230 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



in that forest who shunned a conflict with this deer-stealer, and 

 also with another from whom this young man took a murdei'ous 

 weapon ; and yet these men are as well paid, and are as much 

 in favour, as the gallant young Hall. Under such circumstances 

 as these, how is it to be expected that keepers or woodmen will 

 do their duty ? 



There is not a keeper in the New Forest, that I am aware of, 

 who systematically destroys the lesser vermin — the forest is a 

 nursery for all sorts of vermin — which, having destroyed the 

 greater part of the forest game, then infest the neighbouring- 

 manors of gentlemen to a most objectionable and destructive 

 extent. I asked a keeper once why he did not destroy the 

 vermin, and he replied, " Nothing was allowed for doing so." I 

 then inquired, "What are your wages, your house, and youi- 

 land for .? " This was a puzzling question, but he met it by 

 saying, " No powder and shot was allowed, and no traps." The 

 number of vermin of all sorts bred every year in the New Forest 

 is enough to stock all England ; and in common fairness to 

 neighbouring proprietors, tliis nuisance should not be permitted 

 on the Crown lands. In France the forest-keepers keep a 

 regular list of all the vermin they kill, which, I believe, is 

 printed, and the same attention to so necessary a destruction 

 should be paid here, and each keeper made to nail up the head 

 of every vermin as a proof of his attention to duty. Why 

 should not the New Forest have been retained by the CrowTi as 

 a place for the stalking of red and fallow deer, within two 

 hours' reach or nearly so of Buckingham Palace ; that, in con- 

 junction with its black -game, pheasants, hares, rabbits, wood- 

 cocks, snipes, and wild - fowl of every sort, with its scanty 

 capabilities for useful cultivation, surely ought to have saved it 

 from the present Act of Parliament : an Act, in its working so 

 unpo)5ular, that all the gorse in the forest of any growth has 

 been obliged to be cut to prevent the poorer classes from 

 a general incendiarism, in the event of a dry season. Before the 

 gorse wa.s cut, I have, at night, seen from my windows three 

 incendiary fires raging at one time ; and, on one occasion, forty 



