VERMIN AND TRAPPING 101 



lady trespasser lodged a complaint at headquarters. 

 Though I was ordered to desist, the lady did not 

 come that way again, nor the dear dog that usually 

 accompanied her. Hedgehogs have a bad habit of 

 camping out in the field-hedges when the partridges 

 are nesting. A well-schooled dog is the best means 

 of getting rid of them quickly. I had an old retriever 

 who brought me eleven hedgehogs out of one short 

 hedge, and I never knew her to upset a sitting bird 

 during the whole of her life. 



I regret to say that the last surviving pair of 

 magpies in the locality where I was keepering were 

 picked up in 1909 by a keeper (not myself) that is 

 to say, they were not trapped or shot, but poisoned. 

 Utterly to exterminate birds so handsome may save 

 a trifle of game for the gun, but surely such 

 extremes of preservation can only bring upon the 

 perpetrators the derision and disgust of all sane 

 people. A judicious thinning of hawks and magpies 

 is quite enough to satisfy the demands of any 

 sportsman, and their extinction is bound to react to 

 the detriment of the selfish few. In many parts 

 jays, too, are getting comparatively scarce, though 

 I am glad to say that, like stoats and weasels, they 

 are too cunning ever to be wiped out by fair means. 

 No sane keeper would wish to be without a 

 sprinkling of jays in his woods, for he has no 

 more vigilant and useful sentinels. In a wood 

 where there are jays, neither cat nor fox nor man 



