GAME AS MERCHANDISE. 45 



Wet grass has a special faculty for saturating leather. 

 The very boots with which you may wade into a stream 

 up to your ankles in perfect comfort are powerless to keep 

 out the dew or raindrops on the grass-blades. The path of 

 the keeper is by no means always strewn with flowers. 



Probably the number of keepers has much increased of 

 recent years, since the floodtide of commercial prosperity 

 set in. Every successful merchant naturally purchases an 

 estate in the country, and as naturally desires to see some 

 game upon it. This necessitates a keeper and his staff. 

 Then game itself — meaning live game — has become a 

 marketable commodity, bought and sold very much as one 

 might buy a standing crop of wheat. 



Owners of land, whose properties are hardly extensive 

 enough to enable them to live in the state which is under- 

 stood by the expression ' country seat,' frequently now 

 resort to certain expedients to increase their incomes. 

 They maintain a head of game large in comparison with 

 the acreage : of course this must be attended to by a 

 resident keeper ; and they add to the original mansion 

 various attractive extra buildings — i.e. a billiard-room, con- 

 servatories, and a range of modern stabling. The object, 

 of course, is to let the house, the home farm, and the 

 shooting for the season ; including facilities for following 

 the hunt. The proprietor is consequently only at home in 

 the latter part of the spring and in the summer — some- 

 times not even then. 



