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Webster Family Librai^ of Veterinary Medicine
Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at
Tufts University
200 Westboro Road

Mnr+h Croftnn MA 01 R!^fi

FACT AGAINST FICTION

LONDON : PRINTED BY

EDWARD J. FRANCIS, TOOK's COURT,

CHANCERY LANE, E.G.

FACT AGAINST FICTION.

HYDROPHOBIA AND DISTEMPER ;

WITH SOME REMARKS ON DARWIN.

BY THE

Hon. GRANTLEY F. BERKELEY^

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

HonUon :
SAMUEL TINSLEY,

10, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND.

1874.
[All rights reserved.]

X

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

CHAP.

PAGE

I. Shooting as it Was, and as it Is . . .1

II. The Rented Manor 32

III. Farming and Rotation of Crops . . . .60
IV. The Thief and Poacher. — Preservation of Game 83

V. On the Theft of Live Game . . . .109

VI. On the Rearing of Pheasants by Hand . .124

VII. The Waste Lands and Waste Waters of the

United Kingdom , 143

VIII. The Science of the Wilds, and the Poetry of

Sport . 171

IX. Decoys for Wild Fowl . . . ' . . .190

X. Eels and Lampernes. — The Mystery of Fishes . 246

XI. Change of Seasons and of the Times . . .271

XII. The Loves of the Insects 295

XIII. On Various Subjects 314

XIV. The Sportsman in Retirement. — Rural Life,

AND Food for the Poor .... 326

XV. Nature's School-Room . . . . . . 342

FACT AGAINST FICTION,

CHAPTER I,

SHOOTING AS IT WAS, AND AS IT IS,

Change in tlie Whole System of our Sylvan Sports — Foolish Use
of Voice and Whistle — Tramping Up Game — Mismanagement
of Dogs by Sportsmen — Careless Slaughter of Birds, and
consequent Cruelty — Danger to the Shooters themselves —
Occurrence at Prestwood — Master George — Loading and
Loaders — Driving of Partridges — Theft of Cartridges — Disease
among Partridges.

It will be in the memory of many of us born witliln
the present century, that '^ since the days when we
were young," the whole system of our sylvan sj^orts
has undergone a violent change — a ^^ violent change,
very," and one that in my opinion tends not to the
real art of venery, its poetry, or pleasure.

To sum up the unsportsman-like vagary to which
I allude, all — everything, the training and the
beautiful and mysterious sagacity of pointer and
setter — are all merged in a restless run, enormous

VOL. II. B

2 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

haste, and nfurious desire to let off the barrels of three
double guns as fast as they can be handed to you
and you can pull the trigger, so that there may
be no cessation of noise, headache, tobacco-smoke,
and folly.

In the olden time, two sportsmen went out in
company, attended by one keeper to carry the bag,
and, perhaps, by a brace of setters, pointers, or
spaniels, as the case might be.

Each sportsman carried a gun, and loaded it
when discharged. There was no undue haste. If
a winged bird of any sort fell, time was accorded
for a minute search, and scarce anything was ever
lost. Setter, pointer, or spaniel, did all that was
required in retrieving stricken or running game,
and a large black dog, of the Newfoundland cross,
often miscalled ^^ a retriever," was neither known
nor wanted.

In the present day, from three to six or ten
gunners sally forth together, no earthly thing in
their heads but one of the two or three guns that
are carried at their tails. They have a man or two
behind them to load and hand their guns as fast
as they can discharge them, and not one of these
modern sj)ortsmen ever think of picking up a dead

SHOOTING AS IT WAS, AND AS IT IS. 3

bird or looking for a wounded one ; tliey sally
forth to pull the trigger, and they care nothing
for the interest of the manor or spoiling of the
game.

As a sportsman and a lover of game, I doomed
that when a breech-loader was invented and
brought into use, a ^^ loader," or a man to load
for his master, when two muzzle-loaders wore in
hand, would be done away with ; but such was the
growth of the appetite for unrelenting and con-
tinuous slaughter, noise, and fire, that then three
breech-loaders at a time were used, so that not
half a second with a gun unloaded should be lost
to the panting and headaching. destroyer. In
former times, a sportsman, or, perhaps, two sports-
men, in every sense of the w^ord, went out partridge
shooting, as I have previously said, with a brace
of setters or pointers, attended by one keeper to
carry the bag. In those days, the knowledge of
the habits of the game they were after led the true
sportsman to know that the cleanest and q[uietest
stepper in high turnips, and who made the least
noise, got the most shots; that is, that from his
hushed method of stepping between the roots he
got nearer to his birds.

B

o

4 FACT AGAINST FICTION,

Observe the difference now ! Pointers and setters
are not used ; but from three to four or five gunners
—I can give them no more apt definition, mingled
with nine, ten, or twelve beaters— tramp in a line of
march across the turnip fields, and as the beaters
behead the doomed turnips with clumsy large-nailed
shoes, they make a noise like the roar of a surging
tide or the tramp of soldiers on a march, vainly
expecting that if they take short beats backwards
and forwards, leaving it to the selection of the much
wiser old cock partridges, without using their
wings, to run and double round them, that they
will thus ^^ tramp up" every bird in a given field
and get a shot at him.

They do not, however, tramp them up as wanted ;
they do not induce the birds to lie ; for the coveys,
hearing this measured tread of many feet and a
noise of human voices so unusual approaching
them, take to their legs before the strange ad-
vance, and then to their wings, ere their drilled
assailants come within shot.

When a party of tliis description, so drilled and
armed, commence a ^^ tramp" against wild birds,
they seem to lay aside all thoughts of the birds
having any sense at all. Keepers, very likely

SHOOTING AS IT WAS, AND AS IT IS. 0

tlircc or four of tliem, have black dogs miscalled
retrievers, with tight collars on, to Avhich a cord is
attached, on whose unhappy ribs the keepers keep
drumming with a sufficiently thick stick. Though
they have the poor dear dog in a line, they
perjDctually bid him to be ^^ steady" — the word
^^ steady" to him, or ''keep back," either expres-
sion being superfluous, when the dogs are led. If
birds fall and the dogs are sent to pick up, all
the keepers whistle, as a bystander might suppose,
in imitation of the Italian Opera where heroes and
heroines sing loudest on the eve of death, and men
murder to harmonious strains, with some crotchets,
of course, but without a quaver of consternation.

It is an extraordinary fact, but fact it is, that
those lords of manors who are most anxious to
show their friends a bloody day, — I will not call it
a good day's sport, though they go to an immense
expense to do so, in the preservation of game,
watching it, and feeding' it, — at the moment that
their wished-for success arrives, kick the whole
thing down by shouting to their men, and ordering
iialts in the line of march, giving different direc-
tions to boys with flags and followers, &c.

The most fatal fact that militates against part-

6 FACT AGAINST FICTIOX.

ridge, grouse, or snipes lying for the gun, is tlie
sound of the human voice ^ or, wliich is nearly as
bad, that wretched pea-whistle, which is always
deemed an accompaniment to a dog.

