ODDS AND ENDS 285 
There is only one risk in giving the keeper game— 
that he will reproduce it in the next day’s bag; but 
the trick may be excused, since he thereby denies 
himself a good dinner, to flatter the game-book. If 
a keeper is given no game, he is apt to infer that he 
is credited with helping himself; perhaps that he is 
supposed to help himself. One keeper, fearing that 
he might entirely forget the taste of game, made so 
bold as to ask for a brace of pheasants. ‘ Whatever 
do you want them for ” he was asked ; and answered, 
‘ To eat.’ 
Reluctance to use poison is another point to the 
credit of keepers. They feel that it is not playing 
the game ; they love to know that they have out- 
witted the cunning of vermin; and so, apart from 
other considerations, keepers prefer the exercise of 
the true spirit of woodcraft, unsullied by exclusion 
of the sporting chance. Of course, where rats are 
numerous, it seldom is possible to deal with them 
by trapping and so forth only. An old keeper, who 
scorned the use of poison where trap and gun would 
serve, told me of a poisoning venture in the days of 
his youth. His beat was about seven thousand 
acres, in a district where carrion crows and magpies 
were so numerous that, in spite of devoting most of 
his time to trapping and shooting them, he seemed 
to make no impression on their numbers. He had 
been given a powder called ‘ hog’s-bean,’ and though 
he told me it could be got in the form of a bean, I 
