Chapter VII: Part 7

More than once, descending the steep face of the Downs, we have set foot upon hares in their forms--crouching so closely as to be unseen until felt; and once we have witnessed a curious fatal accident which befell a half-grown hare through the habit of lying low. Partridge-shooting was going on in a field of sainfoin, and as the guns lined out from the fence we saw this hare dancing, as it were, on her head. It was a dance of death, and before we could reach her puss was lying still. One of the guns had actually trodden on her head, and had passed on unknowingly. Half-grown and undersized hares seen in autumn have small chance of enduring through the winter; with the setting in of cold weather their fate is sealed; they are unable to thrive on the rough frosted food, and are claimed by a lingering death. In the wet days of autumn, when showers of leaves and rain are falling, hares change their quarters in the woods for the open fields, preferring of all places a stubble-field free of grasses that hold the moisture. The fall of rain and moist leaves has an opposite effect upon the rabbits--driving them to the shelter of their newly renovated burrows, where they lie all day, snug, warm, and dry.

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Hares no longer Speedy

We have heard of terriers who have chased hares and caught them after a burst of less than a field's-breadth; but we have never seen a terrier catch a sound hare in a fair run, though we have known a clever little dog to flash up a ditch and seize a loitering hare, and we have often known a hare to be caught napping in her seat. The hares that terriers catch after short runs have been in some trap or snare, or have been shot, or otherwise wounded, or probably they are diseased. The wonder is that hares can run so fast and long as they do in a state of advanced disease. Hares suffer each year in some places from a disease of a typhous nature, aggravated by feeding on frosted clover. Parting the white fur on the underside of such a hare the skin is found to be green. There is good cause to be suspicious of disease whenever a thin hare is seen in autumn or winter.

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Starling Hosts

Too many starlings in a given place are likely to be a serious trouble--in fact they make a place almost impossible for other inhabitants. Starlings haunt many kinds of roosting-places--the high reeds, the woods, and the shrubs about a house. The keeper finds small pleasure in the thunderous noise of their wings in his coverts. Towards the end of October the sales of underwood take place; thereafter the underwood is cut, and this often drives the starlings from an old roosting-haunt to fresh woods, where their presence is far from desirable, in view of the approaching covert-shooting. Naturally, people hesitate to take preventive measures, such as shooting or lighting fires of green wood, for the shots or the smoke would drive away pheasants as well as starlings. Yet it is wiser thus to drive away one season's pheasants than to have the wood made impossible for many years--to all save starlings.

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LONDON, EDWARD ARNOLD.]

Trials of a Copser

While we have never met any one who actually hated honeysuckle, if there is a man who curses it occasionally it is the copse-worker chopping underwood. A honeysuckle trail will turn a well-aimed blow from its true direction, and so may cause the copser to cut himself very badly--even a slight blow from his sharp bill-hook is a serious matter. The copser's hand and arm have received the order to swing outwards to gather force for a quick stroke--honeysuckle arrests the bill-hook and turns its direction, while the hand and arm disastrously go on with the reflex part of the order. And though we do not suppose there is a copse-worker in the whole world who does not appreciate rabbits to eat, probably most of them speak at times as harshly of rabbits as of honeysuckle. For rabbits gnaw the underwood, and when the butt of a stem has been gnawed by rabbits' teeth, part of the wood dies, and is far harder to cut than a clean stem.

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Wild Birds in Cages

We have heard from several people that owls are among the birds that cannot be tamed and kept as pets; but this idea is a fallacy. Barn-owls taken from the nest, and properly handled, grow into attractive pets, and we know a pair of them, about four months old, who sit on their master's shoulders, and seem to return his affection. We dislike the idea of rearing wild birds in captivity--especially such useful birds as barn-owls, who are better employed in catching mice than in doing tricks. But nearly all birds are susceptible to a taming treatment, even such shy creatures as the redshanks of the marshes, the wariest of birds in their wild state. There are people who seem to possess a natural instinct for understanding birds, as others for handling dogs, horses, or snakes.

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Truffles

The truffle-hunter, roaming with his little dogs over park lands and other pleasant places, seems to lead a fine, independent life. And he confesses to making money on no mean scale. His professional fee is a pound a day, with all expenses to be paid. The truffles are sold at 3_s_. the pound; but each truffle may cost the consumer fully half a guinea, stewed, as it should be, in rich wine. The truffle-hunter may tell you that his dogs are of the original truffle-hunting breed. Yet we have no doubt that any dog with a good nose could be trained to find truffles as easily as a retriever can be broken to hedgehogs.

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Retriever's Usefulness

The gamekeeper's retriever will learn to discover the whereabouts of every hedgehog in a ditch. A clever dog will find in a few hours as many hedgehogs as a week of trapping will secure--miles of hedges may be cleared in a day in the summer. The dog must be kept under absolute control, lest he disturb sitting birds, thereby, perhaps, doing as much damage as might the hedgehogs. Almost any dog may be trained to a particular work, such as playing the bloodhound's part, and following the trail of men, whether friends or strangers--even terriers may become useful trackers. The night-dogs used by gamekeepers--crosses between mastiffs and bulldogs--will follow poachers through the woods during the blackest hours of night.

