WOODLANDS, GAME, AND SPORT 303 
what the woodlands might be expected to yield 
under economic treatment and what the estate 
accounts actually show as receipts, is what their 
stock of game costs them to maintain. Nor is 
that by any means all that their game- 
preserving means in decreased income. Well- 
managed copses can be made to give good 
pheasant shooting without their annual yield 
being appreciably affected, but the case is 
different with regard to ground game. Anything 
like economic management of woodlands is 
certainly incompatible with such a state of 
affairs as exists in many of the wooded por- 
tions of large estates, where rabbits are per- 
mitted to multiply to such an extent that, 
when deep snow covers the ground, they cause 
wholesale destruction to the coppice in copse- 
woods, rendering natural regeneration all but 
impossible, killing even large trees by gnawing 
away their bark, and making the formation of 
new plantations a practical impossibility with- 
out considerable expense being incurred in the 
erection and maintenance of wire fencing. And 
it is usually the more valuable kinds of seed- 
lings, stool-shoots, poles, and trees that rabbits - 
