GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 199 
If, on a certain day in June, all his sitting hens 
have to be looked to, his food mixed, a number of 
his coops to be shifted, or any other of the absorbing 
duties connected with pheasant-rearing occupy all his 
hours, how can he get to where the large meadow is 
being cut with the machine, and where all the farm 
hands, reinforced by half a dozen strangers—probably 
roving Irish or gipsies, and little better than common 
tramps—are running riot over the hay-making ? 
How can he keep his eye upon the encampment 
of that ubiquitous tribe on the little bit of rough 
commonland close to his best partridge ground, 
whence they will mark every nest in their vicinity, and 
man, woman, and child exert all their well-known 
ingenuity and experience to have the eggs out of 
those nests ? 
There may be eight partridge nests on one thick 
hedgerow, which ina good year will produce from forty 
to fifty brace of birds belonging to that field alone ; 
but how is he to protect these from foxes, weasels, or 
dishonest human beings, when it takes him all his 
time to keep his young pheasants from the same 
dangers, supplemented by those of dogs, cats, rats, 
jays, magpies, and hawks in and around the woods 
where he is responsible for the rearing ? 
Later in the year, does not the dishonest farm 
