speed is an object,
+or the water will accumulate and flow over the hatch; so hurdles are
+used, as they afford a support to the mud hastily thrown up.  Then with
+buckets, bowls, and "scoops," they bale out the water between the two
+dams, and quickly reduce their prey to wriggling helplessness.  In this
+way whole baskets full of fish have been taken, together with eels; and
+nothing so enclosed can escape.
+
+The mere or lake by the wood is protected by sharp stakes set at the
+bottom, which would tear poachers' nets; and the keeper does not think
+any attempt to sweep it has been made of late years, it is too well
+watched.  But he believes that night lines are frequently laid: a
+footpath runs along one shore for some distance, and gives easy access,
+and such lines may be overlooked.  He is certain that eels are taken in
+that way despite his vigilance.
+
+Trespassing for crayfish, too, causes much annoyance.  I have known men
+to get bodily up to the waist into the great ponds, a few of which yet
+remain, after carp.  These fish have a curious habit of huddling up in
+hollows under the banks; and those who know where these hollows and
+holes are situate can take them by hand if they can come suddenly upon
+them.  It is said that now and then fish are raked out of the ponds with
+a common rake (such as is used in haymaking) when, lying on the mud in
+winter.
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE.
+
+GUERILLA WARFARE--GUN ACCIDENTS--BLACK SHEEP.
+
+Scarcely a keeper can be found who has not got one or more tales to tell
+of encounters with poachers, sometimes of a desperate character.  There
+is a general similarity in most of the accounts, which exhibit a mixture
+of ferocity and cowardice on the side of the intruders.  The following
+case, which occurred some years since, brings these contradictory
+features into relief.  The narrator was not the owner of the man-trap
+described previously.
+
+There had been a great deal of poaching before the affray took place,
+and finally it grew to horse-stealing: one night two valuable horses
+were taken from the home park.  This naturally roused the indignation of
+the owner of the estate, who resolved to put a stop to it.  Orders were
+given that if shots were heard in the woods the news should be at once
+transmitted to headquarters, no matter at what hour of the night.
+
+One brilliant moonlight night, frosty and clear, the gang came again.  A
+messenger went to the house, and, as previously arranged, two separate
+parties set out to intercept the rascals.  The head keeper had one
+detachment, whose object it was to secure the main outlet from the wood
+towards the adjacent town--to cut off retreat.  The young squire had
+charge of the other, which, with the under keeper as guide, was to work
+its way through the wood and drive the gang into the ambuscade.  In the
+last party were six men and a mastiff dog; four of the men had guns, the
+gentleman only a stout cudgel.
+
+They came upon the gang--or rather a part of it, for the poachers were
+somewhat scattered--in a "drive" which ran between tall firs, and was
+deep in shadow.  With a shout the four or five men in the "drive," or
+green lane, slipped back behind the trees, and two fired, killing the
+mastiff, dog on the spot and "stinging" one man in the legs.  Quick as
+they were, the under keeper, to use his own words, "got a squint of one
+fellow as I knowed; and I lets drive both barrels in among the firs.
+But, bless you! it were all over in such a minute that I can't hardly
+tell 'ee how it were.  Our squire ran straight at 'em; but our men hung
+back, though they had their guns and he had nothing but a stick.  I just
+seen him, as the smoke rose, hitting at a fellow; and then, before I
+could step, I hears a crack, and the squire he was down on the sward.
+One of them beggars had come up behind, and swung his gun round, and
+fetched him a purler on the back of his head.  I picked him up, but he
+was as good as dead, to look at;" and in the confusion the poachers
+escaped.  They had probably been put up to the ambuscade by one of the
+underlings, as they did not pass that way, but seemed to separate and
+get off by various paths.  The "young squire" had to be carried home,
+and was ill for months, but ultimately recovered.
+
+Not one of the gang was ever captured, notwithstanding that a member of
+it was recognised.  Next day an examination of the spot resulted in the
+discovery of a trail of blood upon the grass and dead leaves, which
+proved that one of them had been wounded at the first discharge.  It was
+traced for a short distance and then lost.  Not till the excitement had
+subsided did the under keeper find that he had been hit; one pellet had
+scored his cheek under the eye, and left a groove still visible.
