174 THE BOOK OF MIGRATORY BIRDS 



keepers, loaders, beaters, stops, etc. The battue cannot 

 fairly be decried, because a good deal of training and not 

 a little dexterity is needed to bring down a couple of 

 rocketers with a right barrel and a left. You will hear a 

 youthful beater say to his neighbour as a bird falls, "Up 

 goes a quid, pop goes a penny, and down comes three 

 bob!" which is equivalent to saying that a pheasant 

 costs a sovereign to rear, but only realises three shillings 

 for the city man's dinner table. I can prove that on some 

 estates there are bad seasons when each bird costs 2, if 

 all the expenses are reckoned up closely ; and if a manorial 

 lord wishes to circulate his wealth in this fashion for the 

 good of the country, pray do not seek to make the taxation 

 intolerably burdensome, or he will go abroad to spend it. 



THE COVERT. 



The best pheasantries have their home and distant 

 coverts, which usually take a parallelogram or curvilinear 

 form. They abound with fir, larch, yew, birch, ash and 

 sycamore, and "rides" are cut through a dense under- 

 growth of rhododendrons, hazels, willow, holly, laurel, 

 elder, guelder-rose, snowberry, privet, and barberry. The 

 plantations enclose oblong patches tilled for buck-wheat 

 and other small crops, which can be applied for feeding 

 the "chicks of the covert," and keep them from wandering 

 away to other "liberties." In the very heart of these 

 Phasianic Elysian Fields are the rearing grounds, much 

 divided by wire fencing, and overlooked by the upper 

 windows of the head-keeper's brick cottage, while at 

 different points are kennelled watch-dogs, whose breed 

 or training disallows of continuous barking except when 

 provoked by intruders, so that the preserved area remains 

 as fearsome to poachers as it was under the old dispensa- 

 tion of man-traps and spring guns. George Wother- 

 spoon, one keeper so stationed, to whom I came by recom- 

 mendation on my tour, very aptly quoted from Holy 

 Writ: "The lines are fallen on me in pleasant places; 

 yea, I have a goodly heritage." He readily conducted me 