A retriever is wonderfully useful for many purposes besides recovering game. A dog, which had never seen a cricket ball, was with us when we chanced to be crossing a field, at dusk, where a ball had been lost in thick cow-parsley in the shade of trees. The cricketers appealed for our help; we cleared the course, and set on the dog. She took the wind, trotted along, turned suddenly, ran straight for a score of yards, and came back, the lost ball in her mouth. Perhaps she worked it out in her own mind that as no shot had been fired there was no game to follow, and the ball-scent must therefore be the one she was required to track. No doubt she would have left the line of the ball if the scent of anything in the shape of dead game had reached her sensitive nose.

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Nuts and Mice

The gamekeeper classes the nutters among "the reg'lar plagues" of his life. Not that he begrudges them their nuts, but that they stand for an old, old story of innocent pleasures and game disturbance. As primrose-pickers are to the nesting pheasants of April, so are nutters to the young birds of October, and the final result is always an angry keeper. His young birds at this season are ever ready to avail themselves of an excuse to stray to fresh woods. The nutter who would avoid the keeper should avoid paths, and lie very low and still when the keeper comes his way. This lesson in woodcraft had been mastered so thoroughly by one young nutter of our acquaintance that when a keeper chanced to pass along the ride near which he was picking, he still lay low when the keeper's words were almost in his ear: "Where be ye? Ah, I sees ye. Come out on it, then!" And he was duly rewarded by the knowledge that these remarks were merely an exhortation to pheasants to feed.

Dormice are the chief of all lovers of hazel-nuts. They are found very often at work by human nutters; and their nest is seen sheltered by hazel leaves--a neat round structure, built of dry grass, beautifully woven. One autumn we came upon a nest containing six young dormice, about half-grown and ready to run, and three of them, wonderful to relate, were wholly white. Autumnal litters are common, and, as though by a beautiful piece of foresight on the part of Nature, the favourite nut food is most abundant just when the little mice are ready to give up a milk diet. Though called "the mouse of the hazel," he seems as partial to acorns as to hazel-nuts, and he is insectivorous, and feeds heartily on nut-weevil grubs. With November he will be as fat as nuts can make him, and before the month is out he will have fallen into his long winter trance. The little reddish brown harvest-mouse seems to have almost disappeared in the north of Hampshire and other parts, and for years we have not seen a single specimen. The nest of the harvest-mouse--cunningly woven amid the corn-stalks--used to be one of the prettiest of things seen in the cornfields, especially when the mouse was seen also, nibbling in his dainty way at the grain. To go round an oat-stack and poke it with a stick was to disturb these gregarious little creatures by the score. The common mouse remains as plentiful as ever, and thousands are seen during the threshing of a single stack; but the harvest-mouse has gone. So much the better, no doubt, for the stacks. Their population of furred foes is always too large--as some idea may be gained from the fact that in one season, and from a group of three ricks, no fewer than 1300 rats were taken. It is a proof of the barn-owls' value to farmers that they are often caught in rat-traps set by holes at the base of stacks. The stack is a favourite if sometimes a fatal hunting-place.

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The Hand of Time

The keeper looks his best in autumn. To many the sight of him then is most welcome, especially if the prospect of sport be fair, and the day of fine promise. People who go to shoot season after season on one estate are greeted year by year by the same friendly faces, nearly all of them a little the worse for time's passage. The host is seen to have aged between this October and last, with his butlers and his beaters and bailiffs. The foreheads of the familiar old horses seem to have sunk a little above the eyes. The dogs are remembered as playful puppies; the headstrong creatures now grow grey about the muzzles. Boys employed of old as "stops," when their height was less than the length of the hares they dangled proudly over their backs, have now qualified for the army of beaters; they have long since learnt the wisdom of not leaving their "stopping" places to forage for hazel-nuts. All these have grown older, and perhaps the visitor himself heaves a sigh as he looks down on his own once trim and slender figure.

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The Keeper grows Old

To the keeper alone of the time-honoured gathering seen on the lawn before the house on an early October morning have the years been kind. Over his face the winds have swept lightly; hardly an impression has been made on his complexion by the sun, moon, and stars, and the hail, snow, frosts, and mists of the year. On his forehead half a century of life has ploughed no furrows. His cheeks are free of wrinkles; there are no crow's-feet about the outside corners of his eyes. He holds the secret of youth. His cheeks might be a girl's; there is a smoothness and suppleness about the skin of his face. Still the muscles of his arms stand out with proud fulness. And his eyes remain the keenest spy-glasses of the party. His limbs are supple and free; a gamekeeper hardly knows the meaning of stiffness. But you may notice now that he straddles mightily over the gate which of old he vaulted with the glide of the fallow bucks in the park. And if you were with him when, at the end of a long day, he goes home to his tea, by chance you might hear the remark made to his good-wife, "Well, mother, I bain't sorry to sit down."

