THE NEW FORESTRY. 9 



The expedients to which owners and their foresters are 

 sometimes driven to protect plantations from destruction by 

 rabbits are pitiable. Wire-netting fences, as usually set up, are 

 useless and expensive, and a substitute is provided by dealers 

 in the shape of an offensive mixture with which plantations are 

 expected to be smeared annually by men with brushes. One 

 of these vendors issues a long list of noblemen and gentlemen 

 who patronise him, with testimonials from their foresters as to 

 the excellence of his mixture, the price of which alone would 

 be prohibitive. One does not know which to deplore most, 

 the mismanagement that suggests such futile measures or the 

 forestry that has anything to do with them. And all these 

 evils. arise from perfectly preventable causes, because, as has 

 been proved, there are no kind of vermin more easily exter- 

 minated than rabbits, if followed up for a short period ; and had 

 gamekeepers only been one tithe as anxious in regard to rabbits 

 as they have been in their ghastly failures in pheasant rearing, 

 they could have provided ample sport for the gun in rabbit 

 warrens properly managed, and saved their employers enor- 

 mous losses in their woods. All that the proprietor needs to do 

 is to decide what areas he will devote to the preservation of 

 rabbits for sport or profit, and make it a condition with his 

 keeper that they shall exist nowhere else. Nothing else than 

 a rule of this kind with a class of ignorant and careless ser- 

 vants or : legislation as on the Continent will save our woods from 

 damage at any time sufficient to turn the scale between profit and 

 loss. At present the woods and game are brought into frequent 

 conflict, instead of working smoothly together as they should 

 do, seeing how closely they are connected, and proprietors do 

 not receive the benefit or satisfaction from either that they 

 ought to have, and in many cases it would be better if, instead 

 of working the two departments on a system of hopeless com- 

 promise, they were to stock their woods with game to their 

 fullest capacity and abandon them to sport altogether. 



Here is a description of what usually goes on wherever 

 game, and particularly pheasants, are preserved to any con- 

 siderable extent, and where the keeper's object is to show a 

 good head of game regardless of the general interests of the 

 estate. From March till midsummer as little work as possible 

 must be permitted in the woods, because the pheasants are 

 either laying or hatching ; from midsummer till October the 

 coverts must be kept quiet and free from intrusion in case the 

 birds should be scared off the ground ; and from October till 

 February as little forestry work as possible must be permitted 



