2go TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 



moles and men, the partridge stuck to her task, and. 

 to the surprise of several people, hatched a mammoth 

 brood. I have had many a good nest ruined by a 

 mole, especially in dry weather ; I suppose the soil 

 beneath the nest remains comparatively moist, and 

 so is easier to burrow in, and more likely to contain 

 food. 



There must be hundredweights of honey stored 

 away in the dark caverns of old stumps and in hollow 

 trees storehouses where truant bees have garnered 

 the sweet essence of myriads of flowers, and year 

 after year, generation after generation, have added 

 to their unsuspected treasure. A bricklayer who 

 kept bees went into a wood to pick some nuts ; he 

 returned, and took sixty odd pounds of honey from 

 an old oak-stump, within a few yards of the road. 

 When we were rabbiting, my mate and I went over 

 practically every yard of the woods, and we found it 

 paid to examine every stump. The most honey we 

 ever found in one stump was twenty-seven pounds ; 

 but most years we got a useful supply sharing the 

 honey, and my mate having the wax for straining 

 the honey. Whether it was our fancy I cannot say, 

 but we never would admit that the flavour of any 

 honey equalled that of the wild, from the woods. 



Once I gained a reward for recovering a lost dog. 

 It was a beautiful black spaniel ; part of her history 

 never will be known, but here is the skeleton of it 

 for three months. She was being sent by train I 



