164 BIRDS AND MAN 



and retirement," — a thorough hermit. It is not 

 so everjTvhere, certainly not in my friend's 

 Gloucestershire village, where the white owl is 

 unknown, while the brown or wood owl is quite 

 common. But it is not a thickly wooded 

 district; the woods there are small and widely 

 separated. There is, however, a deal of old 

 hedgerow timber and many large trees scattered 

 about the fields. These the owl inhabits, and 

 is abundant simply because the gamekeeper is 

 not there with his everlasting gun ; while the 

 farmers look on the bird rather as a friend than 

 an enemy. 



To go a little further into the matter, there 

 are no gamekeepers because the landoAvners 

 cannot afford the expensive luxury of hand- 

 reared pheasants. The country is, or was, a 

 rich one ; but the soil is clay so extraordinarily 

 stiff that four or five horses are needed to draw 

 a plough. It is, indeed, strange to see five huge 

 horses, all in line, dragging a plough, and 

 moving so slowly that, when looked at from a 

 distance, they appear not to move at aU. If 

 here and there a httle wheat is still grown, it is 

 only because, as the farmers say, " We mun 



