GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 187 
inexplicable. Holkham, Elvedon, Merton, and Six- 
Mile Bottom could not have had their records lowered 
without wholesale buying of eggs and artificial rearing 
of birds. Agriculture had doubtless been sacrificed, 
and nets, wire, kites, and other illegitimate means 
been used galore to produce such a result in a second- 
class game county. The thing could not have been 
done by fair shooting in the open fields. 
All these things were said at the time; yet none 
of them were true, and the marvellous record made 
at The Grange in 1887, of which fuller particulars will 
be found on a later page,! was achieved under the 
fairest possible conditions, and on ordinary agricultural 
land producing a more than average rent to its owner. 
What, then, was the explanation? And how is it 
that the same estate has, during the past three years, 
again proved itself capable of producing the two 
biggest weeks’ partridge-driving in England ? 
The answer is, undoubtedly, good keepering, good 
management, and a good understanding all round 
between owner, keepers, farmers, and labourers. 
It would be neither politic nor convincing, in a 
work intended to appeal to all classes of sporting 
readers, to extol unduly a particular place or keeper, 
1 See p. 227. 
