136 The Gamekeeper at Home. 



Holly is another favourite wood for sticks, and 

 fetches more money than oak or ash, on account of 

 its ivory-like whiteness when peeled. To get a good 

 stick with a knob to it frequently necessitates a 

 considerable amount of cutting and chopping, and 

 does far more damage than the loss of the stick 

 itself represents. Neither blackthorn nor crabtree 

 seem so popular as they once were for this purpose. 



In the autumn scores of men, women, and children 

 scour the hedges and woods for acorns, which bring 

 a regular price per bushel or sack, affording a valuable 

 food for pigs. Others seek elderberries to sell for 

 making wine, and for a few weeks a trade is done in 

 blackberries. Chair-menders and basket-makers 

 frequent the shore of the little mere or lake looking 

 for bulrushes or flags : the old rush-bottomed chairs 

 are still to be found in country houses, and require 

 mending ; and flag-baskets are much used. 



Hazel-nuts and filberts perhaps cause more 

 trouble than all the rest ; this fruit is now worth 

 money, and in some counties the yield of nuts is 

 looked forward to in the same way as any other crop 

 — as in Kent, where cob-nuts are cultivated, and 

 where the disorderly hop-pickers are great thieves. 

 I have heard of owners of copses losing ten or 

 fifteen pounds' worth of nuts by a single raid. Here, 