If one or two footfalls are heard in turnips, or
in any considerable cover, by partridges, if neither
voice nor wliistle is heard, the step in the turnips
or cover may proceed from horse or cow, Avhen,
as the partridge cannot see above the cover, they
are not directly alarmed. If, at the same time,
the light, ranging, but cautious approach of well-
trained dogs is heard on the far side of tlie
game, the birds, in listening to both, get pinned
between man and dog, and lie till their enemy's
foot is almost on them.

In ^' tramping" up j^^^rtridge in this line of
march fashion, my late noble and gallant friend.
Lord Cardigan, was peculiar, for he treated his
beaters to a species of drill and words of command
that pertained only to regimental manoeuvres.

'^ Halt I take up your dressing ; bring your right
shoulders forward at the word, and keej) the line."
^^ Now — forward; no halt. Here — you; I've some
orders as to the markers ; come here."

Then followed a conversation between my noble

SnOOTIXG AS IT WAS, AND AS IT IS. 7

friend and a head keeper, during all wliicli time
on one occasion eleven coveys of partridges were
seen collectively to rise at the further end of that
turnip field, and to fly from the dreaded, and, hij
noise, hnoivn danger.

To me there is this disagreeable contingency
api^ertaining to the ^^ tramp" for partridges, un-
aided by the curiously graceful accompaniment of
pointers or setters.

You are forced into line, and forced to keep
step with your right and left-hand man. You are
scolded if you get a trifle in advance, and the
same if a trifle in the rear. Your heavy gun (mine
are heavy) and of the eleven gauge, whichever I
shoot with,— old John Manton, of Dover Street,
Pope, of Newcastle, or that now unrivalled gun
producer. Grant, of St. James's Street, London,
^-held in readiness across the chest for an unex-
pected or a long shot. • For there is in this fashion
of tramping up game no indication of the proximity
of birds, and nothing to draw your attention till
the rushing of wings is heard, drowned in a
roar of '^niark" from every open mouth in your
vicinity.

At whatever distance a partridge may rise, he

8 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

is frio'litenecl with the united roars of a dozen or
more of men, all of Avhom shout the word '^ mark,"
although they well know that there are men told
off at stations in different hedges to do the very
thing without noise that they so vociferously shout
about. When once you enter a turnip-field^ and
by so doing have to some slight extent elicited the
notice of game, the worst thing you can do, with a
view to sport, is to stand still, and give the birds time
to think and run. Then, if that injurious pause is
accompanied by human voice or whistle, the game
is, indeed, up, for the coveys get to their legs and
then fly away.

I neither talk nor whistle to my setters when
they are at work ; they know their duty and I know
them. To uphold my hand is caution enough, and
a short, sharp ^^Ho!" is ample to stop one setter
if the other has come to a point unseen by his
ranging companion. They are perfectly steady
from the chase of hare or rabbit ; yet if I see and
feel quite sure that a hare or rabbit is seriously
stricken^ I bid them to ^^scek dead,'' and I have
known them foot at three parts speed a liare for
half a mile and bring her back, each having a light
hold of her in their so united mouths. The next

SHOOTING AS IT WAS, AND AS IT IS. 9

moment, if a liaro or rabbit gets up under tlieir
feet, or if tlie same is shot at and missed, the
setters drop or stop to the gun, and never attempt
to chase. All this is very beautiful, and to go out
by myself with these setters, or with a second gun
as my companion who will attend to my sugges-
tions, is to me the very bliss of that kind of
sport.

How much more agreeable it is to have this
curious canine conduct to watch, and to be warned
by it of the immediate presence of game, than
to go tramping and plodding on in a line of
march, perhaps for a considerable distance, with-
out a shot — reveries and speculations on matters
far removed from the feathered tribes and fields
rendering you unmindful of the gun, and careless
of, or unprepared for, the instantaneous demand
for unerring aim that a small, brown, swift-winged
bird so suddenly requires.

I know not why, but^ through my long and
constant experience, in all my endeavours, I have
never been able to make the Lords and
Commons, and thence the keepers, aware of the
mischief occasioned by permitting the human voice
or whistle to be heard by creatures thoroughly

10 FACT AGAINST FICTION'.

conversant with the sounds and to whom a nearer
ai3proacli is desired.

It 2)ositively enrages me to see a stupid man
take a sensible dog up to the spot where a bird
has fallen. There is the man, and tliere is the
dog, on the exact spot where the fall took place;
the eyes of the man ought to convince him that
the bird is not there, and the nose of the dog does
convince him that tlie bird has run away ; yet
for all this, the moment the dog essays to foot
the lost game, the foolish biped calls him back,
and puts him on the spot on which the bird would
have been if he had been dead. If not there, he
7nust have run away ; yet the dog is not permitted
to overtake him, but is told to seek dead, when
the dog really knows that the bird is no more
dead than he is. A really good retriever has, or
should have, his brains as free to his own use as
his nose, and both should be uninterruptedly
assigned to him for the purpose he is told to effect.
If you don't Avant him to effect it, don't tell him
to try. If his mind is disconcerted by constant
verbal interference, and he is not free to mako
use of liis mysterious powers in every possible
way, why, the wiser quadruped must fail, through

SHOOTING AS IT WAS, AND AS IT IS. 11

tlic folly of Lis biped master. It lias been my
lot constantly to see retrievers (so called) brought
out with collars round their necks so tight; as
really to interfere with respiration, more par-
ticularly when, as I have but too often observed,
there is a couple of yards of cord attached to their
collars, to stint their breath, to impede their feet,
and to catch in every obstacle they pass over.
Now if bipeds would only use their inferior brains
in ascertaining that to choke a dog and half
strangle him is to diminish the free inspiration
of the laden air that reaches his intelligent brain
through the nasal poAver, and directs him where
to find the bird he is in quest of, they— -the bipeds
— would then take care that their foolish artificial
immdiments should not send him, choking, half-
strangled^ and panting along over ground. His
mouth should be shut, and his mind at command
to test through his nostrils the slight taint on the
ground left by a running bird, whose steps had
very likely followed the line of others, or been
crossed by different game, the latter a very great
addition to the difficulty.