He looks his best in autumn; and he feels his best. He is ready for the test of his labours. He has had worries enough; the rearing season has been a "shocking bad one," and he has had many late nights, watching his birds. Perhaps he has had toothache; that is not unknown to keepers. Often he has been soaked by rain, and more often by the dews of night and morning. But he has lived all the year in the open and in the country, and there is the secret of his youth.

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Rabbit Ways in Autumn

In the cool autumn days rabbits grow in attraction to the poacher. They now have a habit of lying within their burrows by day, after the worryings, buffetings, and evictions of harvest-time, waiting for things to quieten down--until the sounds of binder and harvester are no more heard across the stubbles. Two people know this--the keeper and the poacher. Often it is a race as to who shall be first to take tribute from out-lying dells, with ferret and nets.

The ferreting season proper now sets in in earnest, and at first the rabbits bolt freely, rumbling and rushing along their subterranean passages, and with blind force launching themselves into the nets. A single ferret put into a burrow may send out a dozen rabbits in quick succession; or nothing may happen when the ferrets disappear, hours of digging follow, and then a bunch of ferrets and rabbits crowded together are at last revealed. In autumn days there is exciting sport with the gun at the expense of rabbits if open burrows can be found, or burrows in dells where the bare-stemmed elder is the only undergrowth.

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The Rabbits' House-cleaning

In late autumn rabbits are very busy about their burrows, making them fit for winter habitation. Through the summer, while many of the rabbits have been lying out, the burrows have looked deserted and untidy. Warned by the chilly nights that a subterranean refuge will soon be useful, the rabbits do up their premises, enlarging them, clearing away the remains of old nests, and of relatives that have died underground, and making fresh chambers where they may lie snug and warm in place of those dug out during last season's ferreting operations. Judging by the amount of soil excavated in a single night, rabbits at this season seem to rival ants in energy--one might think there had been a wholesale invasion of new-comers. At work, they kick the soil sideways, forming a furrow perhaps six or ten feet in length. Few have watched them while engaged in this toil, usually undertaken at night-time; but we have seen them at work once or twice by day, and once caught a rabbit by the leg--so intent was he on his digging--while he was in the act of kicking the soil aside.

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The Guileless Countryman

The countryman is not always the guileless simpleton that he sometimes looks; nor, as we can show, is the Cockney sportsman. A holiday-making Londoner was shooting one day in a field beyond the cottage of a labourer, who came out to watch the sport. Suddenly a cry broke from him: he leaped into the air; then bellowed to the sportsman, waving a red handkerchief in signal. Up to the cottage rushed the sportsman, thinking that at the least the countryman had been stung by a hornet or bitten by a mad dog. "Look what ye've bin an' done," said the countryman, advancing. "'Tis a wonder I be alive; look what ye've bin an' done; look at my door, and look at these here shots." Saying which, he pointed to his newly painted door (the sportsman saw it was pitted with such holes as a rusty nail might make). He held out his hand and showed a good two ounces of shot (the sportsman saw they had never been fired from a gun). "These here shots," said the countryman, "they buzzed about me like a swarm of bees: 'tis a wonder I be alive." The sportsman agreed in the marvel of the escape, adding to its wonder by pointing out that his shot had been fired at a distance of five hundred yards from the cottage--and in the opposite direction. "Allow me," he said, "to buy back these wonderful pellets at a fair market price"--and he handed the countryman twopence.

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Sporting Policemen

In rural villages, keen sportsmen are often found beneath the uniforms of the policeman and the postman. No one knows better than the keeper how useful it is to be on friendly terms with the policeman--and no one knows better how to manage it. Often policeman and postman may be found doing duty as beaters, especially during September partridge shooting, when the harvest is late and out-of-work labourers are few. If you see through his disguise of plain clothes, the policeman will remark how he just thought he would have a walk for an hour or two, just to oblige Mr. Keeper. Upholding the law and delivering the post mean much walking: and country policemen and postmen, when passing along the roads early and late, find the haunt of many a fine covey. Being good sportsmen, they take note of the customary line of flight; and if you own some of the land of the covey's haunting they can tell you almost to a minute when the birds leave the turnips beyond the boundary for your stubble.

If a policeman is on duty during the early days of partridge shooting, he will manage to fall in with shooting parties; then he makes it known that he heard shots, and was impelled to take a look round, "to see that there weren't nothing wrong." The policeman's favourite time for making known his presence is soon after the bagging of a good, broad-backed hare. Even policemen become spoiled with favours. On a sportsman telling his keeper to give a hare to a polite and zealous officer of the law, "Excuse me, sir," said he, "but the party over the hedge have just given me a hare, so might I have a brace of birds? Thank ye kindly, I'm sure; a hare will do nicely next time, sir." The sporting policeman can do much to help the luckless sportsman.

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The Woodcraft of Gipsies

Gipsies and gamekeepers have enough in common to make them deadly foes. They share an intimate knowledge of the ways of wild creatures. They are skilled trackers and crafty trappers. They are hedgerow men; born to the hedgerow, trained to know the meaning of every hole, and hollow, and run. Their eyes read the story of the hedge as the scholar's the printed page; hedge-lore is their second nature, and it is as though an instinct tells them where the partridge has built, where the hedgehog has buried himself, or where the rabbits are crouching. In their knowledge of the ways of rabbits and hares keepers and gipsies stand alone; and it often happens that all the knowledge and craft of the one class is pitted against the cunning and knowledge of the other. Between keepers and gipsies it is always war.