+
+Some time afterwards a gun was picked up in the ferns, all rusty from
+exposure, which had doubtless been dropped in the flight.  The barrel
+was very short--not more than eighteen inches in length--having been
+filed off for convenience of taking to pieces, so as to be carried in a
+pocket made on purpose in the lining of the coat.  Now, with a barrel so
+short as that, sport, in the proper sense of the term, would be
+impossible; the shot would scatter so quickly after leaving the muzzle
+that the sportsman would never be able to approach near enough.  The use
+of this gun was clearly to shoot pheasants at roost.
+
+The particular keeper in whose shed the man-trap still lies among the
+lumber thinks that the class of poachers who come in gangs are as
+desperate now as ever, and as ready with their weapons.  Breech-loading
+guns have rendered such affrays extremely dangerous on account of the
+rapidity of fire.  Increased severity of punishment may deter a man from
+entering a wood; but once he is there and compromised, the dread of a
+heavy sentence is likely to make him fight savagely.
+
+The keeper himself is not altogether averse to a little fisticuffing, in
+a straightforward kind of way, putting powder and shot on one side.  He
+rather relishes what he calls "leathering" a poacher with a good tough
+ground-ash stick.  He gets the opportunity now and then, coming
+unexpectedly on a couple of fellows rabbiting in a ditch, and he
+recounts the "leathering" he has frequently administered with great
+gusto.  He will even honestly admit that on one occasion--just one, not
+more--he got himself most thoroughly thrashed by a pair of hulking
+fellows.
+
+"Some keepers," he says, "are always summoning people, but it don't do
+no good.  What's the use of summoning a chap for sneaking about with a
+cur dog and a wire in his pocket?  His mates in the village clubs
+together and pays his fine, and he laughs at you.  Why, down in the town
+there them mechanic chaps have got a regular society to pay these here
+fines for trespass, and the bench they claps it on strong on purpose.
+But it ain't no good; they forks out the tin, and then goes and haves a
+spree at a public.  Besides which, if I can help it I don't much care to
+send a man to gaol--this, of course, is between you and me--unless he
+uses his gun.  If he uses his gun there ain't nothing too bad for him.
+But these here prisons--every man as ever I knowed go to gaol always
+went twice, and kept on going.  There ain't nothing in the world like a
+good ground-ash stick.  When you gives a chap a sound dressing with that
+there article, he never shows his face in your wood no more.  There's
+fields about here where them mechanics goes as regular as Saturday comes
+to try their dogs, as they calls it--and a precious lot of dogs they
+keeps among 'em.  But they never does it on this estate: they knows my
+habits, you see.  There's less summonses goes up from this property than
+any other for miles, and it's all owing to this here stick.  A bit of
+ash is the best physic for poaching as I knows on."
+
+I suspect that he is a little mistaken in his belief that it is the
+dread of his personal prowess which keeps trespassers away--it is rather
+due to his known vigilance and watchfulness.  His rather hasty notions
+of taking the law into his own hands are hardly in accord with the
+spirit of the times; but some allowance must be made for the
+circumstances of his life, and it is my object to picture the man as he
+is.
+
+There are other dangers from guns beside these.  A brown gaiter
+indistinctly seen moving some distance off in the tall dry grass or
+fern--the wearer hidden by the bushes--has not unfrequently been
+mistaken for game in the haste and excitement of shooting, and received
+a salute of leaden hail.  This is a danger to which sportsman and keeper
+are both liable, especially when large parties are engaged in rapid
+firing; sometimes a particular corner gets very "hot," being enfiladed
+for the moment by several guns.  Yet, when the great number of men who
+shoot is considered, the percentage of serious accidents is small
+indeed; more fatal accidents probably happen through unskilled persons
+thoughtlessly playing with guns supposed not to be loaded, or pointing
+them in joke, than ever occur in the field.  The ease with which the
+breechloader can be unloaded or reloaded again prevents most persons
+from carrying it indoors charged; and this in itself is a gain on the
+side of safety, for perhaps half the fatal accidents take place within
+doors.
