22 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 



assume, requested him to leave the field and take 

 his dog with him. He refused with offensive arro- 

 gance. With the same politeness, but with increased 

 firmness, I explained that, if he felt unable to 

 take himself off, I should feel bound to assist him. 

 Whereupon he informed me that, sooner than go for 

 me, he would see his liver torn out and flung on the 

 ground. (He might have known that I should not 

 hang on to any part of him a moment longer than 

 necessary.) But go he did liver, dog, and all 

 leaving only his scent to be carried away by the 

 evening breeze. 



The only occasion that I discovered when gipsies 

 are a help to the keeper is when he has a difficulty 

 in tainting out a colony of rabbits. Rabbits may 

 refuse to be evicted by tar and so forth, but simply 

 cannot abide the attar of gipsies. To evict the most 

 obstinate bunnies, all that is necessary is to encamp 

 a gang of gipsies on their burrow. I have in mind 

 a burrow where the ground was undiggable. It 

 was thoroughly ' gipped,' and after five years, though 

 a rabbit may pay a call occasionally, none has taken 

 up its abode there to this day of writing. The 

 aversion of rabbits to gipsies, the latter often tried 

 to persuade me, is reciprocated ; I have yet to meet 

 the gipsy who will not swear that he or she prefers 

 a hedgehog to a rabbit any day. 



People tried all sorts of tricks on me, one of 

 which was for men who were mowing grass to bring 