In the olden time sportsmen liked to pick up
or take in hand every bird they killed, to view

12 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

its beautiful feathers, and to mark its age or
condition — the latter quite necessary, as giving an
insight into the amount of artificial feeding the
bird had receivedj if any had been deemed neces-
sary ; but now men, in the most unsportsman-like
manner, hasten forth to murder and to destroy
all that rises or runs before them, unheeding
sex, condition, or future utility in the kitchen.
Smashed limbs fall in a cloud of dislodged
feathers, the result of three or four barrels being
zealously fired into the same bird. '^Cooking
distance, if you please," used to be called out if
a man blcAV a bird to pieces ; but now there is no
restraint — all is to be killed anyhow, and as fast
as possible, and when killed the game is flung
down like a heap of rubbish. It is curious and
very distasteful to me to observe this, and to see
how soon keepers, as they are called, fall into
the lamentable ways of their betters. At the end
of a turnip-field the men are apt to assemble,
each flinging from his stifling pockets the birds
and their ruffled feathers unsmoothed, the limbs,
set in their last agony of death, not pulled
straight, but everything tossed together in san-
guinary disparagement, -— the birds flung thus

SHOOTING AS IT WAS, AND AS IT IS. 13

with idle force to the earth, as if they were so
many useless stones, and without a particle of re-
flection, that every knock upon their bodies while
warm, from being recently killed, added bruises
to the wounds that had bereft them of life. Yet,
so the powder and shot world wags on. This
manner and method of careless slaughter, I firmly
believe to be the result of the fashionable insanity
of shooting pigeons, to which the attention of the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
is so greatly needed. Ho ! I was nearly sug-
gesting that a twin society for the protection of
young females, as well as doves, was as much
required in its attentions at Ilurlingham ; but if
dowagers can't look after their own doves, why,
no association ever formed will do it for them,
and humanity, morality, and the slang term ^^slow"
will have to linger on, hand in hand, till the ^^fast"
world runs itself wildly to an end.

Arrived at my time of life, when ^^ the heart"
is no longer ^4iot and restless," but its pulse
'^ subdued and slow," it often happens to me to
have a bird or hare rise or get uj), or run almost
beneath my feet, when out with the fast man of
the day, and w^iile mj cool and deliberate aim

14 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

is on it, abstaining from the trigger till the game
is at sufficient distance to be simply and cleanly
killed, to see that bird or hare blown by a gmmer,
who had no business to shoot at it, into a mass
of fractured limbs, of fur or feathers, of no use
to any one, but simply so exterminated to add to
the l)ag of the day and to the headachy pleasure
of letting a petard off under a gunner's nose. Of
course I exclaim, on the part of the lord of
the manor, to the owner of the intruding gun,
^'Cooking distance, if you please," and ^^what
business had you to shoot that bird ? "

'^ My dear fellow," cries the shooter or shooters,
— for probably several had lent their aid to spoil
the game, — ^^ you were so long in letting off your
r/un, that we thought you weren't going to pull
the trigger.''

This, when ^' subdued and slow," angers me not
at all. I laugh at these eager men, and j)ity the
spoiling of the game ; if their stand in a cover was
near mine, I could, if I chose it, give them scarce a
chance of pulling a trigger, save at a falling bird.

I see that it gives men, many younger, some as
old as myself, so much pleasure to let oft' their
gun, that I oftcr abstain from an opportunity.

SHOOTING AS IT WAS, AND AS IT IS. 15

undoubtedly mine, of firing, to give them the
coveted shot, intensely amused at times when
they have missed the bird after all. They
often miss, when my gun is aimed, from their
own haste to be the first to fire ; and it has
very frequently liappened, that if we have fired
together, particularly in cases where my neighbour
has been an uncertain shot, and that when the
bird was dead, he or they have turned to ask ^^if
I had let off my gun," I have simply shaken my head
and abstained from loading, to give them, at least,
all the pleasure in my power to afford, in permitting
them to think they had the shot all to themselves.

One thing in these fast days strikes me as very
strange, it is, that so few shooters — I can't call
them sportsmen — are added to the dead-bag of the
game. I constantly see men fire in covers or in
hedgerows, right into spots wherein any human
creature might he, but into which they had seen
no human creature go ; a boy or a girl, most likely
both, may be there accidentally, or as ^^ stops,"
or a brother gunner may have got there, or a
beater wandered from the line. None of these
possible considerations, however, intervene between
the eager, covetous eye of the gunner and the

16 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

risen bird he sees, but on the instant bang goes
the breach-loader, and the chance is run of animal
or bird destruction licensed, or human accidental
death. For myself, if a bird rises near me, or a
hare starts up close by, I call out to friend or
beater, ^^ Where are you?" and then, even with
that delay, often have more than plenty of time
to fire. I do not go out simjDly to destroy, nor
can I bear to endanger anybody who is with me,
and therefore I am neither nervous nor put out in
any way by the dangerous folly of others.*

While telling this, and in order to give those on
whom I may lay the fair lash, a rise out of which
to laugh at me, it behoves me to tell an occurrence
that chanced to me at Prestwood, on the borders
of Worcestershire, the residence of Mr. Foley.

We had assembled to shoot the covers there, on
a beat where, for incautious shots, the ground was
dangerous, inasmuch as there were hollows in the
woods, with rather high ridges on either side of
them. It was necessary, where these hollows were,
to have a gun on each ridge, so as to command

■" In this, the close of the shooting season, 1874, I have been
shot twice. Once in the hand, and once about G inches above the
knee ; in the latter place two shots went to the bone, where they
remain.

SHOOTING AS IT WAS, AND AS IT IS. 17

the rises from the lower groimd. Caution, there-
fore, was to be more particularly used, as tliougli
the dip in the ground was considerable, cutting
across as a bird flies, the gunners were not very
far off each other, and therefore well within
danger.

From my friends having arrived at, to me, a
very complimentary opinion, that as a shot (as I
trust in all other things) caution was my habitual
custom, it chanced that the selection fell on me
to take one hill above a hollow^, wdiile Foley, the
then lieir-apparent and a young man, took the
other, so as to keep him, for that time at least,
in an assured place of safety.

Foley, now the owner of Prestwood, — as I hope
in all haj^piness and health, while life lasts, he
ever will be, — was attended by a rammer-bearer,
one of the first innovations on the original rammer
borne beneath the barrels of the gun, in the sliape
of a very small boy.

A pheasant rose directly in front of me, and
flew pretty straight away, but inclining to Foley's
side the ^^ gully," out of all possibly-to-be-com-
puted danger in regard to Avhere Foley stood, and
in every way a safe shot for me. I killed the

VOL. II. c

18 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

pheasant with one of my eleven-gauge, old muzzle -
loading Jolni Mantons, but with the usual forcible
shooting of that splendid gun. A tall-growing
ash sapling intervened between me and. the
pheasant, but the blow by which the gun cut down
the impediment occasioned extraordinary diversion
in the charge, for the boy immediately at the heels
of Foley tumbled over, ramrod and all, and
cried out tliat '^ he was shot." From our re-
spective j^ositions, the exclamation of tlio boy
was beyond my conception, yet there he lay on
liis back, his hand up to his face, and Foley
standing over him. To add to my unspeakable
mystification, the late Mr. Foley rushed up, and,
staring with spectacles on nose into the boy's face,
rather relieved my mind by loudly asseverating
that ^' the boy was in a fit, and speechless, at tlie
point of death." Of course, being totally unable
to account for any mischief from my gun, I
rushed into the liollow and up the other side,
just in time to share in the folloAving comedy,
Til ere stood Henry Foley, and there leaned his
father, l)ending liimself over the supposed-to-be-
dying urcliin, who still retained possession of tlie
extra ramrod, but from whom not one syllabic of

SHOOTING A8 IT WAiS, AND AS IT 18. 19

speech could be elicited. There was blood on tlie
boy's chin and lips, evidently from his mouth, while
in silence lie continued to set a fixed gaze on Mr.
Foley's spectacles, and to move his clieeks in
strange evolutions, Avhich Mr. Foley's horrified
glance immediately construed into convulsions.