+
+In farmsteads where the owner had the right of shooting the
+muzzle-loader was--and still is, when not converted--kept loaded on the
+rack.  The starlings, perhaps, are making havoc of the thatch, tearing
+out straw by straw, and working the holes in which they form their nests
+right through, till in the upper story daylight is visible.  When the
+whistling and calling of the birds tell him they are busy above, the
+owner slips quickly out with his gun, and brings down three or four at
+once as they perch in a row on the roof-tree.  Or a labourer leaves a
+message that there is a hare up in the meadow or some wild ducks have
+settled in the brook.  But men who have a gun always in their hands
+rarely meet with a mishap.  The starlings, by-the-by, soon learn the
+trick, and are cunning enough to notice which door their enemy generally
+comes out at, where he can get the best shot; and the moment the handle
+of that particular door is turned, off they go.
+
+The village blacksmith will tell you of more than one narrow escape he
+has had with guns, and especially muzzle-loaders, brought to him to
+repair.  Perhaps a charge could not be ignited through the foulness of
+the nipple, and the breech had to be unscrewed in the vice; now and then
+the breech-piece was so tightly jammed that it could not be turned.
+Once, being positively assured that there was nothing but some dirt in
+the barrel and no powder, he was induced to place it in the forge fire;
+when--bang! a charge of shot smashed the window, and the burning coals
+flew about in a fiery shower.  In one instance a blacksmith essayed to
+clear out a barrel which had become choked with a long iron rod made
+red-hot: the explosion which followed drove the rod through his hand and
+into the wooden wall of the shed.  Smiths seem to have a particular
+fondness for meddling with guns, and generally have one stowed away
+somewhere.
+
+It was not wonderful that accidents happened with the muzzle-loaders,
+considering the manner in which they were handled by ignorant persons.
+The keeper declares that many of the cottagers, who have an old
+single-barrel, ostensibly to frighten the birds from their gardens, do
+not think it properly loaded until the ramrod jumps out of the barrel.
+They ram the charge, and especially the powder, with such force that the
+rebound sends the rod right out, and he has seen those who were not
+cottagers follow the same practice.  A close-fitting wad, too tight for
+the barrel, will sometimes cause the rod to spring high above the
+muzzle: as it is pushed quickly down it compresses the air in the tube,
+which expands with a sharp report and drives the rod out.
+
+Loading with paper, again, has often resulted in mischief: sometimes a
+smouldering fragment remains in the barrel after the discharge, and on
+pouring in powder from the flask it catches and runs like a train up to
+the flask, which may burst in the hand.  For this reason to this day
+some of the old farmers, clinging to ancient custom, always load with a
+clay tobacco pipe-bowl, snapped off from the stem for the purpose.  It
+is supposed to hold just the proper charge, and as it is detached from
+the horn or flask there is no danger of fire being communicated to the
+magazine; so that an explosion, if it happened, would do no serious
+injury, being confined to the loose powder of the charge itself.  Paper
+used as wads will sometimes continue burning for a short time after
+being blown out of the gun, and may set fire to straw, or even dry
+grass.
+
+The old folk, therefore, when it was necessary to shoot the starlings on
+the thatch, or the sparrows and chaffinches which congregate in the
+rickyards in such extraordinary numbers--in short, to fire off a gun
+anywhere near inflammable materials--made it a rule to load with green
+leaves, which would not burn and could do no harm.  The ivy leaf was a
+special favourite for the purpose--the broad-leaved ivy which grows
+against houses and in gardens--because it is stout, about the right size
+to double up and fold into a wad, and is available in winter, being an
+evergreen, when most other leaves are gone.  I have seen guns loaded
+with ivy leaves many times.  When a gun gets foul the ramrod is apt to
+stick tight if paper is used after pushing it home, and unless a vice be
+handy no power will draw it out.  In this dilemma the old plan used to
+be to fire it into a hayrick, standing at a short distance; the hay,
+yielding slightly, prevented the rod from breaking to pieces when it
+struck.
