319 



THE KEEPER'S TREE. 



Most men who lead a country life — whether sportsmen or not — • 

 know the sort of tree to which I allude, and the kind of fruit 

 which decorates its branches. There are usually three or four such 

 trees scattered over every large manor, generally on the edge of 

 some spinny, often a lone weird-like ash or small oak, from whose 

 lower branches are suspended skeletons and bodies in every state of 

 decomposition, of all such beasts and birds as come under the 

 denomination of vermin — a word which bears a very extensive 

 signification in the gamekeeper's vocabulary. As the wind sighs 

 through tlie branches of the old tree, cats, pole-cats, weasels^ 

 hawks, owls, crows, magpies, jays, swing to and fro, like so many 

 malefactors hung in chains ; and well do I recollect as a boy, when 

 the taste for natural history was just developing itself, with what 

 interest I used to examine the ''^ keeper's tree" which stood at the 

 entrance of a little wood close to our village, to see what rarities I 

 could discover in this miscellaneous and ghastly museum. 



The subject maybe a stale one to many, and it may have possibly 

 been treated of before ; but I have often thought that a chapter on 

 the keeper's tree might prove not only interesting, but useful to 

 many gamekeepers and men who are addicted to the pursuits of a 

 country life, as pointing out in a concise manner what quadrupeds 

 and birds may really be considered vermin by the keeper (because 

 in this case, the innocent often suff'er for the guilty), and also 

 shortly to describe the habits and appearance of the different birds 

 of prey, to enable the gamekeeper, who is not generally a scientific 

 naturalist, to say at a glance what species it is that he has shot or 



