90 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



ing-tenant of what had happened? No, and for a very 

 good reason. Nothing ever comes of such telling ex- 

 cept a burst of rage on the part of the owner against 

 all keepers and all interfering persons, which lasts for 

 an hour or so, and then all goes on as before. I have 

 never known a keeper to be discharged except for the 

 one offence of dealing in game and eggs on his own 

 account. In everything else he has a free hand ; if it 

 is not given him he takes it, and there is nothing he 

 resents so much as being interfered with or advised or 

 instructed as to what species he is to spare. Tell him 

 to spare an owl or a kestrel and he instantly resolves 

 to kill it; and if you are such a faddist as to want to 

 preserve everything he will go so far as to summon his 

 little crowd of humble followers and parasites and set 

 them to make a clean sweep of all the wild life in the 

 woods, as in the instance I have described. No, it is 

 mere waste of energy to inform individual owners of 

 such abuses. The craze exists for a big head of game, 

 or rather of this exotic bird of the woods, called in 

 scorn and disgust the "sacred bird" by one who was 

 himself a naturalist and a sportsman; the owners are 

 themselves responsible for the system and have created 

 the class of men necessary to enable them to follow 

 this degraded form of sport. I use the word advisedly; 

 Mr, A. Stuart-Wortley, the best authority I know on 

 the subject, an enthusiast himself, mournfully acknowl- 

 edges in his book on the pheasant that pheasant shoot- 

 ing as now almost universally conducted in England 

 is not sport at all. 



