His Son. 29 



Out of doors in his work the assistant upon whom 

 the gamekeeper places his chief reliance is his own 

 son— a lad hardly taller than the gun he carries, but 

 much older than would be supposed at first sight. 



It is a curious physiological fact that although 

 open-air life is so favourable to health, yet it has the 

 apparent effect of stunting growth in early youth. 

 Let two children be brought up together, one made 

 to ' rough ' it out of doors, and the other carefully 

 tended and kept within ; other things being equal, the 

 boy of the drawing-room will be taller and to all ap- 

 pearance more developed than his companion. The 

 labourer's children, for instance, who play in the lonely 

 country roads and fields all day, whose parents lock 

 their cottage doors when leaving for work in the morn- 

 ing so that their offspring shall not gain entrance and 

 get into mischief, are almost invariably short for 

 their age. In their case something may be justly 

 attributed to coarse and scanty food ; but the children 

 of working farmers exhibit the same peculiarity, and 

 although their food is not luxurious in quality, it is 

 certainly not stinted in quantity. Some of the 

 ploughboys and carters' lads seem scarcely fit to be 

 put in charge of the huge cart-horses who obey their 

 shouted orders, their heads being but a little way 

 above the shafts — mere infants to look at. Yet they 



