132 THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME. 



keeper goes his rounds. Even to this day a lingering 

 superstition associates this bird with coming evil ; and I 

 have heard the women working in the fields remark that 

 such and such a farmer then lying ill would not recover, 

 for a crow had been seen to fly over his house but just 

 above the roof-tree. 



Trespassers give him a good deal of trouble, for a 

 great wood seems to have an irresistible attraction for all 

 sorts of semi-Bohemians, besides those who come for 

 poaching purposes. The keeper thinks it much more 

 difficult to watch a wood like this, which is continuous 

 and all in one, than it is to guard a number of detached 

 plantations, though in the aggregate they may cover an equal 

 area. It is impossible to see into it any distance ; to 

 walk round it is a task of time. A poacher may slink 

 from tree to tree and from thicket to thicket, and, unless 

 the dogs chance to sniff him out, may lie hidden in tangled 

 masses of fern and bramble, while the keeper passes not 

 ten yards away. But plantations laid out in regular 

 order with broad open spaces, sometimes with small fields 

 between, do not afiford anything like cover for human 

 beings. If a man is concealed in one of these copses, and 

 finds that the keeper or his assistants are about to go 

 through it, he must move or be caught ; and in moving he 

 has to pass across an open space, and is nearly sure to be 

 detected. In a continuous wood of large extent, if he 

 hears the keepers coming, he has but to slip as rapidly 



