GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 199 



If, on a certain day in June, all his sitting hens 

 have to be looked to, his food mixed, a number of 

 his coops to be shifted, or any other of the absorbing 

 duties connected with pheasant-rearing occupy all his 

 hours, how can he get to where the large meadow is 

 being cut with the machine, and where all the farm 

 hands, reinforced by half a dozen strangers probably 

 roving Irish or gipsies, and little better than common 

 tramps are running riot over the hay-making ? 



How can he keep his eye upon the encampment 

 of that ubiquitous tribe on the little bit of rough 

 commonland close to his best partridge ground, 

 whence they will mark every nest in their vicinity, and 

 man, woman, and child exert all their well-known 

 ingenuity and experience to have the eggs out of 

 those nests ? 



There may be eight partridge nests on one thick 

 hedgerow, which in a good year will produce from forty 

 to fifty brace of birds belonging to that field alone ; 

 but how is he to protect these from foxes, weasels, or 

 dishonest human beings, when it takes him all his 

 time to keep his young pheasants from the same 

 dangers, supplemented by those of dogs, cats, rats, 

 jays, magpies, and hawks in and around the woods 

 where he is responsible for the rearing ? 



Later in the year, does not the dishonest farm 



