WOODLANDS, GAME, AND SPORT 303 



what the woodlands might be expected to yield 

 under economic treatment and what the estate 

 accounts actually show as receipts, is what their 

 stock of game costs them to maintain. Nor is 

 that by any means all that their game- 

 preserving means in decreased income. Well- 

 managed copses can be made to give good 

 pheasant shooting without their annual yield 

 being appreciably affected, but the case is 

 different with regard to ground game. Anything 

 like economic management of woodlands is 

 certainly incompatible with such a state of 

 affairs as exists in many of the wooded por- 

 tions of large estates, where rabbits are per- 

 mitted to multiply to such an extent that, 

 when deep snow covers the ground, they cause 

 wholesale destruction to the coppice in copse- 

 woods, rendering natural regeneration all but 

 impossible, killing even large trees by gnawing 

 away their bark, and making the formation of 

 new plantations a practical impossibility with- 

 out considerable expense being incurred in the 

 erection and maintenance of wire fencing. And 

 it is usually the more valuable kinds of seed- 

 lings, stool-shoots, poles, and trees that rabbits 