+
+Most men who have had much to do with guns have burst one or more.  The
+keeper in the course of years has had several accidents of the kind; but
+none since the breech-loader has come into general use, the reason of
+course being that two charges cannot be inadvertently inserted one above
+the other, as frequently occurred in the old guns.
+
+I had a muzzle-loading gun burst in my hands some time since: the
+breech-piece split, and the nipple, hammer, and part of the barrel there
+blew out.  Fortunately no injury was done; and I should not note it
+except for the curious effect upon the tympanum of the ear.  The first
+sense was that of a stunning blow on the head; on recovering from which
+the distinction between one sound and another seemed quite lost.  The
+ear could not separate or define them, and whether it was a person
+speaking, a whistle, the slamming of a door, or the neigh of a horse, it
+was all the same.  Tone, pitch, variation there was none.  Though
+perfectly, and in fact painfully, audible, all sounds were converted
+into a miserable jangling noise, exactly like that made when, a wire in
+a piano has come loose and jingles.  This annoying state of things
+lasted three days, after which it gradually went off, and in a week had
+entirely disappeared.  Probably the sound of the explosion had been much
+increased by the cheek slightly touching the stock in the moment of
+firing, the jar of the wood adding to the vibration.  This, gun belonged
+to another person, and was caught up, already loaded, to take advantage
+of a favourable chance; it is noticeable that half the accidents happen
+with a strange gun.
+
+Shot plays curious freaks sometimes: I know a case in which a gun was
+accidentally discharged in a dairy paved as most dairies are with stone
+flags.  The muzzle was pointed downwards at the time--the shot struck
+the smooth stone floor, glanced off and up and hit another person
+standing almost at right angles, causing a painful wound.  It is a
+marvel that more bird-keepers do not get injured by the bursting of the
+worn-out firelocks used to frighten birds from the seed.  Some of these
+are not only rusty, but so thin at the muzzle as almost to cut the hand
+if it accidentally comes into contact with any force.
+
+A collection of curious old guns might be made in the villages; the
+flint-locks are nearly all gone, but there are plenty of single-barrels
+in existence and use which were converted from that ancient system.  In
+the farmhouses here and there may be found such a weapon, half a century
+old or more, with a barrel not quite equal in length to the punt-gun,
+but so long that, when carried under the arm of a tall man, the muzzle
+touches the ground where it is irregular in level.  It is slung up to
+the beam across the ceiling with leathern thongs--one loop for the
+barrel and the other for the stock.  It is still serviceable, having
+been kept dry; and the owner will tell you that he has brought down
+pigeons with it at seventy yards.
+
+Every man believes that his particular gun is the best in the locality
+to kill.  The owner of this cumbrous weapon, if you exhibit an interest
+in its history, will take you into the fields and point out a spot where
+forty years ago he or his immediate ancestor shot four or five wild
+geese at once, resting the barrel on the branch of a tree in the hedge
+and sending a quarter of a pound of lead whistling among the flock.  The
+spot the wild geese used to visit in the winter is still remembered,
+though they come there no more; drains and cultivation having driven
+them away from that southern district.  In the course of the winter,
+perhaps, a small flock may be seen at a great height passing over, but
+they do not alight, and in some years are not observed at all.
+
+There is a trick sometimes practised by poachers which enables them to
+make rabbits bolt from their holes without the assistance of a ferret.
+It is a chemical substance emitting a peculiar odour, and, if placed in
+the burrows, drives the rabbits out.  Chemical science, indeed, has been
+called to the aid of poaching in more ways than one: fish, for instance,
+are sometimes poisoned, or killed by an explosion of dynamite.  These
+latter practices have, however, not yet come into general use, being
+principally employed by those only who have had some experience of
+mining or quarrying.
