GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 209 
ledge, or sometimes from an envious desire to rival 
the totals of better managed estates—relentlessly 
pursue the already diminished stock to the death, 
trusting to the chapter of accidents and the futile 
idea that one good breeding season will set matters 
right. 
When the one good breeding season does come, 
their careless management leaves them quite unpre- 
pared to cope with the conspiracy between poachers, 
egg or game dealers, and dishonest keepers, which I 
regret to have to say widens and deepens every year. 
The improvement or enlargement of the natural 
nesting cover by means of belts, or banks sown with 
broom and gorse and wired in, is a simple means of 
helping the stock of birds not half enough attempted. 
Where money is no object, artificial banks should be 
thrown up, especially in low-lying, flat country, to 
give the birds the chance of protecting their nests 
from heavy wet, and of leading their broods on to the 
slope of the bank, out of the danger of furrows or ruts 
full of water, which are to the young chicks as great 
rivers and pools, in which they are easily drowned. 
I heard last year of six young partridges being found 
drowned in the huge print of a cart-horse’s hoof, after 
a heavy thunder shower. Such banks should be left 
bare, except for a little seed of broom and gorse, and 
P 
