DISGUISED POACHERS. 239 



listlessly about the lanes, leaning against the gates and 

 smoking his pipe. You never suspect that any sporting 

 propensities can be concealed under the high-crowned 

 beaver and swallow-tailed coat of this classical-looking 

 gentleman, who seems to be merely enjoying the beauty of 

 the evening, although all the while he is watching with the 

 eyes of a lynx the unsuspecting partridges as they run about 

 calling to each other preparatory to going to roost. The 

 fellow is thus able to form a pretty good guess as to where 

 half-a-dozen coveys may be netted ; and he returns to his 

 confederate, who in the meantime has been equally usefully 

 employed at some alehouse or elsewhere in preparing and 

 mending the nets. "Dressing" for the occasion, as it is 

 termed, is now become by no means an uncommon practice 

 near large towns in England, and many a pheasant preserve 

 is laid waste by Methodist parson-like fellows, whose 

 black coat-pockets and clerical-looking hats contain, instead 

 of sermons, neatly coiled piles of horsehair nooses ready tied 

 on a line long enough to be run across a large extent of 

 cover, at the favourable moment when the keeper, of whom 

 they have just asked the way to the rectory, has gone about 

 his business in some other direction. 



By such means as these a great part of the game is 

 obtained which we see hung up in such immense quantities 

 in all the poulterers' shops. A gamekeeper cannot be too 

 curious and inquisitive as to the business and movements of 

 all strangers about his ground, whether dressed in a fustian 

 jacket and leather leggings, in a rusty suit of black, or in a 

 blue swallow-tail with gilt buttons. By watching unseen an 

 idler of this sort, a keeper may frequently find out some 

 projected manosuvre against his pheasants and partridges. 



There has been of late a great cry out against game and 

 game-laws, gamekeepers and game preservers. In fact, the 

 mere word " game " is sufficient to excite the bilious indig- 

 nation of half the newspapers in the United Kingdom, and 

 more especially of those whose claims to popularity are 

 founded on the loudness and virulence of their abuse of what 

 they term " the aristocracy of the kingdom." 



I am very far from being an advocate for carrying out the 

 system of preserving game to the extent which is frequently 

 done, where woods as full of pheasants as a poultry -yard is of 

 chickens afford no real sport, and where, instead of amuse- 

 ment of hunting for and finding your game, your only 



