rapidly. They undermine hedges, stop up drains,
fill ditches with their fresh earthings; thus,
between their dainty teeth, their greedy appetites,
and their poisonous droppings, vegetation is
annihilated wherever gamekeepers are paid by
perquisites instead of by salary, as is often the
case where the game preserver is non-resident.
When we hear of keepers clearing their two
and three hundred per annum by the sale of
"coneys," we know that the farmer loses at
least two for every one hundred pounds thus
pocketed. By the law, rabbits are not game,
and, therefore, the unlicensed tenant is at
liberty to destroy them; but short-sighted
landlords step in with a special agreement reserving
the nuisance, and then transfer the right to
their servant: " that is to say, the gamekeeper
has a direct interest in maintaining a stock of
the vermin which are above all others the most
prolific and most mischievous to the farmer."

Live rats are worth in London, at certain
times of the year, two or three shillings a dozen.
Let us imagine the sensation that would be
produced by a landlord reserving, when letting a
farm, the right of catching rats and then
transferring the privilege to a servant or London
dog-fancier, who would, of course, at once set about
annihilating traps, ferrets, and terriers. As it
is, gamekeepers not only wage war on the
mice-destroying birds, but shoot the terriers, and trap
the cats that kill the rats; thus, the balance of
nature is, as it were, upset, and vermin
increase inordinately.

As for the poor cats, there is strong reason
to believe that keepers use drugs, such as
valerian, on their domiciliary visits, to entice them
to wander from their legitimate pursuits, into
unlawful paths, and thus increase the grinning
trophies of the " Gamekeeper's museum" nailed
on a barn-door. Mr. Bucklaud, in his amusing
Curiosities of Natural History, tells of a
gamekeeper who purchased distant and domestic
cats to swell the evidences of his zeal. As
for dogs, a battue-manufacturer in a moment
of candour declared that a fanner had no
business with any dogs, and that " the shepherd's
collie was a useless nuisance," for ever disturbing
and attracting his master's eye to the sacred
animals which in England occupy the place of
the cats and the ibis of the ancient Egyptians,
and the bulls of the modern Hindoo.

Under the influence of this religion, we have
had magistrates, and clergymen too, convicting
and fining a farmer for picking up a hare killed
in her form by his horse's foot;* sending a
labourer to prison for pocketing a leveret " the
size of a rat," which had been first mortally
wounded by a companion's scythe while
mowing; and the young daughters of a farmer,
returning from a social party along the high road,
have been first brutally assaulted by
gamekeepers, and then fined on the charge of hunting
game with the house-dog they had with them
for their protection.

* This conviction was reversed on appeal to the
Commissioners of Inland Revenue.

And what is the repayment for all the destruction
of corn and roots, of man's food and cattle
food; all the burdens imposed on farmers,
poor-rates and gaol-rates, which ought to be called
poachers' rates; all this demoralisation of
labourers, tempted beyond human endurance by
half tame birds and beasts scattered in their
path like so many live half-crowns, squeaking
"Come sell me! come sell me!" It ends in some
half-dozen blasé gentlemen lazily turning out
about mid-day, placed with due regard to rank
and precedent by the head keeper at certain
favoured spots, at the head of rides, where the
game driven up by the beaters and stopped by
nets comes up in droves on to " hot corners,
and the final sport consists in a bouquet of
pheasants shot by sportsmen who have nothing to do
but blaze away as fast as the loaders can hand
them their guns. Which noble result is duly
recorded in a paragraph in the Morning Toastrack,
relating how the Earl of Wholesale and
Retail, Lord Kickupadust, the Honourable
Frank Fastman, and three or four other great
guns at his lordship's magnificent seat, the
Slaughter-House, in the course of the morning
killed some two hundred pheasants, a hundred
and fifty hares, three hundred rabbits, two
woodcocks and a water-hen, seriously wounded
a jacksnipe and a beater; and, it might be, but
is not, added, " half ruined a tenant farmer."
Well may the Secretary of the Farmers' Club
observe: " What exercise- what skill- what of
the excitement or the prowess of a sportsman's
life is there in this?" The lad who gets his
three shots a penny at the tiny running hare in
the famous Home preserve at  Cremorne, may be
quite as good a marksman; the worthy citizen
who sits in his punt under Marlow-bridge,
pulling up gudgeons as fast as the boatman
can pull them off, enjoys a vast deal more of
glowing exertion. And, what is more, the
punt-fishing enthusiast does give the silly gudgeons
a choice and a chance of his line. To parallel
the battue, the fisherman should cast his line
in a well-stored basin, or a tab duly filled
overnight with hungry roach and dace.

The extent to which the mania for easy shooting,
and a complimentary puff in the
newspaper, is carried, may be illustrated by the
fact that a few seasons ago, a nobleman being
about to shoot in an outlying wood in which
there was little or no game, ordered his keeper
to put some pheasants in overnight. The
poachers did not, on this occasion, get at the
secret, as they sometimes do. In the morning
came my lord and his party- pretty good shots
all of them- and famous sport they had: so
good, in fact, that after lunch they wanted to
go back to the big wood; but the keeper
hesitated, and, when pressed, explained that " it was
of no use my lord going there again; they had
killed a hundred and eighty and odd pheasants
already, and he had only turned down a couple
of hundred."

This is the ridiculous side of the question;
but there is a lower deep. Pheasants well fed
may be kept at home, and it may be