POACHING PARTRIDGES 69 
was concerned. It is always hard, however, to 
unlearn the devices upon which we depended for 
amusement in youth. What mattered it that prudence 
warned Bill that it were best to keep on a pleasant 
footing with ‘t’ squire’? However willing Bill might 
be in the main to forego his beloved forays, the Old 
Adam within him must inevitably experience a special 
hankering after forbidden fruit, and human nature 
being what it is, a lapse of his good resolution was 
pretty certain to occur in the long run. 
A recent writer has informed us that the old stamp 
of rural poacher has become well-nigh as extinct as 
the Dodo itself. In some districts he is seen, we 
admit, less frequently than formerly. In spite, how- 
ever, of the spread of education and diffusion of 
enlightened ideas, we doubt whether the typical 
poacher is really much scarcer than formerly, in ratio 
at least to the decreasing population of rural com- 
munities. The old dogged type of brutal poacher has, 
perhaps, become scarce, but his tastes and predi- 
lections have been transmitted to his descendants. 
There are plenty of families who treasure the details 
of their forefathers’ craft and endeavour to reproduce 
the traditions of those who went before them with all 
seriousness of purpose. 
In the Highlands of Scotland the vast majority 