^'He's ia convulsions," exclaimed Mr. Foley.
Then, as if to arouse the boy to some more
healthful effort, he cried, ^^ AVhy doii't you speak ?"

The boy's cheeks rolled about more than ever,
and his lips became violently agitated, his unoc-
cupied hand arose, it met his mouth, and 'twixt
his finger and thumb, and from his hitherto
occupied tongue, he knip^Dcd a shot, a little flat-
tened on its sides, and, holding it up to Mr.
Foley's face, he uttered, in considerable and in
triumphant mirth, to his patron, '^Here a is."
The shot cannoning off the tree, from the rest of the
charge the shot had severed, cut the boy's li}^, and
stuck between two of his front teeth, his prisoner.
This the boy's tongue had been busy with, and
first or last he was resolved not to speak till he
had dislodged and captured it.

'^ Well, my little man," I said, giving him lialf-a-

crown, ^' then you are not hurt ? "

c 2

20 • FACT AGAINST FICTION.

^^Nooa," he said, gTinning.

^'Will you be sliot again," I asked him, ^^ if I
give you another half-crown to-morrow ? "

^^ Ees/' was the response, to the great grati-
fication of the head gamekeeper, the gigantic
Beard, for whom I always entertained, and still
entertain, the highest respect, as no man ever
did his duty better, or proved himself a more
faithful servant, to the late as well as to the
present Mr. Foley.

Beard was, if I remember rightly, over six feet
three in heiglit, and not being able to swim, he
used to walk, after a fashion, under water, when
the river or canal was deep and narrow, and
somehow or other always came up on the side
he desired.

In these fast and heedless days, let me here pro-
pose a caution to my brother shooters; It is this :
if they cannot afford to keep a servant of their
own to load their second gun, then never borrow
from your entertainer a keeper of tliat particular
manor to load the spare gun, for instead of his
attention being strictl}- confined to the charging
and care of the second gun, his ideas will be
ranging to the rise of the game, the flight of wild

SHOOTING AS IT WAS, AND AS IT IS. 21

fowl, or tlie lino of beatorSj and ten to one but
lie explodes the weapon lie is supposed to have
charge of in the very waistcoat, or at the Avaist-
Luttons, of the shooter for whom he is loading.

It is strange, but it has actually come within
my notice, that at the present day, not only
unpractised shooters, but mere idiots, are at times
sent out with shooting-parties armed with a gun.

I have known it asked of a fond mother, '^ What,
you do not mean to say lie (her son) is going out
shooting with us?"

'' Oh, yes ; poor dear George, he is very safe, I
assure you; he cant hurt himself with a breech-
loader, as there is no pouring down powder and
ramming it with the gun on cock ; he knows how
to slip it into the breech; so you need not be
afraid — unless by great accident he pulled the
trigger before putting the gun to his shoulder."

^' Humph!" said the sportsman to himself to
whom this comfortable assurance was addressed.
^' He won't hurt himself; that may be, but if he
lets his gun look at his companion, and gets at
play with the trigger, there is no saying wliat
he might do."

The dangerous shooting -party to which I now

22 l^ACT AGAINST FICtlOX.

allude sallied forth ; it was in tlie earliest part of
October, and the beat was in the fields, with an
occasional double hedge or spinny. The guns at one
time were divided, some to walk the turnips, while
two others took either side of a thick liedo-e. While
proceeding thus, an under-keeper, who had been told
off to mark, came running up to us in a state of con-
siderable excitement. As he approached he was
damned by the master of the party for quitting
his post; but resolutely, terrifically breathless, he
came on, and when close to his master, in enor-
mous consternation, blurted forth, as far as I could
make out, the following words, —

^^ Oh, Lard ! oh. Lard ! Measter G.'s a squatted
down in t'e dike, a rived 'isself of 's duds, and 's a
dressing on 'isself in a wuzzle le'f."

^^What?" roared all within hearing, not being
able to comprehend the local language of the ex-
cited under-keeper — '' What?"

The master of the party, however, knew the
import of the blurted-out intelligence, and bidding
us all stand still, hastened away Avith his informant.
Tlie fact was, that Master G. had bethought
himself of the very warm day, and, desiring cooler
raiment, he had undressed himself, and Avas endea-

8II00TING AS IT A\AS, AND AS IT IS. 23

vouring to construct an Adamisli clothing from
the leaf of the mangold-wiirzel.

So blind, were the parents to the idiotic pecu-
liarities of this their only son, that they took him
to the mansions of their friends, and trusted him
as if he was soundly in possession of his senses,
totally forgetting that while with them, or in
company Avith any one of whom he was afraid, the
weak-minded young man might only by chance
conduct himself with propriety; but, of course,
opportunities arose when for a short time he
became free of all surveillance, and on one
occasion I saw him drive, or, at least, I saw
the butler whom he had driven into a state
of speechless surprise, under the following cir-
cumstances.

The mansion had become vacated by the shoot-
ing-party ; the lord of the house had gone away,
and with a few ladies only one guest remained
that day to dinner. The ladies had left the dining-
room, and Master Gr. and this gentleman were
tete-a-tete. A message having been sent in which
called the gentleman for a short time to the
steward's room. Master G. was left to himself in
the full enjoyment of company to which, when

"24: FACT AGAINST FICTION.

opportunity occiirredj lie was much addicted— viz.,
three parts of three bottles of wine — of port, of
claret, and sherry. He had not been left many
minutes alone when tlie butler chanced to go into
the dining-room, and coming out, labouring under
a bewildered look of amazement, was met in the
passage by the gentleman who, not five minutes
before, had left that apartment and the nothing-
like emptied bottles.

^^ Would you wish any more wine, sir?" gasped
the butler.

" More wine ! No, there is ample on the table."

^^ I beg pardon, sir," rejoined the butler; ^'but
tliere 's none on the table 7ioio ; every bottle 's empty
except the decanter of water."

^' Empty! Why, I left three bottles nearly full
with your young gentleman ! Where is he ?"

^' Gone to the drawing-room, sir, a singing —

• The sessions at 'sizes are all a farce,
And tlie judge and the jury may — '

He slammed the door, and I couldn't hear what it
was he told the ladies they was to do when the
sessions was over. Since then there 's been a deal
of liustling 'twixt him and his mamma to get him
uj^stairs to bed."

