CHANGE OF CHARACTER 287 



the private history and prospects of the farmer and 

 his family, their births, their marriages, and their 

 deaths, but still, on the whole, a friend to be 

 respected, to be entertained, and never to be 

 molested, or molested only at the farmer's personal 

 peril. 



Now all that is changed. He is always cheery 

 still, but is yet the most suspicious and wary of 

 birds, eye and ear always open, ready to detect, not 

 so much the presence of his lurking prey, as the 

 presence of his lurking foe. The gun and the pole- 

 trap and poison and the other gruesome stock-in- 

 trade of the gamekeeper have driven him off from 

 all " well-preserved " or, as I would rather call 

 them, from a natural-history point of view, from all 

 "ill destroyed" estates: from all estates, that is, 

 in which every larger animal which is not game, or 

 which is not preserved for hunting, is dubbed 

 " vermin " a name which ought to be reserved for 

 the most noxious and noisome of insects and is, 

 as far as possible, promptly and unscrupulously 

 destroyed. It must be freely admitted that the 

 gamekeeper has more excuse for persecuting the 

 magpie and his near relation, the carrion crow, 

 than he has for destroying other noble and 

 interesting birds, such as hawks and owls ; for, 



