THE COUNTRY FOLK 353 



has, in response to those appeals, issued the laconic 

 order to his gamekeepers, " No more pole- traps ; 

 ravens, if they come to Milton Abbey, to be 

 encouraged to breed ; badgers not to be molested, 

 except inside the rabbit warrens." It may be 

 hoped that he may see reason to extend his list 

 of exemptions still further, and that his good 

 example, as, in some measure, has already been 

 the case, may be widely followed elsewhere. 



And what about the people ? They are much 

 what you might expect in a spot so secluded and 

 so free, as yet, from the centralising, modernising, 

 ambition-moving influences of the Board School 

 or the railway. The Dorset dialect, rich, racy, and 

 expressive, still, to a great extent, holds its own 

 among them. The parish register contains much 

 the same family names from generation to genera- 

 tion, from century to century. A pretty cottage, 

 about half a mile from the Manor House, is 

 inhabited, at this moment, by a man of seventy-three 

 years of age, who was born in it, has never had a 

 day's serious illness, and has lived in it all his life. 

 His father was born in the same cottage before him, 

 lived in it to the usual span of human life, and died 

 in it ; and his grandfather, the same again, before him. 

 The tenancy of one cottage by one family thus 



