GAMEKEEPERS. 321 



selves any practical knowledge of the things that belong to his 

 craft ? How many could undertake the keeper's duties for a 

 single week ? Only, we suspect, a very small proportion. The 

 butler, the coachman, the gardener even in a majority of cases 

 can do very good work by rule of thumb. But the game- 

 keeper, to do good work, must be a business-like and methodical 

 student of nature, with trained habits of observation and a power 

 of rapid deduction. He must be, then, a man of intelligence 

 above the average. But, as it is, only too many of them just shuffle 

 through the seasons, for only too many are recruits from the ranks 

 of the shiftless loafers. Let us take the seasons through and 

 begin with the rearing of birds. 



There are all the duties of the pheasantry. The seeing that all 

 conditions are maintained that are most favourable to laying, e.g. 

 proper proportion of sexes ; the freshness of the ground"; the right 

 number of birds in each compartment, where a bird or two too 

 many may spoil the whole ; just so much food and of such a kind 

 as will keep the birds in perfect health, but will not check their 

 laying, as so easily may happen if they grow too fat; the 

 deciding which nests of the wild birds are in dangerous places, and 

 had better be removed ; the keeping a good healthy stock of 

 fowls of the right size and sort for foster mothers ; the careful 

 moving of the sitting hens off their nests for feeding purposes 

 every day, and the seeing that the eggs are not over-dry. And 

 then, when the birds are hatched, anxieties multiply ; for how- 

 ever clean he may keep the coops, and how often soever he may 

 shift their position, there are still the chances of pip and gapes to 

 be met and fought, and this is generally a losing game. The 

 gamekeeper must try to believe though few of them will that 



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