PREAMBLE 



A GAMEKEEPER'S notes are written for the most 

 part on the tablets of his mind. He is a man of 

 silence ; yet he is ever ready to unlock the casket 

 of his memories if old friends, and sympathetic, 

 are about him. We have known keepers who could 

 talk, when so minded, as well as they could shoot, 

 making their points as certainly as they would bowl 

 over any straying cat that crossed their paths. But 

 few keepers can handle a pen with the same con- 

 fidence as a gun. Some keepers, it is true, carry note- 

 books, and therein make certain brief notes simple 

 records and plain statements of fact, interesting 

 enough to glance over, but nothing to read. 



The vermin bag has an honourable place in these 

 notes year by year the keeper may set down 

 precisely how many malefactors (and others) have 

 fallen to his gun and traps. It is a record in which 

 he takes almost as much pride as in his daily and 

 yearly lists of game ; the grand total of a good 

 season for game or vermin lingers for ever on his 

 lips. The date of a shoot, the beat, the number 

 and names of the guns, and what luck befell them, 

 all may be noted with scrupulous care, with a word 