+
+There is a saying that an old poacher makes the best gamekeeper, on the
+principle of setting a thief to catch a thief: a maxim, however, of
+doubtful value, since no other person could so thoroughly appreciate the
+tempting opportunities which must arise day after day.  That keepers
+themselves are sometimes the worst of depredators must be admitted.
+Hitherto I have chiefly described the course of action followed by
+honest and conscientious men, truly anxious for their employers'
+interests, and taking a personal pride in a successful shooting season.
+But there exists a class of keepers of a very different order, who have
+done much to bring sport itself into unmerited odium.
+
+The blackleg keeper is often a man of some natural ability--a plausible,
+obsequious rascal, quick in detecting the weak points of his employer's
+character, and in practising upon and distorting what were originally
+generous impulses.  His game mainly depends upon gaining the entire
+confidence of his master; and, not being embarrassed by considerations
+of self-esteem, he is not choice in the use of means to that end.  He
+knows that if he can thoroughly worm himself into his employer's good
+opinion the unfavourable reports which may be set afloat against him
+will be regarded as the mere tittle-tattle of envy; for it is often an
+amiable weakness on the part of masters who are really attached to their
+servants to maintain a kind of partisanship on behalf of those whom they
+have once trusted.
+
+Such a servant finds plentiful occasions for dexterously gratifying the
+love of admiration innate in us all.  The manliest athlete and frankest
+amateur--who would blush at the praise of social equals--finds it hard
+to resist the apparently bluff outspoken applause of his inferiors
+bestowed on his prowess in field sports, whether rowing or riding, with
+rod or gun.  Of course it frequently happens that the sportsman really
+does excel as a shot; but that in no degree lessens the insidious effect
+of the praise which seems extorted in the excitement of the moment, and
+to come forth with unpremeditated energy.
+
+The next step is to establish a common ground of indignation; for it is
+to be observed that those who unite in abuse of a third person have a
+stronger bond of sympathy than those who mutually admire another.  If by
+accident some unfortunate, _contretemps_ should cause a passing
+irritation between his master and the owner of a neighbouring estate,
+the keeper loses no opportunity of heaping coals upon the fire.  He
+brings daily reports of trespass.  Now the other party's keepers have
+been beating a field beyond their boundaries; now they have ferreted a
+bank to which they have no right.  Another time they have prevented
+straying pheasants from returning to the covers by intercepting their
+retreat; and a score of similar tricks.  Or perhaps it is the master of
+a pack of hounds against whom insinuations are directed: cubs are not
+destroyed sufficiently, and the pheasants are eaten daily.
+
+Sometimes it is a tenant-farmer with a long lease, who cannot be quickly
+ejected, who has to bear the brunt of these attacks.  He is accused of
+trapping hares and rabbits: he sets the traps so close to the preserves
+that the pheasants are frequently caught and mortally injured; he is
+suspected of laying poisoned grain about.  Not content with this he
+carries his malice so far as to cause the grass or other crops in which
+outlying nests or young broods are sheltered to be cut before it is
+ripe, with the object of destroying or driving them away; and he
+presents the mowers whose scythes mutilate game with a quart of beer as
+reward, or furnishes his shepherds with lurchers for poaching.  He
+encourages the gipsies to encamp in the neighbourhood and carry on
+nightly expeditions by allowing them the use of a field in which to put
+their vans and horses.  With such accounts as these, supported by what
+looks like evidence, the blackleg keeper gradually works his employer
+into a state of intense irritation, meantime reaping the reward of the
+incorruptible guardian and shrewd upright servitor.
+
+At the same time, in the haze of suspicion he has created, the rascal
+finds a cloak for his own misdeeds.  These poachers, trespassers,
+gipsies, foxes, and refractory tenants afford a useful excuse to account
+for the comparative scarcity of game.  What on earth has become of the
+birds, and where the dickens are the hares? asks the angry proprietor.