The keeper detests nothing more than a gipsies' camp. His eyes take no more pleasure in their red rags spread on the bushes than might the eyes of a bull. A gipsy camp means to the keeper so much dirt, so much thieving, so many lies, so much the more trouble, and so many the fewer rabbits in his preserves. The gipsies' cauldron, steaming at dusk over a fragrant fire of wood, brings only the bitter knowledge that some of the birds or beasts he is paid to preserve are stewing in the pot. Speak to him of gipsies, and scorn flashes in his eyes, anger flushes on his face. "They be always a-shirking about wi' a dog or two, perkin' into everything," an old keeper once said to us. "They can't let nothing bide."

A gipsy brought to trial for larceny made oath that his law allowed him to take as much from others every day as sufficed for his maintenance. That was more than three hundred years ago; and gipsies still faithfully believe in and take advantage of that law. In our experience, we have known one gipsy who was honest; he was famous for his honesty. His blameless character was so much appreciated that he was allowed to pitch his tent in an old ox-drove, where it ran past a sheltering wood. Within the wood the keeper had buried four-dozen traps; and it chanced that the leaves drifted over his traps, so that when he came to find them he hunted the ground in vain. One day the gipsy's boy came to the keeper's cottage. He said that while picking wood for his father's fire he had trodden on something hard, which turned out to be a heap of traps, and that his father, thinking they must belong to the keeper, had sent him to tell the story. Where is another gipsy in England who would throw away such a chance?

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Gipsy Lies

Gipsies are certainly good sportsmen, after their own fashion. But one seldom hears of a gipsy shooting with a gun; the gun speaks too loudly. The gipsy makes sport with dogs, ferrets, and nets. He takes no open risks; he holds it to be a disgraceful thing to be caught red-handed. And if caught he never makes confession. No matter how red his hands, there is always an excuse. His horse is found feeding, perhaps, on the farmer's crops. Then the horse must have broken loose unbeknown. Or his dog crosses the road, leveret in mouth. Then, "He picked un up dead, killed by a stoat what I seed a-sniffin' about." His dog has snapped up a sitting partridge. "It must be one as they beggarin' foxes 'ave killed." Or the gipsy himself, hunting a rabbit in a hedge, is taken in the act of knocking over the rabbit with his stick. All was done in mistake for a rat. The keeper remarks that he has lost a fine clutch of eggs--olive-brown eggs: he hints that the gipsy knows something about it. Innocently comes the question: "They sart o' eggs be pison, bain't they?" If caught with nets and ferrets on a rabbit burrow, a fine tale he has to tell of poachers who ran away at his approach, leaving all their tackle.

A keeper, who had strict orders to allow no gipsies to stop on his ground, one day came across a strong swarm, and saw clearly that they intended to stay the night. But in reply to his marching orders, they pleaded that they wished to stay only long enough to make some tea; they promised they would be gone by the time the keeper returned, in a couple of hours. So he went away, but went no farther than behind the nearest hedge: whence he heard himself described in a picturesque and blood-curdling fashion, and heard the declaration also that the gipsies had no intention of budging an inch for such a blue-livered, red-nosed piece of pulp as he. Thereupon the keeper took a run and a jump, and landed his eighteen stone self and his leaded stick in the gipsies' midst, sending their pots and pans far-flying. The gipsies snatched burning sticks from the fire, and a desperate fight began, but they soon had enough of that eighteen stone of angry keeper.

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Long-netters

In autumn, rabbits receive special attention from the long-net poachers. On a night not too dark or windy, yet windy and dark enough, the long-netters find all omens propitious. To begin with, the rabbits are now in prime condition. Then there is no fear of a hard frost to make the fixing of net-pegs a difficulty, or to allow the sound of footfalls to be carried far through the silence of night. And rabbits are plentiful; as yet their ranks have been thinned by no serious covert shooting. To crown all, the market is ready and expectant, for the chance of a sale of stolen rabbits has not been spoilt by the large surplus bags of genuine sportsmen. A warm night best suits the poachers' object, with the wind blowing towards the side of the selected wood--enough wind to prevent a panic among the rabbits through sound or scent of danger while the gear is fixed, yet not enough to deter them from turning out in goodly numbers, and journeying some distance from the wood to feed. The nets are set up all along the side of the wood, then poachers with dogs or drag-lines make a circuit and drive the feeding rabbits home, and to their doom.

