228 A FARMER'S YEAR 



tion in most classes of offences. It is extraordinary what an amount 

 of false sentiment is wasted in certain quarters upon poachers, 

 who, for the most part, are very cowardly villains, recruited from 

 among the worst characters in the neighbourhood. When some 

 friends and I hired the shooting at Bradenham, one of our keepers, 

 a very fine young fellow named Holman, interrupted a gang of 

 poachers engaged in killing pheasants at night. He was unarmed, 

 and they were armed, and the end of it was that one of them fired 

 a gun straight at him, the contents of which he only escaped by 

 throwing himself behind the trunk of a small tree. The man was 

 identified, and tried at the Assizes, but as it was only ' a night 

 poaching case,' a sentence of six months was thought to be sufficient 

 punishment for this vigorous attempt at murder. 



Not a year goes by without keepers, who are merely doing the 

 duty for which they are paid, being murdered or beaten to a pulp 

 by these bands of thieving rascals, who are out, not for sport, but 

 for gain. Yet bad as is the night-poaching business, the trade of 

 the egg-stealer is perhaps even more despicable, since, as I told 

 the defendant to-day, not only was he himself breaking the law, 

 he was causing many others to break it also. It is not to be 

 supposed that these large lots of eggs are found and thieved by one 

 man ; on the contrary, a system of * feeders ' is necessary to their 

 collection. A rascal of the stamp of our friend the ' marine dealer ' 

 is in touch with various bad characters in the villages round about, 

 who suborn labourers to find the nests in the course of their daily 

 toil, and when they are full to bring away the eggs at night. These 

 in due course reach the hands of the middleman, who pays for 

 them at a certain tariff, and passes them on to some honest 

 merchant who does a larger business. Ultimately they find their 

 way, either through game-dealers or by the agency of a not too 

 scrupulous head-keeper, into the possession of the tenants of great 

 shootings who are anxious that their bags should be big in due 

 season, and try to increase their stock of partridges by buying 

 eggs, not knowing, of course, that they have been stolen, very fre- 

 quently from their neighbours' land, and sometimes from their own. 



