THE NEW FORESTRY. 15 



estates, keepers are not allowed to carry a gun to kill vermin, 

 trapping only being permitted. That being so, it follows that 

 the system of forestry that necessitates the most frequent dis- 

 turbance of the woods must be the worst for the game, and the 

 system that answers to this description more than any other 

 is our own system of forestry of the past, for nowhere, except 

 in this country, are woods so needlessly disturbed under the 

 pretence of thinning, pruning, inspection, or work of some 

 kind or other. The quietness and repose of Continental 

 forests, even of small extent, are a contrast to the bustle that 

 goes on in English plantations. What disturbs game in 

 coverts are sight and sound, and nothing prevents the one or 

 deadens the other so much as a dense crop of timber. A game- 

 keeper's idea of a wood is one adapted to his own notions of 

 game preservation, however crude these may be, and his own 

 convenience. It must consist throughout of timber trees 

 standing thinly on the ground, never to come down, sufficiently 

 furnished with coppice or underwood for the shelter of his 

 pheasants, but not so dense as to prevent himself or his beaters 

 from facing the covert comfortably on a dewy or wet morning 

 on a shooting day. Should it be a young plantation, so thick 

 as likely to brush his coat tails, it is time, according to the 

 keeper, that -it was thinned, and many a plantation has been 

 thinned for no better reason. Though the keeper's days of 

 actual work, during the shooting season, often do not embrace 

 a week or ten days throughout the whole year, and his shoot- 

 ing " day " does not begin before ten o'clock and ends soon 

 atter lunch, he would without scruple sacrifice his employer's 

 crop of timber for the reasons described, if he had his way, 

 when he ought to have men and dogs to do his bidding 

 without trouble. Woodmen have to do the work of the woods 

 in nearly all weathers, and are often drenched to the skin when 

 felling, thinning, or draining, and no complaint is heard, but a 

 keeper must not endure such hardships. It is, however, the 

 southern keeper who is most fastidious. He knows least and 

 wants most, and a training in the fir woods of Scotland for one 

 winter would be a useful experience for him in his own line. 

 These remarks are made in the knowledge that a prejudice 

 exists against dense plantations in connection with game 

 preservation, and that the prejudice has originated mainly 

 through ignorant and incapable gamekeepers. 



There are signs, however, that the gamekeepers will by and 

 by have to conform to a different state of things. All that is 

 needed to put an end to the present system is to show gentle- 