+In the spring he recollects being shown by the keeper, with modest
+pride, some hundreds of young pheasants, flourishing exceedingly.  Now
+he finds the broods have strangely dwindled, and he is informed that
+these enemies against whom all along he has been warned have made short
+work of them.  If this explanation seems scarcely sufficient, there is
+always some inexplicable disease to bear the blame: the birds had been
+going on famously when suddenly they were seized by a mysterious
+epidemic which decimated their numbers.
+
+All this is doubly annoying, because, in addition to the loss of
+anticipated sport, there has been an exorbitant expenditure.  The larger
+the number of young broods of pheasants early in the year the better for
+the dishonest keeper, who has more chances of increasing his own profit,
+both directly and indirectly.  In the first place, there is the little
+business of buying eggs, not without commissions.  More profit is found
+in the supply of food for the birds: extras and petty disbursements
+afford further room for pickings.
+
+Then, when the game has been spirited away, the keeper's object is to
+induce his employer to purchase full-grown pheasants--another chance of
+secret gratuities--and to turn them out for the battue.  That
+institution is much approved of by keepers of this character, for, the
+pheasants being confined to a small area, there is less personal
+exertion than is involved in walking over several thousand acres to look
+after hares and partridges.
+
+By poisoning his master's mind against some one he not only covers these
+proceedings but secures himself from the explanation which if listened
+to might set matters right.  The accused, attempting to explain, finds a
+strong prejudice against him, and turns away in dudgeon.  Such underhand
+tricks sometimes cause mischief in a whole district.  An unscrupulous
+keeper may set people of all ranks at discord with each other.
+
+In these malpractices, and in the disposal of game which is bulky, he is
+occasionally assisted by other keepers of congenial character engaged
+upon adjacent estates.  Gentlemen on intimate terms naturally imagine
+that their keepers mutually assist each other in the detection of
+poaching--meeting by appointment, for instance, at night, as the police
+do, to confer upon their beats.  When two or three are thus in league it
+is not difficult for them to dispose of booty they quickly get into
+communication with professional receivers; and instances have been known
+in which petticoats have formed a cover for a steady if small illegal
+transport of dead game over the frontier.
+
+For his own profit a keeper of this kind may indeed be trusted to
+prevent poaching on the part of other persons, whose gains would be his
+loss, since there would remain less for him to smuggle.  Very probably
+it may come to be acknowledged on all sides that he is watchful and
+always about: an admission that naturally tends to raise him in the
+esteem of his employer.
+
+Those who could tell tales--his subordinate assistants--are all more or
+less implicated, as in return for their silence they are permitted to
+get pickings: a dozen rabbits now and then, good pay for little work,
+and plenty of beer.  If one of them lets out strange facts in his cups,
+it signifies nothing: no one takes any heed of a labourer's beerhouse
+talk.  The steward or bailiff has strong suspicions, perhaps, but his
+motions are known, and his prying eyes defeated.  As for the tenants,
+they groan and bear it.
+
+It is to be regretted that new and then the rural policeman becomes an
+accomplice in these nefarious practices.  His position of necessity
+brings him much into contact with the keepers of the district within his
+charge.  If they are a "shady" lot, what with plenty of drink, good
+fellowship, presents of game, and insidious suggestions of profit, it is
+not surprising that a man whose pay is not the most liberal should
+gradually fall away from the path of duty.  The keeper can place a great
+temptation in his way--i.e. occasional participation in shooting when
+certain persons are absent: there are few indeed who can resist the
+opportunity of enjoying sport.  The rural constable often has a beat of
+very wide area, thinly populated: it is difficult to tell where he may
+be; he has a reasonable pretext for being about at all hours, and it is
+impossible that he should be under much supervision.  Perhaps he may
+have a taste for dogs, and breed them for sale, if not openly, on the
+sly.  Now the keeper can try these animals, or even break them in in a
+friendly way; and when once he has committed himself, and winked at what
+is going on, the constable feels that he may as well join and share
+altogether.  At outlying wayside "publics" the keeper and the constable
+may carouse to the top of their bent: the landlord is only too glad to
+be on good terms with them; his own little deviations pass unnoticed,
+and if by accident they are discovered he has a friend at court to give
+him a good character.