•SHOOTING AS IT WAS, AND AS IT IS. 25

And such was the man, in these fast days, sup-
posed to he safe to send with a large party out
shootinG:.

When keepers are appointed by their employers
to load the additional gun, when muzzle-loaders
are shot with, I often have seen, and no doubt I
shall still see, the loader walking along after his
master w^ith the gun held in a slanting position, and
the charge being rammed vigorously down in that
position, with that hateful new-fangled thing, the
^' loading rod" — concussion enough given to knock
out the breeches, and by the slant, half the powder
lost b}^ damply sticking in tlie barrel, clinging to the
slanting sides, and at length balling beneath the
ill-directed wad. The order ought to be, ^^ stand
still while you load." To stand still, in these
days, or to take your time about anything, is
utterly beside the go-adiead fashion of the hour:
everything is at railway pace, and much, if not
all, that was once in high repute is irresistibly
run down.

There is now another phase of shooting which
is fast going a-head of the tramj^ing in armies
through the fields, and that is, the driving of par-
tridges a^ well as of grouse. This new idea is /ar*

26 l^ACT AGAINST FICTION.

'prefcrahle to the last, as noise and scaring of the
winged game is turned into some use, and besides
this it saves fine gentlemen the trouble of walking.
They can take out a garden-stool Avitli them, and
sit and smoke with their loader and their three
guns resting upon the bank beside them, and if
the weather should be too hot or too wet, their
loader can carry an umbrella.

1 j)refer '' the drive'' infinitely to the '^ tram]Ding"
in a noisy line, and generally in a ^^ drive" on the
moors or fields, the space requires guns to be sta-
tioned at comfortable distance from each other, and
there is no clashing of shots at the same doomed
bird. The shots themselves, to some men, are much
more difiicult, and that, too, enhances the pleasure
of the sport; and w^liat is more, the shooters only
run the risk of being shot by one man, their OAvn
loader, instead of eight or ten.*

In closing this chapter I must give my friends a
caution — at least those of my friends who, like
myself, can't afibrd to take abput with them their
own loader in charge of the cartridge-bag. It has,

'" Alas, the accidents wMcli have happened, and ^vhicll might
have been avoided, in the shooting season closing in lfe74, have
been of a horrifying description.

SHOOTING AS IT WAS, AND AS IT IS. 27

of course, fallen to my lot to have some beater or

boy appointed to bear my spare cartridges over

and above those I carry in a belt round my waist

— a belt made for me by my haberdasher in the
country, Mr. Budden, of Wimborne, on a very

good plan of his own.

On returning home, I have on such occasions

been astonished at the amount of shooting I seem

to have had, from the diminution of ammunition,

and have felt perfectly certain that I had never

expended it in shots. I would, therefore, recommend

all my friends situated as to followers, in the field

or wood, as I am, — for I can't take mj own keeper

from his duty, — to have the sj)are cartridge pouch

fitted with a lock and tico keys : one key worn tied

to the waistcoat button-hole, for immediate use, the

other to be carried in the waistcoat-pocket in case

of accident. The theft of cartridges first began

among boys appointed to carry a pouch ; they stole

them for use on the period of the Gunpowder Plot,

and for rejoicings at Christmas, or to have a lark

with at other times. Upon this grew a suggestion

from poaching thieves to their sons or relations,

that the boys should steal the cartridges for the

powder and shot they contained, as that could be

2S FACT AGAINST FICTION.

made serviceable in the old ilint-lock u'uii or muzzle-
loader of any kind.

This instigation to robbery on the part of the
men to their sons and boys, is sure to increase with
ilia increase ofhreech-loadiiKjyunSj for at times the
cartridges so stolen Avill have a value besides the
amount of powder and sliot contained in them, as
old breech-loaders will be cast aside and become
of common use anion o^ thieves, and cartridires and
poachers may surreptitiously come together.

Grrant, of St. James's Street, has made a bag for
cartridges with lock and key, and to him I would
refer my readers for anything of a similar kind.

The breed of partridges has of late signally
failed, and failed from some acute disease ; this
has nothing whatever to do witli mere atmospheric
effects, or the weather. I sj^eak from close j^i'^^-
tice and personal suj^ervision. Very early in
the breeding seasons, as soon as the young par-
tridges were able to fly, when the covey rose,
one, two, and three or four young birds were ob-
served by me to drop very soon, and to be unable
to fly as far as the rest of the covey. When next
I saw the coveys in which this inability to continue
the flight existed, these birds were missing, and

SHOOTING AS IT WAS, AND AS IT IS. 29

tlio uiiinber in tlic covey proportionately dimi-
nisliccl. After some little time liatclies of from
eighteen to twenty young birds dwindled down to
two or three, and then also I oljserved in very
many cases but one old bird with the covey, and
sometimes none.

The breeding season, or rather the dying seasons,
wore on, and my keepers reported some good
coveys, numerically speaking, though all })ro-
nounced them to be the worst seasons ever knowm.
In tlie second week in one September I sliot on
my own manor; and in a lield in wdiich a covey
of fourteen was reported, there they were, and at
the first rise some elucidation was afforded, for in a
left and right shot out of tlie same covey I killed
two different - sized young birds. Eventually I
killed three different - sized young birds, and on
extending my beat I met with small coveys of
young birds of different sizes, Avithout any old
l)irds, proving that in many cases the old birds as
well as many young ones had died, and hence the
packing together of the orphan birds.

In the immediate precincts of my house, in one
of these seasons, I knew of nine old birds sitting on
full nests of eggs, all of them hatched off splendidly

30 ' FACT AGAINST FICTION.

save one, wlio sat in a place accessible to rain, and
she wont off with only five. Tlie pheasants, too, had
been hatching off most successfully, yet as time went
on I saw old hen pheasants with only one or two
young ones, and occasionally with none. There were
no young dead birds found in the cover rides, and
when the earlier crops were cut, such as grass, rye,
peas, &c., not the vestige of a dead bird was found,
other than might have arisen from some casualty.
This puzzled me in the rides and in the grass, but
on arable land in a light soil, the ^^ sexton beetle,"
in his black gown and red scarf, buries any com-
paratively small bird, hare, or rabbit, that he and his
fellows cannot at once eat up, therefore no remains
of small game can on such a site be found. The
pheasants with me, both hand bred and wild, did well,
particularly the former ; but the partridges, old and
voung, decreased every day ; and there was no help
for it. As the month of September advanced, we
picked up what had been fine full - grown, full-
feathered young partridges, with the horseshoe on
their l^reast, dwindled to the merest skeletons — some
dead, others almost dead ; and we examined them
anatomically, but all in vain. Neither nostril,
brain, nor croj), nor gizzard, afforded us the

SHOOTING AS IT WAS, AND AS IT IS. ol

sliglitest clue to the cause of death, and to the
day of tlie publication of this work, I know no
more about the cause of this ravao^ins; disease
than the child unborn. Of this I am convinced,
that in manors where this pestilence exists, if it
still exists, there ought to be no partridge shooting
for a vear. I should abstain from it at home, and
I advise all my friends to do the same, or that
best of all game will become extinct.

