504 Practical Game Preserving. 



should be respected so long as the Squire respected them, 

 and, if this feeling be encouraged, there is no necessity for 

 the unpleasantness and rancour existing between some 

 lords of the manor and the people upon it. If the owner 

 of the preserves instil into his labourers and all the men 

 working upon the farms, &c., the idea that he trusts to them 

 not to interfere nor permit interference with the game, 

 they will soon fall in with it, and work as assiduously 

 for its protection as they would for its destruction if they 

 were treated in an improper spirit. As a recompense for 

 this, let them have money or game at the end of the season 

 as a reward, and, if they would like a day or two at the 

 rabbits, be it so. No one likes to be suspected, much less 

 to be treated harshly, and if the idea be allowed to engraft 

 itself in the village people that they are thought to poach, 

 or that they dare not for fear of keepers and the law, they 

 are sure to grasp the first and every succeeding opportunity 

 to prove the contrary. In this way poachers are made ; 

 they commit the trespass once to revenge themselves or 

 spite their master or landlord. The trespass is found to 

 prosper, and the feeling of paying "the maister" out is 

 found sweet, and is repeated until the man's character is 

 lost and he becomes a confirmed poacher. So much for 

 the labouring man. As to the regular poacher, the ne'er- 

 do-weel, the loafer in the village public-house, he is a 

 common object of the country, generally a labourer, who 

 has always so much work to do that he never does any. 

 He is generally a demure, bland gentleman, most reverential 

 to his betters, and is always going to tell the keeper about 

 this varmint, that covey of birds, and a nest of young 



