22 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
assume, requested him to leave the field and take 
his dog with him. He refused with offensive arro- 
gance. With the same politeness, but with increased 
firmness, I explained that, if he felt unable to 
take himself off, I should feel bound to assist him. 
Whereupon he informed me that, sooner than go for 
me, he would see his liver torn out and flung on the 
ground. (He might have known that I should not 
hang on to any part of him a moment longer than 
necessary.) But go he did—liver, dog, and all— 
leaving only his scent to be carried away by the 
evening breeze. 
The only occasion that J discovered when gipsies 
are a help to the keeper is when he has a difficulty 
in tainting out a colony of rabbits. Rabbits may 
refuse to be evicted by tar and so forth, but simply 
cannot abide the attar of gipsies. To evict the most 
obstinate bunnies, all that is necessary is to encamp 
a gang of gipsies on their burrow. I have in mind 
a burrow where the ground was undiggable. It 
was thoroughly ‘ gipped,’ and after five years, though 
a rabbit may pay a call occasionally, none has taken 
up its abode there to this day of writing. The 
aversion of rabbits to gipsies, the latter often tried 
to persuade me, is reciprocated ; I have yet to meet 
the gipsy who will not swear that he or she prefers 
a hedgehog to a rabbit any day. 
People tried all sorts of tricks on me, one of 
which was for men who were mowing grass to bring 
