Gipsies. 173 



ing places, where his assistants meet him with their 

 reports. 



The gipsies, who travel the road in caravans, give 

 him endless trouble ; they are adepts at poaching, and 

 each van is usually accompanied by a couple of dogs. 

 The movements of these people are so irregular that 

 it is impossible to be always ready for them. They 

 are suspected of being recipients of poached game, 

 purchasing it from the local professionals. Under 

 pretence of cutting skewer-wood, often called dog- 

 wood, which they split and sharpen for the butchers, 

 they wander across the open downs where it grows, 

 camping in wild, unfrequented places, and finding 

 plenty of opportunities for poaching. Down land is 

 most difficult to watch. 



Then the men who come out from the towns, 

 ostensibly to gather primroses in the early spring, or 

 ferns, which they hawk from door to door ; and the 

 watercress men, who are about the meadows and 

 brooks twice a year, in spring and autumn, require 

 constant supervision. An innocent-looking basket or 

 small sack-bag of mushrooms has before now, when 

 turned upside down, been discovered to contain a 

 couple of rabbits or a fine young leveret. This 

 detective work is, in fact, never finished. There is 

 no end to the tricks and subterfuges practised, and 