I am told that a similar disease has been and
still is rife in some of the moors and momitains of
Scotland, and that red and black grouse and ptar-
migan have been and are dying by thousands. If
this is the case, and if, according to Lord Radnor,
the '^ foot and mouth disease," hitherto confined to
cattle, has broken out or breaks out in our kennels
of hounds and sporting dogs, there will be an end
to the sylvan joys of what once was called Merry
England, and we shall be driven abroad to seek for
those amusements for which the United Kinoxlom
]iad been famous.

o

2 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

CHAPTER 11.

THE RENTED MANOR.

Sporting Rights — Teiicant Farmers and Eabbits — Eggs of Game
Birds — Prevention of Theft — Unwise Leniency shown to Thieves
— Rabbits as Food — Tenancy at Will — Gamekeepers — Cockney
Orators.

Among the many perjolexing occurrences of country
life, tliere is nothing more difficult to manage with
satisfaction to yourself, and with justice to all
around you, than a mansion rented as tenant of
the sporting rights and game as well as of the
mansion, said tenant thus being the third person,
and coming between the real proprietor of the
soil and the farmers of the estate, and of course,
by this, creating a third interest, not always con-
templated by either of the two parties with whom
the tenant for sport has to deal. If the tenants
of the farms are rcalh' respectable and well-
conditioned men, then life among them as the
renter of the game is easy enough, by giving to

THE RENTED MANOR. 33

each man duo consideration ; but if a mistaken
laxity in the landlord as regards his tenants liad
given, oi'j f(n' the time, assigned to them any sort
of s2>oi'ting permission to course hares or to kill
rabbits, then the very instant a stranger takes
from their landlord those rights exclusively, and
pays for them a heavy rent, war is proclaimed;
and in many instances tenants, forgetfully un-
grateful of the mere permission they had for some
time enjoyed, do all they can to annoy the noAv-
comer or tenant of the mansion, and to ^^I'cvent
their landlord from obtaining an increase to his
income, perhaps really needed, by the letting of
his house and his shooting, and his park and
grounds.

On the other hand, if the landlord had been
of the opinion of the Cobbett ^^ gridiron," namely,
that farming and the pursuits of agriculture were
so interesting and agreeable in themselves '^as
to need no other amusement" on the acres, and
if he had kept his tenants strictly to their asserted
occupations, giving no leave of any kind to sport,
then the third man coming in would find all
smooth to his taking and to his liking, and it
would be his own fault, or the fault of some very

VOL. II. D

o

4 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

litigious tenant, if tilings did not continue happily
between all parties.

There has been a vast deal of nonsense talked,
at farmers' clubs and meetings, about the mischief
done by what is called ^'an over-preservation of
game." Now, what /.s* really meant by an ^^over-
preservation of game?" It is not the mere quantity
kept, but the fact that the peoj)le who make the
outcry are not themselves allowed to assist in its
destruction. Game, that is, pheasants, hares, and
partridges, may be present and protected in the
strictest manner, and yet not be in anything like
such quantities as to overrun or damage the
farmer's crops.* Rabbits are not game, but they
should always be reserved by the landlord. No
landlord with a grain of sense would preserve or
encourage too many rabbits, although he would
be quite right in strictly protecting from depre-
dators such rabbits as were on his manor or lands,
so as to keep off illicit company.

There is nothing wdiich so tends to misunder-
standings an cf ill-will as the assignment of coursing

"' The real fact is, that no proprietor can " over-preserve game,"
for an over-preservation would bring disease, as wo all know, and
the winged game would die if increased beyond the natural average. ■

THE RENTED MANOR. ' 35

of haros and killing of rabbits to the tenantry;
such liberty is for ever attended with unsatis-
factory results. A tenant himself, or his good
and valuable farming men, have no time to destroy
rabbitSj and rabbits cannot be destroyed except
in the woods; the consequence is, therefore, that
they, the tenants, assign the killing of the few
rabbits really within their power, in banks and
hedgerows, to ratcatchers or poaching thieves,
who are willing enough to accept a footing on
the lands without payment, in order to have
opportunities for illegal depredations, and to
carry off game as well as rabbits and foxes,
leaving with the farmer a few rabbits for eating
by w^ay of cloak to the mischief which they have
really been doing to all parties.

I have seen a great deal of this in instances
when I have been asked to re-arrange affairs,
and to obviate abuses upon estates left in the
possession and under the control of ladies ; and
in almost every instance in which farmers have
been given the right to the rabbits, and where
they had been exercising the right to preserve
them under plea of their ^' destruction,'' I have

found not only the farmer's crops suffering from

D 2

36 • FACT AGAINST FICTIOX.

tlie number of rabbits lie himself kept, but even
his neighbours were loud in their complaints of
the nuisance he, their brother -agriculturist, occa-
sioned. To such an extent have I found rabbits
preserved by tenant-farmers, when they were
given the right to kill them, that in the orchards
attached to the farm I have known large log
piles built up on purpose for the rabbits to breed
in ; and upon notice of a repeal of the permission
to kill rabbits, the tenant-farmer has requested
me to let him keep his rabbits until the following
spring, in order that he riur/kt he ahle to take off
the crop of rabbits he had so long fostered ; in fact,
the head of rahhits he had been getting vp for
years ! I have often stood on a tenant-farmer's
devastated field, and wondered to myself what
he would have said had his landlord's or my
rabbits caused half so much destruction !

Then, again, as to the unrestricted leave to keep
greyhounds and to course hares, restricted merely
so far that the coursing was to be confined to the
proper season, beginning in November and ending
on the 1st of March. In such cases, when the hares
have been so constantly disturbed as to leave their
'^ forms " out upon the fields, I have known the

THE RENTED MANOR. 37

tenant-farmer seat himself at dusk mider liis land-
lord's wood, and slip his lurching' greyhound as
the hares cantered forth to disport themselves on
the open downs or fields. Of all dogs there are
none so mischievous as a greyhound at large
upon a farm during the spring and summer. With
a nose equal to any sort of sporting dog, and a
speed beyond all other kinds, the greyhound soon
learns, when left at large, to become a most crafty
and efficient lurcher, killing hares and rabbits by
speed, and springing on or chapping hen pheasants
on their nests, as well as destroying the young
birds even while they are unable to fly, and
eating the unhatched eggs. All the most destruc-
tive lurchers in the possession of thieves and
poachers are thoroughbred greyhounds, with their
sterns cut — cut for the now obsolete design of
cheating the Excise of the tax on greyhounds, by
saying the dog is for sheep.