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Training Rabbits

Keepers have found it more or less possible to train rabbits to a mode of life which shall baffle the long-net poachers. By giving them regular courses of driving-in at night they will take to feeding chiefly by day, and will grow very suspicious of the sound of a footfall after dark. Where there are not enough rabbits to justify special precautions and continual watching, long-netting may be made difficult by turning cattle at night into the grass fields bordering the woods. Not only will the cattle be sure to take an inquisitive interest in the long-netting, but they will have something to say to the dogs used for driving in, and will quite upset their work. In one place some poachers were baffled after a curious fashion. A local gang had set up some seven hundred yards of new netting, worth about ten guineas, and had gone off to round up the rabbits, when another gang from a distant part of the county arrived on the scene. The curses they heaped on their luck soon gave way to blessings--at any rate, they were quick to see the chance of poaching something more valuable than rabbits. They rolled up the new nets and fled. Then the men of the first gang returned in the wake of the rabbits, which had found nothing to impede their rush to cover. Curses were deeper and stronger than those breathed before. The men decided in the end to put their case and themselves unreservedly into the hands of the police, who telephoned to the nearest railway station, and captured the poachers with their poaching brethren's gear and their own rolled up in blankets.

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Why Birds Flock

Why birds and beasts flock, no doubt, is for mutual protection from natural foes. One has heard of swallows nesting on a cliff beneath an eagle's eyrie, yet having nothing to fear from the eagle's attack because of their combination; and every one knows how a party of small birds will defy a hawk, or will mob and rout a cuckoo or a day-flying owl. Possibly the reason for the great congregation of sparrows in one chosen tree in a London square is mutual protection from cats. Food is a most important factor in flocking; the keeper knows that the scarcer the food of partridges the greater is their tendency to pack. Birds may pack at night for mutual warmth--as when titmice snuggle on branches, and wrens, to the number of ten or twenty, crowd a hole in the thatch. Partridges gain something in warmth in snowy weather by their habit of jugging at night--a good covey on a yard of ground. But examination of the spot where they have passed the night shows that the main pack has been divided into comparatively small parties, in the same way as there were small parties among the great herds of buffalo that travelled as one column across the plains of America. Sheltered hollows are naturally chosen for jugging, where the keen edge of the wind passes over the birds' heads. There is not always safety or benefit in numbers; a flock may attract foes where individuals would pass unnoticed, or may make short work of food which would keep an individual for many days. With insects, great congregations may be harmful, if an advantage to their bird enemies. Presumably, flocking is a matter of general convenience.

During the first fortnight of October little parties of fieldfares from Scandinavia drift over the fields, chuckling in their throaty way, redwings are seen, our wood-pigeons are reinforced by countless thousands from overseas, snipe come in, woodcock will soon be here, parties of goldcrests, newly arrived, cry their sharp notes among the larches, and the winter flocks of tits, with goldcrests, tree-creepers, and nuthatches busily move in the woods. Everywhere birds are in flocks. Chaffinches, greenfinches, and sparrows move in vast congregations, plovers circle in clouds above the fallows, flocks of rooks unite in the evening and thousands upon thousands of starlings rise, fall, and circle in perfect unison, filling the air with the rushing noise of wings.

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The Companies of Rats

Many animals snuggle together for warmth in bitter weather--as the squirrels and the rats. Those who go ratting in hedges and dells in the winter know they may try a dozen freshly used burrows without finding a rat--when suddenly from a single hole the rats will come pouring out in a stream of fur. Twenty or more rats will lie together in one hole. They are clever enough to block up a hole on the windward side to keep out the draught--so that a rat-hole newly stopped with soil, turnip leaves, or grass, is almost certain indication that rats are within. They store food for winter, and the keeper may find it more difficult to secure his potatoes from frost than from the attack of the most numerous of his furred foes.

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The Fall

With the fall of the leaf we find the things we sought diligently in the summer in vain. Within a foot of the path we trod almost daily, we see, for the first time, where a pheasant brought off her brood; in the fork of a slender birch-pole is that jay's nest for which we long hunted--appearing now as a thick, deep wood-pigeon's nest; and where the bracken has died down are the whitening bones of a rabbit which, though his death-place was marked by the keeper's eyes, was not to be found. A single leaf of June may hide a bird's secret from prying eyes. By noting the things seen in the fall of the leaf we learn best how to find summer's treasuries.

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Late and Early Autumns

A man of grumbles, equal to the farmers, yet the gamekeeper is prepared to admit that a late autumn brings him one blessing. The leaves so screen his roosting pheasants that there is little fear of night-shooting in his coverts. Accordingly, he sleeps peacefully during many hours which he would have to devote to watching in a wet early season. Deep in his heart, all the same, he has a certain liking for the hours passed in watching over his birds at night. They bring him rheumatism; but also an excitement that adds much to the savour of existence. Not to know from moment to moment when his head may be smashed in is a stimulating change from dealing with small game whose worst powers of resistance are limited to a dig from the spurs of a winged cock, or a scratch from the claws of a netted rabbit.

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Hares in the Garden

As winter sets in, hares and rabbits are tempted to pay casual nocturnal visits to the garden. To fence the garden securely may be inconvenient--and unless the work is done thoroughly, not forgetting the bottoms of gates, it is almost useless. And possibly only a few plants are in danger, such as carnations or parsley, the special garden favourites of hares and rabbits. So the simplest plan may be to wire in the few plants or flower-beds that are threatened. Or a string may be fixed at about eight inches off the ground, after being saturated with one of the fluids used for tainting rabbits from their burrows. This is useful when isolated carnations are dotted about in herbaceous borders, or when there are several rows of Brussels sprouts in different parts of the garden; hares are very fond of Brussels sprouts.

