54 THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME. 



is precisely like one from another field, the keeper may 

 find, if he does not look pretty sharp after the mowers on 

 the estate, that they have been bribed by a trifle extra to 

 carry the eggs to another man at a distance. A very un- 

 pleasant feeling often arises from suspicions of this kind. 



His agricultural labour consists in superintending the 

 cultivation of the small squares left for the growth of 

 grain in the centre of the copses, to feed and attract the 

 pheasants, and to keep them from wandering. These 

 have to be dug up with the spade — there would be no 

 room for using a plough — and spade-husbandry is rather 

 slow work. An eye has therefore to be kept on the 

 labourers thus employed lest they get into mischief The 

 grain (on the straw) is sometimes given to the birds laid 

 across skeleton trestles, roughly made of stout ash sticks, 

 so as to raise it above the ground and enable them to get 

 at it better. 



Ash woods are cut every year, or rather they are 

 mapped out into so many squares, the poles in which 

 come to maturity in succession — while one is down 

 another is growing up, and thus in a fixed course of years 

 the entire wood is thrown and renovated. A certain time 

 has, of course, to be allowed for purchasers to remove 

 their property, and, as the roads through the woods are 

 often axle-deep in mud, in a wet spring it has frequently 

 to be extended. So many men being about, the keeper has 

 to be about also : and then, when at last the gates are 