Here let me mention a most erroneous mistake
which some game-preserving landlords fall into.
They give the rabbits to the keepers* A keeper
should look to no perquisites; his wages should
be ample, for his is a hard life, if he does his
duty, and he should be so well paid by his

38 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

employer as to need no aJditions. AVlien the
rabbits • arc tlic perquisite of tlie keeper, lie is
sure to keep as many as lie can, and tlie tenant
is certain to liave tlie dissatisfaction of seeing"
damage by rabbits done to liis crops, liis loss
giving to his landlord no pleasure whatever.

As a renter of manor and game, as it has been
my fiite to be for the greater portion of my life,
my system is as follows : to preserve all the
manorial rights exclusively as they were let to
me, to guard all the rights belonging to the
estates, and to give the strictest orders to my
keepers, by night and day, to protect the farmers'
stock, fences, roots, and crops from depredation,
and to watch over the herds and flocks, cows,
oxen, horses, mares and foals, sheej:), and pigs,
as if they were my own, and at once to re]3ort
any accident to any of them to the farmer, and
to render him all the assistance in their power,
night and day, to remedy the evil. I remember
more than one instance in which the tenant-
farmer over whose land I held the exclusive rights
has come to me and coin})laincd of the tresjjassing
of the cattle from squatters on tlieir crops by
night, purposely turned in upon them by tlieir

TIIK RENTED MANOR. o9

more needy neighbours or by tramping gipsies.
In reply, I told, tliem, '^ that the remedy was in
their own hands, and that they could pound and
chari2:c for all cattle so at lar^e."

Their answer has been, ^'That is all very
well, sir — I know what the law is ; but the first
time I put it in force, one of my ricks was
fired l^y an incendiary at night ; and I am not
going to excite the revenge of tramps or gipsies,
nor that of the needy possessors of a hut-kept
cow, and so to risk it again."

On all the farms over which the exclusive
sporting rights are mine, my keepers are strictly
charged to prevent, by poundage, the damage
arising from stray cattle, and to guard the root
crops from molestation. The consequence of
this fair conduct is, that the gamekeepers and
the tenant-farmers under me have lived happily
together, and my men are regarded by them
as a most efficient rural police.

As to the rabbits, each tenant-farmer is re-
quested by me to rej)ort any spot on his holding
where he thinks there are too many rabbits.
The moment that report reaches me or my
head keeper, my men, nets, and ferrets obey

40 t^ACT AGAINST FICTION.

the farmer; and if lie wishes to join in the
sport, and has not a gun of his own^ I lend
him one for tliat occasion^ and thus all parties
have ever been contented.

As res2)ects the labourers on the farnij and
the nests of pheasants and partridges, my system
is this : if they iind a nest, and show it to my
keepers (the nest is not disturbed, if not too
close upon any public footway or road), and
when hatched safely off, the farm-labourer who
found it receives a shilling ; and if I am 2)leased
with the general conduct of the labourers on the
farm, I often make a present at Christmas to
tlie foreman, for the benefit of all the hands
employed. There is one thing, however, which
my readers, if in possession of a manor, must
guard against, and it is this, that, after a bird
has hatched, if the shells of the eggs are left in
the nest, it is possible that the eggs of some other
known nest may be stolon, and tlic shells of the
one that has been hatched put in the place of
the stolen ones, so as to get another shilling.
The shells should, therefore, (duxiijs he destroyed
by the keeper, to prevent this dishonesty.

It is also a rule with me^ supposing some

THE RENTED MAKOK. 41

man J known to bo dishonesty brings me eggs or
a very small leveret (both eggs and animal
being useless to him for food or sale), showing
thereby a desire to please me, to reward him
in return to a far greater degree than any use
by him of such things could have won for him ;
and I do this to show both rich and poor that it
is my wish not to tyrannize over the said-to-be
working classes (but often no workers at all),
but to teach them to see (to use a homely old
saying) upon which '' side their bread is really
buttered." By the system wdiicli I have always
pursued, the very men who set themselves up
against me have in the end, and, after punish-
ment, left off their dishonest aggressions, and
come to me for both advice and protection, when
put upon by others, or robbed and swindled by
their own associates.

I am perfectly certain that, in sundry vicinitieSj
well known to my experience in game-preservingj
but for the culpable folly of the magisterial
bench at petty sessions in dealing with convic-
tions, I could have made many an idle villain
support himself, his wife, and children,- by honest
means and fair wages, rather than starve, as he

42 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

does, botli wife and cliildren by refusing to
labour, and by going out at night or in the day
to steal game or rabbits, or anything he can lay
his hands on, tlie monetary proceeds of which,
by all such thieves, being regarded, not as a fund
for the support of their families^ but as pochet-
money for the man to spend in gamhling or in
hecr. As an instance of the culpable leniency
in magistrates, I select the following from a
vast number of similar cases : —

Two notorious thieves went out, one winter
morning, at daybreak, on a maiden snowfall, to
trace hares and rabbits to their forms in the
furze and heather. Both of these men were old
offenders, and had been previously convicted in
full penalties ; and one of them had treated w^ith
contempt in a former case the last simmions
served upon him, as well as the warrant issued
against him, having frightened away, so it Avas
said, two policemen (Avhicli I do not believe)
who came to take him, threatening to murder
them with a stone hammer. Having been thus
left at large, in defiance of summons and warrant,
for a considerable time, — but keeping out of the
way, of course, — he continued all his misdeeds

THE RENTED MANOR. 4o

until tlic snowy morning* came wliicli I have pre-
viously alluded to. Ho tlicn went forth watli aiiotlier
man, who was armed with a heavy bludgeon,
amounting to a small tree, and was regarded
as an invincible bully by all his confreres.

Two keepers (they were mine) fell in with
these villains, and took them in the act of
poaching and of theft; for dead hares and
rabbits are the private property of the owner
of the land and manor on which they are found.
The champion bully brandished his club, and
threatened the brains of any man who attempted
to lay hands upon him ; so, thus put to his
weapon, the under-keeper at once delivered
a blow with his own stick, and broke the
cowardly bully's head, wdien he immediately
threw down his bludgeon, cried, and surrendered.
Upon these thieves were found a net and four
dead rabbits.

Summoned for this offence before the Bench
that same Aveek, these two fellows refused to
appear, so of course they were convicted. In
what ? Why, in a moiety of the penalty, twenty
shillings instead of forty, and that, too, in the
face of their previous convictions, and defiance of

44 FACT AGAINST FICTIOX.

summons and warrants. On warrants against them
being" immediately issued, they ran away on the
day of their conviction , Friday ; they stayed
away on Saturday, came back on Sunday, and
on Monday paid their fines, laughing at the
inadequate penalty, which they had not expected
when they failed to appear, and borrowing the
money to pay the fines from the receivers of
stolen game, poulterers and public-liouse kee23ers,
under the conditions that by their future depreda-
tions and drinking they were to pay off the score.

