NUTS AND MICE 207 



even terriers may become useful trackers. The 

 night-dogs used by gamekeepers crosses between 

 mastiffs and bulldogs will follow poachers through 

 the woods during the blackest hours of night. 



A retriever is wonderfully useful for many purposes 

 besides recovering game. A dog, which had never 

 seen a cricket ball, was with us when we chanced to 

 be crossing a field, at dusk, where a ball had been lost 

 in thick cow-parsley in the shade of trees. The 

 cricketers appealed for our help ; we cleared the 

 course, and set on the dog. She took the wind, 

 trotted along, turned suddenly, ran straight for a 

 score of yards, and came back, the lost ball in her 

 mouth. Perhaps she worked it out in her own mind 

 that as no shot had been fired there was no game to 

 follow, and the ball-scent must therefore be the one 

 she was required to track. No doubt she would have 

 left the line of the ball if the scent of anything in the 

 shape of dead game had reached her sensitive nose. 



The gamekeeper classes the nutters among " the 



reg'lar plagues " of his life. Not that he begrudges 



them their nuts, but that they stand for an 



old, old story of innocent pleasures and 



Mice game disturbance. As primrose-pickers 



are to the nesting pheasants of April, so 



are nutters to the young birds of October, and the 



final result is always an angry keeper. His young 



birds at this season are ever ready to avail themselves 



