12 INTRODUCTORY. 



offenders among them, as among any other class, is not 

 improbable ; but, whether or not their attitude towards 

 the beasts and birds of prey is always a judicious one, it 

 is surely within the bounds of possibility that they are 



acting, according to their lights, conscien- 

 ygame- tiously and, as they think, in their masters' 



interests. It is possible even that the conduct 

 of keepers as a class may in this respect be open to some 

 fair criticism; but it is, I think, impossible that their 

 prejudices, the growth of generations of close touch with 

 Nature, whom they learn to know more intimately than 

 any other class of men except, perhaps, the poachers, can 

 be utterly without foundation. I, for one, should be re- 

 luctant to pin my faith unconditionally to the teachings of 

 the class-room as opposed to such downright assertions as 

 are, for example, to be found in Speedy's 'Sport in the 

 Highlands.' Nor may we hope in a little while to soften 

 the still more merciless creed of the farmer. Jesse told 



him that he would find the rook following the 

 By farmers. 



ploughshare and not the sower ; but such an 



assurance would, even if beyond denial, appeal with little 

 force to men whose finer perceptions of these matters are 

 pardonably blunted by the bitterness of succeeding years of 

 depression, and who, in their despair, are not unnaturally 

 prepared to lay the mischief at any door but the right one. 1 

 There are others engaged in this work of slaughter, 

 some of them with less excuse. There are the bird-catcher 



and the naturalist - collector. The former 

 catchers empties all the music of Surrey into the 



purlieus of Little St Andrew Street and 

 small blame to him : it is his living. The latter commits 

 his depredations in the cause of science ; and these, indeed, 

 sometimes almost pass belief. They are scarcely less 

 shocking than the evils perpetrated in the name of re- 



1 When ladies disagree, indeed, as they have in the recent sparrow 

 controversy between Miss Ormerod and Miss Carrington, the farmers 

 may well keep their own counsels. 