A mysterious affair occurred in a garden, which a gamekeeper was called in to investigate. It appeared that the inhabitants of the house had been awakened in the night by a din as if the roof of a tin church had fallen off, a din proved to be associated with a piece of corrugated iron in the garden, used as a stand for pots and pans. The mystery to be explained was what had upset the stand and the pots. A tuft of the fur of a hare on the tin gave the clue, with a nibbled patch of parsley a few yards away. It was determined that a cat had come suddenly round a corner on a hare enjoying an unlawful feast, and that the hare in her fear had dashed headlong into the corrugated iron, thus raising pandemonium; one effect was the hare came no more to that garden.

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Food for Pheasants

The cost of feeding pheasants is a question of some interest at this season--to those who must foot the bill. The keeper is commonly blamed for running up too big a bill; a happy medium between his maximum and his employer's minimum is probably the correct amount of money required for food. The object of supplying corn to pheasants is not always understood. It is less to feed the pheasants--for they can usually exist on natural food, if not very thick on the ground--than to keep them from straying, by giving them a pleasing and profitable employment. That keeper makes a mistake and is extravagant who strews maize on a clean-swept ride. His pheasants in a few minutes will swallow a cropful and will be free during the rest of the day to seek and find mischief. They explore foreign woods, and if they like them, stay away from home. But they may be kept where they should be if pleasantly engaged in feeding. Straw-corn--such as rough rakings and damaged sheaves from the tops of ricks which are being threshed--not only serves to feed pheasants, but forces them to spend the greater part of their time, which otherwise would be spare time, in searching for each mouthful. One plan is to tie bundles of straw-corn round the trunks of trees so that the pheasants must jump to peck the ears. The empty straw is piled up again and again for the birds to scratch down; it is only necessary to throw in a little loose grain. Such a miniature stack will amuse the birds for hours at a time, and helps to keep them at home.

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The Lingering Leaves

Leaves may still cling to the newest growths of underwood long after the older underwood is gaunt and bare. The sap, perhaps, is fresher and more vigorous in the younger wood--prolonging the period of ripening--and the new buds have not pushed out far enough to dislodge the leaves. In coppices that have been thinned one sees how unusually big, and how strong and enduring, are the leaves on the shoots of tree-stumps--as though the whole energy of what was once a tree is concentrated in the few shoots and leaves. Where hedges are clipped, dead leaves remain in place far into the winter, possibly because, owing to injury, the growth is retarded of those layers of cork which form to assist the buds in dislodging the worn-out leaves. On the sides of rides trimmed annually the leaves form quite a screen in late autumn--to which one sportsman put down his many misses at rabbits, and ordered his keepers to walk along every ride and pick off all the leaves that remained. The shoots of underwood that has been cut always grow more luxuriantly in a hot, dry summer than in a rainy one; every copse-worker will tell you this is the case, though we have not come across one who could solve the riddle.

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Planning Big Shoots

In early November many keepers are putting the perfecting-touches to plans that have been maturing all through the year. From the second day of February the keeper whose work is not merely work, but the most absorbing interest the world has to offer, has been weighing continuously a thousand details--studying each in its relation to others--scheming to arrange all so that in combination they shall bring the best possible results when the big days of the shooting season come to pass. Few shooting men realise the immense importance of apparently trivial details. Let a single one--such as the exact placing of a "stop"--be forgotten or disregarded, and the whole of a day's sport by modern methods may be ruined. Many good beats, many good days, have been brought to naught by a sportsman coolly and without permission despatching an important "stop" on an errand. And afterwards he will protest in all good faith that he commandeered the "stop" only because he seemed to be standing idly at a corner, as if waiting for something to do.

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Plots and Counter-Plots

On the shoulders of the head keeper falls the responsibility of all the mistakes that mar a day's sport. His position is unfortunate, for though he may perfect every arrangement, the success of the day must depend on good shooting and the perfect carrying out of orders. His plans must be set in motion amid every kind of distraction--a general in command on a battlefield is not more harassed by questions, plots, and counter-plots than the commander of a shoot. Guns are no sooner told where to go than they inquire the way--one is asking querulously where he will find his cartridges, another is sure his position is hopeless, while the beaters require constant attention, for if they are left alone to move on to the next beat they will lose themselves as a matter of course. In partridge-driving the keeper's nerves are stretched to breaking-point. Half a drive is finished, and not a bird has shown itself; the suspense grows almost unendurable before the swirling clouds of birds at last suddenly rise, and go on beautifully in twos and tens and twenties--in a stream that no man can count. The great art is to give even shooting through the day, and to distribute sport evenly among the guns, without favouritism--unless, indeed, orders are that the cream of the sport must pass the way of an important personage. If a keeper, for reasons of his own, should wish the bulk of the game to go to one quarter, he can manage this by retarding one end of the line of beaters, or by ordering certain beaters to tap with their staves more vigorously than the others--and by this stratagem his partiality is hidden completely from the sportsmen.

