FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS 147 



in the same style as " The Gamekeeper." '* It is, he says, 

 ' a minute account of the natural history of the wild deer 

 of Exmoor and of the mode of hunting them. I went 

 all over Exmoor a short while since on foot in order to 

 see the deer for myself ; and in addition I had the advan- 

 tages of getting full information from the huntsman 

 himself and from others who have watched the deer for 

 twenty years past. The chase of the wild stag is a bit 

 out of the life of the fifteenth century brought down to 

 our own times. Nothing has interested me so much, and 

 I contemplate going down again. In addition, there are 

 in the MS. a number of Somerset poaching tricks, which 

 were explained to me by gamekeepers and by a land- 

 owner there.' He points out that there are no competitors 

 in the field ; and ' as Somerset and Devon are annually 

 visited by some thousands of people for trout-fishing (I 

 was trout-fishing there lately), hunting, and the scenery, 

 I thought a book on the deer — which they all inquire 

 about — and full of local colour would be certain of some 

 sale, not only one year, but perhaps several seasons in 

 succession.' It is, in fact, one of the most readable 

 sporting treatises that exists, if treatise it may be called, 

 in spite of the fact that no sportsman would go to it for 

 infonnation. It is of all Jefferies' books the most orderly, 

 consistent, and complete, if we exclude the make-weight 

 of two chapters at the end. Having set himself to write 

 a book on an attractive but little-known subject, he 

 became a reporting journalist again, and subdued himself 

 to the subject to such purpose that he seems to be the 

 docile gamekeeper's friend again — when, for example, 

 he writes : 



' The way to kill those birds [magpies] is to hang up a 

 dead lamb, poisoned, in a tree ; they tear the flesh, and 

 are destroyed by the poison it has absorbed. . . . Owls 

 are very numerous in the covers. Wood-owls or brown- 

 owls, as they are indifferently called, are considered by 

 the keepers destructive to game, especially to young 



* In a letter to C. J. Lonyman, .\ugust 22, 1883. 



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