240 TOUR IN SUTHERLANDSHIRE. 



employment is the mere act of shooting them, the birds and 

 hares being as tame and as easy to kill as so many domestic 

 fowls. At the same time, if proprietors like to go to the 

 expense and trouble of keeping innumerable pheasants and 

 hares, I cannot see why they should not be allowed to 

 indulge their taste, without being held up to public censure 

 by those whose taste happens to be different, as is so 

 frequently the case. 



It is not the farmers who complain of the game : they 

 have a fair and I believe a legal right to compensation for 

 all the mischief it does them ; and I do not think that this 

 claim is often, if ever, refused to be acknowledged by the 

 game preserver. In fact, it is his interest to keep on good 

 terms with the occupier of the land, even if his sense of 

 justice did not induce him to do so, as the farmer and tenant 

 are able to destroy more game, in the shape of eggs and 

 young birds, during the breeding season, than the proprietor 

 and all his friends could do in a twelvemonth. They can do 

 this, too, without exposing themselves to any risk of paying 

 penalty for infraction of the game-laws. As far as my own 

 experience extends, I have never found tenants looking upon 

 the preservation of game as so great a nuisance and source of 

 loss as they are represented to do by many writers on the 

 subject, who for the most part advance as facts statements 

 which are either utterly untrue, or at the best are twisted 

 and exaggerated to serve their own purposes. Leases are 

 always entered into by farmers with their eyes well open to 

 every chance of loss which they are likely to sustain from 

 the game, and stipulations are made accordingly. In fact, 

 the proprietor of the game is almost invariably the person 

 who, directly or indirectly, pays for its keep : this price it is 

 right that he should pay for his amusement, and the cases I 

 believe are very rare in which any objection is made to 

 doing so. 



In considering this subject, it should also be borne in 

 mind that in these days game is a source of profit and 

 income to so many persons, that it ought to be under legal 

 protection, as much so as any other kind of property. The 

 trespasser in pursuit of game renders himself liable to certain 

 penalties with as perfect a knowledge of the risk he runs as 

 the man who steals from the hen-roost. It is often argued 

 that poaching is the first step to many worse crimes ; so is 

 picking pockets. Pheasants are great temptations, and so are 