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Indian Summer

A late spell of midsummer heat makes it seem as though summer indeed has lingered in the woods. With the oak-trees still heavily canopied with green leaves, the season of pheasant-shooting seems an anomaly. A varied bunch of wild flowers may be picked, many belonging to June rather than to the months of nuts and berries. Primroses bloom freely. Flowers are to be found everywhere, and cottage gardens are ablaze with Michaelmas and tall yellow daisies and dahlias; the coming of the first keen frost will mean a floral massacre. On hedges laden with blackberries and the red bryony berries there are sprays of honeysuckle, and there are many bright blooms of scabious, knapweed, corn-poppy, daisy, harebell, violet, and scarlet pimpernel. Even some of the old cock pheasants seem to imagine that April has come, judging by their spring-like crowing, and some of the hens nest who should have done with nests by the end of July. One very late nest we saw with eleven eggs, on which the hen was only beginning to sit, as shown by a broken egg. She had been cut out by the mowing of seed-clover heads, but returned to her mistaken duties, and was sitting on the evening of September 30.

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Winter Sleep

On a perfect summer-like day of autumn, it is strange to think that hedgehogs are going to their winter quarters, and that sleep is overtaking so many creatures--bats that hang amid the dark rafters of the barn roofs; toads in the mud of the ponds; field-mice, water-voles, lizards, badgers, squirrels, hedgehogs curled in the ditches, snugly rolled up in a great ball of dry grass and leaves; and the dormouse, "seven sleeper," as it is called locally, or "dorymouse," "sleeper," or "sleeping-mouse." Much country weather-lore, in all parts of the world, is based on the storing of nuts by squirrels, the building of winter houses by musk-rats, the early or late cutting of winter supplies of wood by beavers, the working of moles, who are supposed before winter comes to prepare basins for the storage of worms, and the laying up of food on the part of bears. "The hedgehog," said the writer of "Husbandman's Practice," "commonly hath two holes or vents in his den or cave, the one toward the south and the other toward the north, and look which of them he stops; thence will come great storms and winds follow." The badger in his winter retreat certainly will block up holes from which draughts blow.

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A Dish of Hedgehog

Though hibernating hedgehogs will remain above ground all the winter, in the hollows where leaves to cover them have accumulated, most retire to the rabbit-burrows. They are seldom found when ferreting operations are going forward, because the ferrets do not care to have dealings with them--though when hedgehogs are skinned or opened, ferrets relish their flesh as food. Keepers do not care to carry hedgehogs home, on account of the many unpleasant things that they distribute between himself and his ferrets. It is true that gipsies and others eat hedgehogs, and this is the time when they are in season for those who appreciate them, being at their fattest, as are all creatures about to retire for the winter. Gipsies caught trespassing at this time of year are always ready with the excuse that they are searching merely for hedgehogs--even if dogs and nets and ferrets happen to be in their possession. That they prefer hedgehog to rabbit is a tale for a grandmother. Yet they know well how to make a tasty dish of hedgehog. They burn off the bristles, split the prickly beast down his back, and broil him on a forked stick over a fire of wood. That is the quickest and cleanest way of cooking out of doors; and, for those who appreciate things grilled, the best. But for those whose taste is toward cooking with all the natural juices conserved, the elephant's-foot process is recommended. Take not merely your hedgehog's feet, but his whole body, "prickliwigs" and all, and encase in a jacket of clay, and bury in hot ashes. Before serving, peel off the clay and the prickles at the same time. Of hedgehog also may be made a stew of savoury brown. So that the stew's beginning may be in keeping with the traditions of the immortal cooks, take an onion stuck with cloves, then, having browned your neatly jointed hedgehog in a frying-pan, by means of a few ounces of butter (together with the clove-stuck onion), immerse it in good stock, to which add a few chopped truffles, and any other such appetising things you can lay hands on--a glass or so of champagne or other good white wine will not be amiss, while a squeeze of lemon-juice is held to effect a decided improvement. By simmering, reduce the liquid contents of the cooking-pan by one-half: and serve hot, garnished with little sippets of toast. Should you tire of hedgehog cooked in these ways, any of the numerous rabbit recipes may be applied. It is to be presumed that most people would soon have enough of the hedgehog dishes.

WINTER

Rustic Wit

Countrymen often display a dry humour all their own. At a shooting party we fell in with a beater, into whose charge one of the guns had given a well-filled cartridge-bag. Every now and again we noticed that the beater thrust his hand into the bag, and regarded the cartridges which he pulled out with a puzzled look. We inquired the reason, and it transpired that some of the cartridges were loaded with No. 5 shot, and some with No. 5-1/2, and that the beater had been asked to sort them by their owner, a gun of indifferent merits. He said, in continuation of his story: "He did tell I he can't get on nohow wi' sich mixed tackle. _I_ reckon if there weren't no shots in 'em at all 'twouldn't make ne'er a marsel o' difference."

