366 THE GAME PRESERVER'S GUIDE. 



the same plan as if you were shooting. Take one field after 

 another in a straight line; and though you will not thereby 

 see so much game as you otherwise would, you will, at all 

 events, avoid the mistake of fancying that there are 150 

 brace instead of 50. With regard to pheasants, you may 

 always be shown these birds at feeding-time, as the keepers 

 know where to find them as well as barn-door fowl. If, 

 therefore, they are not shown, depend upon it, if it is the 

 interest of the keeper to show them, that they are not in 

 existence. As to the number of hares and rabbits, you may 

 generally make a pretty good guess at them by the state of 

 the runs and menses. If these are numerous and well used, 

 there is sure to be plenty of fur; or at all events there has 

 been till very recently. The spring months are also the 

 only ones in which vermin can be successfully trapped, and 

 therefore you have every reason for taking your moor or 

 manor at that time of the year. 



There are sundry points of importance by which likely 

 ground may be known. In the south, where pheasants and 

 partridges are to be preserved, there should be one or more 

 large coverts in the centre, in which pheasants are secure at 

 all seasons, and in addition a number of small ones, which 

 are all the better if in the form of belts. A belt surrounding 

 a property, as is too often the case, is by no means desirable, 

 because the pheasants in it are sure to feed upon the adjacent 

 lands, when they are liable to be shot or poached. If the 

 corn is all bagged, or the stubbles are mown directly after 

 harvest, or if the course of husbandry leads to their being 

 broken up soon in the autumn, the partridge shooting will 

 not be good, unless there are plenty of turnips, mangold 

 wurtzel, seed-clover, or other green crops. A. light sandy 

 soil suited to turnips is also that which partridges thrive 

 upon ; but there must be water at all seasons, or in a dry 

 one they will be liable to die away wholesale. So also with 

 the pheasant-coverts; they ought all to have water in them, 

 and this should be perpetual, and not merely a winter pond, 

 liable to be dried up in the summer. In the choice of 

 moors, as well as in that of manors, the management of the 

 adjacent beats should be taken into consideration. Game 

 being one man's property to-day and his neighbour's to- 



