328 AWAKENING OF ENGLAND. 



mismanaged ; and though tiere and there an 

 owner, who feels his responsibility as a citizen 

 of the British Empire more strongly than his 

 love for killing something, may be induced to 

 start a fresh plantation of standards, invariably 

 the rabbits and hares are so numerous amid 

 the preserves that the tender shoots have a 

 poor chance of surviving as they spring up 

 from the ground or from the stubs of the 

 underwood. 



The amount of damage that rabbits and 

 hares have inflicted upon British agriculture 

 is incalculable. I have known farms where 

 the farmers have gone to great expense in 

 netting their fields of winter wheat against 

 rabbits, yet a gamekeeper's foot has been 

 inserted under the wire netting so that the 

 rabbits may grow fat at the farmer's expense.^ 

 In spite of all that can be said by the apologists 

 of sport adding to the revenue of the farmers, 

 the forest sporting rights throughout England 

 and Scotland taken as a whole amount to little 

 over one shilling an acre. The farmer must 



* In a motor tour 1 undertook in Suffolk in February this 

 year (1912), I came across a scandalous instance near Wood- 

 bridge, where small holders could scarcely get a living out of 

 poor heath land overrun by game. The landlord would not 

 relinquish his sporting rights. 



