ABUSES IN THE NEW FOREST. 271 



forest, as my beater in thick cover or anywhere else, 

 he holloed, " Mark, sir ! " to a hen pheasant or grey-hen 

 as eagerly as to anything else, and looked disappointed 

 as well as astonished, in the first place, at my not firing, 

 and, in the second, on a suggestion that I might be 

 tempted to thrash him if he halloed to the hen-bird 

 again. One day after shooting, I asked one of these 

 fellows if the gentleman, that I knew he usually beat 

 for, was careful as to what he shot ; the man grinned 

 and said, " Every thing's a cock, sir, as rises." With 

 this quaint assurance I was contented. More recently, 

 on stopping at a woodman's lodge to put up my horse, 

 while I beat the Homesley enclosure then thrown 

 open, I saw a quantity of game feathers lying on the 

 grass ; so I exclaimed to the old man, " What, Brom- 

 field, do you keep cats to kill the game ? " " Xo, 

 sir," he replied, " those feathers be from the gentle- 

 man's game-bag what shot here yesterday; he shook 

 his bag there." On this I inspected them closely, 

 and found that, though there were hen and cock 

 pheasant feathers, the majority of the collection were 

 from difi^erent grey-hens. I knew this as well as 

 anybody, but not choosing specially to rely on my own 

 judgment, I enclosed some of the grey-hen's feathers 

 to Mr. Cumberbatch, at Xew Park, with a request 

 that they might be shown to the most experienced 

 keepers in the locality, who would determine for me 

 what feathers they were. The reply to this was, 

 "the feathers from more than one grey-hen, cer- 

 tainly." I then told him where I had found them, 

 and whence they came. In addition to this, I had 

 reason to suppose that some persons, holding the 

 shooting licence under the Crown, were in the habit 

 of killing the game therein without the usual game 



