408 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 



young pheasants killed, which were rearing tame at the hen 

 coops, he watched, and discovered an old hen-pheasant in the 

 act of killing them, and that in consequence he shot her. 

 Kather a dangerous precedent to be promulgated by way of 

 example to other keepers, for this reason. There is not an old 

 hen-pheasant sitting adjacently to the hen-coops, who, when 

 she comes to seek for food at the place where in all probability 

 she herself was reared, who will not p^c/j on the hack of the liead, 

 and kill every newly-hatched young pheasant or partridge, 

 or chicken for that matter, that gets in her way. Cock-phea- 

 sants will do this as well as hens, and for that reason as well 

 as others, the little crates or boarded walls in front of the 

 several coops should be, till the young birds attain a certain 

 size, covered with a net. This keeps the full-grown phea- 

 sants out, and retains the young brood to the individual hen 

 Avho hatched them. If this is not done, when there are many 

 coops of variously -aged birds, they will intermix, and hens 

 knowing the strangers, the little birds who stray will get killed. 

 In illustration of what I have said in regard to manner 

 and method with hounds, since my residence at Beacon the 

 following facts came under my notice. An old travelling fox 

 found out good quarters in a small patch of gorse at High- 

 cliff. Thence he paid nightly visits to my tame pets, and 

 carried off no end of bantams, pheasants, and rabbits. " You 

 are welcome," I said, " but I will have some payment out of 

 you in sport." Accordingly, I invited Mr. Shedden from the 

 New Forest, to hunt him. We found him in the little patch 

 of gorse, and, slipping away through the plantations which 

 join it, unseen, he ran a ring by Mudeford, and came back to 

 Ilighcliff, the scent being very indifferent. A long check 

 then took place in the plantations, when a farmer came up 

 to say he had that moment met the fox crossing the high-road 

 on the other side the village. The hounds were then at a 

 check, and had Mr. Shedden lifted them to where the farmer 

 was ready to take him, the fox would have had the hounds 

 only five minutes behind him over that road. Instead of this 

 the hounds were " let alone," and, after a vast deal of delay, 

 thoy picked out tlic line across my lawn, over Chuton Plougii, 



