190 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE 
your keepers are devoting themselves exclusively to 
the pheasantry and the coops, must be abandoned. 
You may arrange to divide the work as you please, 
and a great deal may be done for your young pheas- 
ants by the keepers’ wives and by others, The 
pheasants and other game under Marlowe are by no 
means scarce, big bags being made in the covers at 
The Grange; but the partridges are the principal 
object of care and attention. 
Everything must be done to watch and thwart 
egg-stealers and poachers. To arrive at this it follows 
that the whereabouts of every, or nearly every, nest 
must be known, and these must be watched and 
visited practically every day. An under-keeper at 
The Grange is expected to know how many par- 
tridge nests he has, and exactly where they are; 
moreover, if any disappear, he is required to know 
how, where, and when they ceased to exist. The 
head man is quite likely to turn up unexpectedly on 
the beat at 4 A.M. on a May morning, and require to 
be taken round by his under-keeper and shown the 
actual nests which he has reported to exist on his 
beat. The destruction of vermin must be very closely 
attended to, especially where the fences are, as in 
Hampshire, very big and thick, and form the main 
nesting-ground of the birds, 