+
+The worthy pair, have an engine of oppression in their hands which
+effectually overawes the cottagers: they can accuse them of poaching;
+and if not proceeding to the ultimatum of a summons, which might not
+suit their convenience, can lay them under suspicion, which may result
+in notice to quit their cottages, or to give up their allotment gardens;
+and a garden is almost as important to a cottager as his weekly wages.
+In this way a landlord whose real disposition may be most generous may
+be made to appear a perfect tyrant, and be disliked by the whole
+locality.  It is to the interest of the keeper and the constable to
+obtain a conviction now and then; it gives them the character of
+vigilance.
+
+Sometimes a blackleg keeper, not satisfied with the plunder of the
+estate under his guardianship must needs encroach on the lands of
+neighbouring farmers occupying under small owners; and so further
+ill-will is caused.  In the end an exposure takes place, and the
+employer finds to his extreme mortification how deeply he has been
+deceived; but the discovery may not be made for years.  Of course all
+keepers of this character are not systematically vicious: many are only
+guilty occasionally, when a peculiarly favourable opportunity offers.
+
+Another class of keeper is rather passively than actively bad.  This is
+the idle man, whose pipe is ever in his mouth and whose hands are always
+in his pockets.  He is often what is called a good-natured fellow--
+soft-spoken, respectful, and willing; liked by everybody; a capital
+comrade in his own class, and, in fact, with too many friends of a
+certain set.
+
+Gamekeeping is an occupation peculiarly favourable to loafing if a man
+is inclined that way.  He can sit on the rails and gates, lounge about
+the preserves, go to sleep on the sward in the shade; call at the
+roadside inn, and, leaning his gun against the tree from which the sign
+hangs, quaff his quart in indolent dignity.  By degrees he easily falls
+into bad habits, takes too much liquor, finds his hands unsteady,
+becomes too lazy to repress poaching (which is a weed that must be
+constantly pulled up, or it will grow with amazing rapidity), and
+finally is corrupted, and shares the proceeds of bolder rascals.  His
+assistants do as they please.  He has no control over them: they know
+too much about him.
+
+It is a curious fact that there are poaching villages and non-poaching
+villages.  Out of a dozen or more parishes forming a petty sessional
+district one or two will become notorious for this propensity.  The
+bench never meet without a case from them, either for actual poaching or
+some cognate offence.  The drinking, fighting, dishonesty, low gambling,
+seem ceaseless--like breeding like--till the place becomes a nest of
+rascality.  Men hang about at the public-houses all day, betting on
+horses, loitering; a blight seems to fall upon them, and a bad repute
+clings to the spot for years after the evil itself has been eradicated.
+
+If a weak keeper gets among such a set as this he succumbs; and the same
+cause hastens the moral decay of the constable.  The latter has a most
+difficult part to maintain.  If he is disposed to carry out the strict
+letter of his instructions, that does not do--there is a prejudice
+against too much severity.  English feeling is anti-Draconian; and even
+the respectable inhabitants would rather endure some little rowdyism
+than witness an over interference with liberty.  If the constable is
+good-natured, and loth to take strong measures, he either becomes a
+semi-accomplice or sinks to a nonentity.  It is difficult to find a man
+capable of controlling such a class; it requires tact, and something of
+the gift of governing men.
+
+By contact with bad characters a weak keeper may be contaminated without
+volition of his own at first: for we know the truthful saying about
+touching pitch.  The misfortune is that the guilty when at last exposed
+become notorious; and their infamy spreads abroad, smirching the whole
+class to which they belong.  The honest conscientious men remain in
+obscurity and get no public credit, though they may far outnumber the
+evil-disposed.
+
+To make a good keeper it requires not only honesty and skill, but a
+considerable amount of "backbone" in the character to resist temptation
+and to control subordinates.  The keeper who has gone to the bad becomes
+one of the most mischievous members of the community: the faithful and
+upright keeper is not only a valuable servant, but a protection to all
+kinds of property.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+The End.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 36948 ***