r48 SPORT. 



much the better for Allan -a- dale, who can thus 

 monopolise and command the market. Instead of a 

 crime, I hold it to be a duty in the game-preserving 

 landowner to sell a certain portion of his game, for 

 the double purpose of supplying a recognised want 

 and of underselling the poacher. 



Why is there a sympathy with the poacher ? for there 

 is, especially among some borough magistrates. First, 

 because he is the general game supplier of the district ; 

 secondly, because a sort of romance is attached to 

 him. The poacher of theory and penny literature is 

 a young, manly, athletic agricultural labourer, \vho 

 cannot control the sporting tastes which are so deeply 

 implanted in his Anglo-Saxon nature, and who, w^ith 

 gun or wire, occasionally goes out to bring home a 

 pheasant or hare to a sick wife or starving family. 

 The real, practical poacher is the idle, dirty, drunken 

 blackguard of the town, who will never work, who, if he 

 has not already kicked his wife to death, neglects or 

 forsakes her, and, in company with no less than twelve 

 (with fewer he dare not go out), and often thirty or 



