THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



331 



sparrows in the corn, as it was ' such a trouble to be always 

 coming to see what he was after ;' to inform against a 

 farmer for picking up a hare his horse had killed in her 

 form ; and against a labourer who had taken the dead 

 pheasant out of the snare which he (the keeper), to 

 secure a conviction, and confirm his suspicions, had first 

 put there." 



Besides these protective duties, the keeper destroys all 

 the birds and animals which feed on and keep down the 

 vermin of llie farm. The " windhover," or kestrel, and 

 the barn owl — two birds which prey on mice and beetles 

 exclusively, the weasel, as well as the fox, are pursued by 

 him with relentless activity. The consequence is that, 

 wherever game is strictly preserved, rats, mice, and beetles 

 swarm like an Egyptian plague, and foxes are not to be 

 found. 



Agricultural improvements come within the range of 

 objects offensive to the view of the battue-preserver- 

 Some years ago, a ukase was issued, on certain great 

 estates, against the use of the turnip-drill, because par- 

 tridges were apt to run along the straight lines under the 

 broad green leaves of that invaluable plant, instead of rising 

 on the wing. But the weight of the rent-paying interest, 

 which is fortunately dependent in all partridge counties on 

 the root crop, defeated, after a brief contest, this attempt 

 to stop the way of agricultural progress. Since that 

 time, however, the usd of artificial manures, of reap- 

 ing machines (as cutting tlie stubble too close), and the 

 wholesome practice of trimming banks and cutting hedges, 

 have successively, and in the last instance too often suc- 

 cessfully, been prohibited by zealous and ignorant game- 

 preserving landlords. 



Where time is an object, where two or three years are 

 too long for the preparations of an impatient battue maniac, 

 then breeding and vermin-killing do not sufBce, and resort 

 is had to the illegal purchase of eggs and of birds. Torakins 

 Trotman, thatcher by profession and poacher by taste, is 

 baled off to prison for being caught with a dozen pheasant's 

 eggs in his Jim Crow hat, by the sentence of a magistrate 

 who has through his head gamekeeper bought or sold a 

 couple of thousand eggs tliat very same season. So large 

 is this illegal traffic, that one of the London game-dealers, 

 by whose intermediation such transactions are usually con- 

 cluded, offered last year, in answer to an application from 

 the executors of a great game-preserving landlord, to take 

 one hundred thousand pheasant's eggs, as fast as they could 

 be delivered ; and he bought five hundred live pheasants 

 every week for several weeks, from a well-known earl and 

 battue-giver. 



The Earl of Washington and Slashington, or Squire 

 Southacre, or the Rev. Mr. Vulpecide, or David Deadun, 

 Esq., attorney and bill-discounter, and in virtue of the pro- 

 fits of these professions renter of a mansion with demesnes 

 and the right of shooting over some tcntbousand acres — al- 

 though not the owner of a single acre — having completed, 

 early in the year, arrangements for holding one, two, or at 

 most three, battues between October and Christmas, and 

 having enabled from a dozen to a score of guns to fill a two- 

 horse waggon on each eventful day — and having, also, con- 

 cluded au arrangement with a London tradesman for the 

 sale of the produce of each day's butchery — will probably 

 not be seen or heard of in ihe district any more until next 

 year : except through his dogs in office, the gamekeepers, 

 or his viceroys, the law agents who collect the rents. 



The consequences of tliis abuse of sport — this mixture of 

 the game slaughterer's and the game seller's callings — are 



to be found in crops ill cultivated, because devoured and 

 destroyed before harvest ; in discontented farmers and de- 

 moralised labourers ; in gaols supplied with artificial crimi- 

 nals; in poor-houses tenanted by the wives and children of 

 the imprisoned poachers ; in London shops loaded with 

 tame-fed game, wheat-ricks swarming with rats, hedgerows 

 ruined by rabbits, hares taking the place and the food of 

 sheep, and plieasantsas wild as Cochin Chinas and a good 

 deal fatter. 



Of course the vast cost produces very imposing statistics 

 of the " sport" (?) of the battue manufacturer. The follow- 

 ing is an extract from the game book of a nobleman, which 

 last year went the round of the local papers, with some 

 complimentary remarks on the excellent sport which the 

 distinguished peer had shown his friends : " Ist day, 178 

 hares; 2nd day, 293; 3rd day, GO; 4th day, 195; 5th day, 

 77; in all, 802 hares in five days, besides countless pheasants 

 and rabbits," 



A competent authority, Mr, Grey, of Dilston, the agent of 

 the Greenwich Hospital estates in the north, says: " Look 

 at the progi-ess of a single hare in a wheat field ; you see 

 him pick a stem here and a stem there, in his course over 

 the field ; he will nibble an inch or two from ibis stem, and 

 he does not stop until he has cut off a great many. It is 

 not the inch he has eaten, but what would have been a 

 wheat ear, which is thus destroyed." Hares are great travel- 

 lers. Imagine the damage that eight hundred hares can do in 

 a single night. We have ourselves ridden, in the dusk of 

 the evening, through a forty-acre £eld — on the farm of a 

 non-resident landlord in Lincolnshire, which was eventually 

 abandoned by the tenant in consequence of the hare uui. 

 sance — and have disturbed hundreds of hares, as thick as 

 rabbits in a warren, all eating, and trampling in their play 

 more than they eat. 



Rabbits, when strictly preserved, are perhaps even more 

 mischievous than hares. Although they do not travel so 

 far, they multiply more rapidly. They undermine hedges, 

 stop up drains, fill ditches with their fresh earthings; thus, 

 between their dainty teeth, their greedy appetites, and their 

 poisonous droppings, vegetation is annhilated wherever 

 gamekeepers are paid by perquisites instead of by salary, 

 as is often the case where the game preserver is non-resi- 

 dent. When we hear of keepers clearing their two and three 

 hundred per annum by the sale of " coneys," we know that 

 the farmer loses at least two for every one hundred pounds 

 thus pocketed. By the law, rabbits are not game, and, 

 therefore, the unlicensed tenant is at liberty to destroy 

 them; but short-sighted landlords step in with a special 

 agreement reserving the nuisance, and then transfer their 

 light to their servant: " that is to say, the gamekeeper has 

 a direct interest in roaiutaining a stock of the vermin which 

 are above all others the most prolific and most mischievous 

 to the farmer." 



Live rats are worth in London, at certain times of the 

 year, two or three shillings a dozen. Let us imagine the 

 sensation that would be produced by a landlord reserving, 

 when letting a farm, the right of catching rats, and then 

 transferring the privilege to a servant or London dog-fancier, 

 who would, of course, at once set about annhilating traps, 

 ferrets, and terriers. As it is, gamekeepers not only wage 

 war on the mice-destroying birds, but shoot the terriers, 

 and trap the cats that kill the rats ; thu?, the balance of 

 nature is, as it were, upset, and vermin increase inoi-- 

 dinately. 



As for the poor cats, there is strong reason to believe that 

 keepers use drugs, suc'-a as valerian, on their domiciliary 