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The Oak City

Every oak-tree teems with life. Of insects alone five hundred species look mainly to the oak for support. When the tree grows to the age of fruitfulness--when sixty or seventy years have passed over its head--then its population is increased tenfold. Here is a reason for the incredible supplies of fruit--the great majority of the acorns go to support the pensioners, and thousands must be sown if one is to have a chance to develop into a seedling. Squirrels come to feast and hide the acorns as they hide nuts; the dormice come; human children come with sacks for the sake of the pigs at home; pheasants feast on the ground; rooks, more wary, amid the branches; hungry jays warn hungry wood-pigeons when the keeper approaches. To the animals, birds, and insects are added the parasite plants, fungi flourishing where a broken branch rots, lichens covering the bark, on the topmost bough the mistletoe.

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Acorns

Were it not for the oaks there would be scanty winter faring and feasting for many wild creatures. When acorns and hazel-nuts are scarce, and full beech-masts are not plentiful, birds and beasts have an unusually hard struggle to tide over the winter, even should it be mild, as a paucity of nuts is supposed to foretell. Different creatures like their nut food in different conditions and at different times. The rooks in their greed pull the acorns from their cups where they grow, others do not relish them in their fresh green state, and wait until they are ripe and mellow. Pheasants, who are very partial to acorns in autumn and winter, when more delicate faring is not available, prefer to eat them just as they begin to sprout. Like corn and other seeds, acorns when sprouting possess a peculiarly attractive sweetness. Some of the trees seem to produce fruit of extra sweetness or extra fine flavour--at least, the gamekeeper finds that his pheasants seem to prefer to feed beneath certain trees. Perhaps it is that those trees which are most sun-drenched produce the sweetest acorns, just as the most exposed hazel-nuts on the topmost twigs are so much better than the pale ones of the lowest branches.

The keeper welcomes a generous supply of acorns--provided that the trees which yield them grow in his woods, and not exclusively near the boundary of his beat. Wood-pigeons, as soon as they have cleared the beech-mast, their specially favoured food, will stuff their crops with acorns to the bursting-point--and so grow fat. Acorns also form an important item in the winter fare of rabbits and deer. It is true that they draw rats to the coverts, and even when the last acorn has gone it is not easy to clear the rats away completely. Whether or not there are plentiful acorns, the keeper is much indebted to the oak for food for pheasants, because they are so fond of the spangle-galls, to be found in plenty on the backs of the leaves, that they prefer them even to the maize which is freely scattered. All the galls of the oak, whether oak-apples, or bullet, artichoke, spangle, or root galls, are the outcome of eggs laid by the various gall-wasps, and the pheasants know that within the spangle-galls are the grubs, feeding on the galls' flesh. Left to themselves, the grubs will in due time reach the chrysalis stage of existence, to be hatched in June as winged insects, and to lay in turn the eggs which cause the pretty vermilion-spotted galls. So the wheel of life turns again and would turn for ever if unspoked by the pheasant's beak.

* * * * *

Plump Rabbits

In mid-November rabbits are at their fattest. Grass has been green, sweet, lush, and growing; under the autumn sun, winter oats and wheat have sprung inches high, and rabbits have been enjoying rare feasts. The stoats, in turn, have found benefit in the autumn. It is on full-grown rabbits that they now depend chiefly for food. No longer can they feed on young birds; nor are small rabbits often to be met. Rats show fight when attacked, and stoats prefer to tackle game without power of resistance. Full-grown hares have too much staying power to be hunted down, and they are too fond of making for the open fields to be worth hunting. There are mice and field-voles, but the fat rabbits of the woods are the most obvious of possible meals. No hunt is more determined, ferocious, or relentless than when a stoat hounds a big rabbit to its death.

* * * * *

The Stoat's Hunting

By scent alone the stoat runs down the rabbit chosen for its dinner. No matter how devious the rabbit's course, or how many other rabbits cross the trail, the one line of scent is followed to the end, and sooner or later the death-scream of the rabbit is inevitable. We have often seen the last act of the tragedy. One hunted rabbit made for the shelter of young underwood, cleverly twisting amid the jungle of fern, grass, and bramble, so that the leaping stoat could have been guided only by scent; the rabbit seemed to understand that the hollowness of the bottom of old wood offered few chances of dodging. At last the rabbit grew exhausted; and, at a loss to know where to run to shake off its pursuer, but a few yards behind, took to turning and twisting with redoubled energy, now rounding a leafy stump, then dashing into a clump of brambles, doubling, again rounding the stump, again flashing through the brambles--then sitting up for a second, listening to hear if the stoat were still following. The stoat, thus baulked again and again, grew ever more furious. Coming up on the hot scent to the leafy stump, round which the rabbit had slipped in the nick of time, it would dash in so furiously as to make the brown leaves rattle off, as a terrier leaps at a rabbit's seat from which the owner has just fled. The burning scent throws the pursuer into a frenzy. But the stoat, with a chatter of rage, lost little time in following on into the bramble clump; and the sight of man near by was not enough to turn it from its object. At last, in the brambles, it came upon the rabbit dead-beat--charged in a blind fury, sank its teeth into the head, worrying home the grip. Then, having disabled the rabbit, it retired a yard or two and charged again, retiring and charging at intervals, as if to gain fresh power for driving in the needle-sharp teeth.... At such a moment the keeper feels more than ever justified in shooting a stoat.