98 THE RURAL PROBLEM 



where the pheasant is bred and the fox comes to make his 

 home. Woodland and cover and copse and spinney, which 

 to the town-bred statistician represent so much wasted 

 possibility of cultivation, influence the climate of the 

 surrounding country and harbour the life which preys on 

 agricultural pests. Here live hawks, and the owl, arch- 

 enemy of mice ; hence come showers and dew. These places 

 could not be ploughed up and intensively cultivated without 

 materially altering the climate and destroying the balance of 

 ral life. Even the game itself is not always injurious. 

 The real damage is done by hares and rabbits, rooks and 

 pigeons. Pheasants are a nuisance in the case of autumn- 

 sown corn, but at other times do no hurt. Partridges are 

 quite harmless. They never seek out grain newly sown 

 like the rooks. It is the slugs, grubs, worms and insects they 

 are seeking, the bits of weeds and their seeds, aphides, 

 earwigs, and ants' eggs. The more the soil is worked, as by 

 harrows, the more food they are able to find, and the more 

 good they do by destroying insects and grubs that injure 

 delicate roots. 



In the second place the fact must be faced that any 

 drastic interference with game- preserving would seriously 

 affect the livelihood of our village population. The partridge 

 brings the peasant many a good shilling for finding nests, 

 the farmer sells stuff for the pheasants. Besides the keepers 

 and underkecpers and persons regularly employed in the 

 task of game- preserving, there are the ordinary villagers who 

 turn out for many a day's enjoyment when the shooting 

 season begins, and earn good wages as beaters and a hearty 

 lunch into the bargain. 



About 35 per cent, of the expense of keeping up a grouse 

 moor consists of the wages of a permanent staff ; for every 

 £l of rent another 15s. or £l is spent in the neighbourhood in 

 wages of villagers, hiring, carting, etc.* If these estimates 

 be correct, the abolition of grouse- shooting, for instance, 

 would involve enormous displacement of labour. The 

 approximate gross rental value of grouse moors in England 

 and Scotland is about £1,270,000 annually ; the wages bill 



* The Grouse in Health and Disease ; see Preface by Loro Lovat, 

 1912. 