The j^urchasers of the stolen game fix their own
price for each head of game, and a far higher
rate of interest than usual for the money advanced,
as they desire to pay themselves for the risk which
they know they run of never seeing their money
again*

There are a great many beer and public house
keepers who receive stolen game in this way,
advancing beer at an extortionate price when it
is to be paid for in game ; and as a country
gentleman and justice of the peace, as well as a
game-preserver, I have been and am cognizant
of this grievous abuse ; but it is most difiicult to
bring home conviction to the villain most deserving

THE RENTED MANOR. 45

of punislimcnt, viz., the receiver. The law as it
stands, in this instance, as in many others, opens
a door hy which the worst criminal can escape
detection, crowned by the fact that the great
^^ unpaid'' upon tlie Bench, mostly parsons, inva-
riably do all in their power to let off a villain
with as little punishment as possible, while they,
at the same time, make themselves amusingly
remarkable by the funny character they get for
impartiality, in committing themselves mucli more
frequently than they commit the prisoners brought
before them.

If we had ^^stipendiary magistrates," as they
have in Ireland, tlie laws would be acted uid to
(though Ireland is no example for that) and crime
of all sorts largely decreased. We see the good
effect of a professional judge in the County Courts ;
but there again the legislators have stejDjDcd in
with a mischievous infliction, called ^'a sj^ecial
jury," of five men, selected from much the same
class as the thieves and poachers, save that they
are ^' householders," and are not absolutely in
rags. It is a farce for a gentleman to attempt to
defend himself in some localities if charged as a
*^ Lord of the Manor" with wrongfully seizing

46 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

engines or lurclicrs, illegally used by uncertificated
persons for the destruction of game, for tlie jury
care nothing for their oaths, nor for the Judge's
charge ; they really have made up their minds to
find for the plaintiff before they go into Court.

Neither do the workino: classes, when addicted
to theft, care anything for their oath : they will
swear just what they think will save them or their
friends from punishment. I have seen a villain
let off by offering an aVibl^ bringing three people
to swear that he was in their company through-
out the entire day of the alleged depredation,
and eleven miles from the spot where it was
sworn to have been committed. His two com-
panions in the attempted theft of game, shooting
a partridge without a licence and out of season,
were convicted in a mitigated penalty, but so
inadequate was the fine, that the Excise was
moved to come upon them for the cumulative
penalty. When had up by the Excise, the two
previously convicted thieves produced their com-
panion, who had got off throuyh the ^' alibi ^^ to
swear that ^^he really had been with them on the
occasion upon which all his witnesses swore he
was eleven miles away, and that he could, there-

THE llENTED MANOIJ. 47

foro, prove that tlicy did not sJioot a partridcje,'^^
This perjury failed ; yet in this case, as in many
otliers, perjury was allowed to go unpunished ;
and things have now come to such a pass, that
old Mr. Weller's advice to his son Samuel to
induce Mr. Pickwick to prove an '^ alibi," in the
action of ^^Bardell v. Pickwick," has been adopted by
every scoundrel who has become amenable to the law.

It is perfectly clear to me that punishment should
not only follow close upon the heels of detected
crime, but that, upon the first offence j the highest
and most severe penalties should be awarded. I
am not by any means sure that any good result
is obtained by a light punishment for a first
offence, for the punishment is often so light that
it brings contempt upon the sentence, and hardens,
rather than deters, a first offender. The law has
very often to deal with juvenile offenders who
think a gaol is a fine place, and committal thereto
a feather in their caps, — ^making them, so to
speak, as good a man as their father, or equal to
their brothers, wlio liave been, perhaps, many
times under lock and key.

As we have seen that whipping deters from
murder more than lian<2cinf>' bv the neck, and

48 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

that, too, ill offences directed against the life of
tlie liigliest person in tlic realm, so a severe and
degrading punishment on a first offence would
greatly deter from the commission of a second,
when carried out in the rural districts against the
thieves of game and offenders of any description.

I have seen, in the close of the year 18G0,
that there have been blatant men at farmers'
meetings exclaiming against game and rabbits,
the latter as ^^ useless vermin." Game and rabbits
are now made to serve as food for the people ;
and those dupes of the legislative folly of Mr. Bright,
OiTirer, Dodi^'cr, Dilk and Co., would be astonished
if they went into statistics, and saw the enormous
amount of '^food for the people" sold and given
away to them from the warrens and manors,
making up an immense weight of food, and
obtained at a far lower price than meat sold by
the butchers. I never refused rabbits to any
honest man who asked for them; and at one of
my residences I used to give them frequently
to the coast-guard men. I had not done this
very long when the men asked me to let tliem
buy the rabbits, because, they said, although
I was so kind in occasionally giving them

THE RENTED MANOR. 49

rabbits, they could not expect mo to do so con-
tinually, therefore tliey hoped I would not be
offended at their askino; mo to sell them rabbits,
for, ''at fourtccn-2:ienco a couple, with the skins,"
they could give a far better dinner of rabbits
to their families than they could get for that sum
as meat from any butcher.

Tlie endeavour made at these farmers' clubs,
to move the Legislature to interfere between land-
lord and tenant with respect to game and rabbits,
is part and parcel of the old dodge put in force
by Mr. Bright in his abortive attack upon the
game laws, Avhen he did all in his power to sow
discord between landlord and tenant in the counties
to suit his parliamentary party, and to obtain
votes for those men who have now ruined Ireland.
^'Tenant right" must, and ever will, be based
upon the spontaneous act of the tenant, that is,
on his accepting terms offered to him by the pro-
prietors of the land, without Avliich acceptance the
landlord woidd refuse to let his acres. The would-
be tenant can refuse the proffered terms if he
likes, and the landlord, unless there is a revolution
in England as well as in Ireland, can offer what
terms he pleases ; and as Mr. Bright has always

VOL. II. E

50 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

said tliat ^^ the poor man oiiglit to bo allowed to
do what lie likes with his own little garden plot/'
just so the same right to do what he likes with
his larger possession, his larger garden (as much
his own as the ^'garden plot" is the poor man's),
is justly vested in the owners and lords of estates
and manors.

If I had a thousand estates, I would not let one
farm iipon them on lease. Landed property has
drawbacks enough ujDon it, without the owner of
the property being saddled with a disagreeable
tenant, — a man established close to his own door,
who has, perhaps, a temper which is never satisfied
except wlien it is in hot water. I have seen as
p'ood farmino' done by tenants at will as I ever
saw done under a lease ; and, moreover, I have
known tenants at will remain on their farms as
long and very frequently for a longer period
than any lease woidd be ^Tanted. I have known
the same family go on from sire to son in the
same farm for more than one hundred years,
witiiout the slightest approach to ill will between
tliem and the landlord ; and I never knew so much
ill will arise between landlord and tenant, and so
much discomfort exist, as in cases where leases

THE RENTED MANOK. 51

had been e^rantcd. A tenant at will can leave a
farm if he thinks his landlord is unjust or dis-
agreeable, and the land bad ; and the same alter-
native is also open to the landlord — he can get
rid of a tenant who has rendered himself in any
way objectionable. A tenant at will can receive
compensation for money expended in improve-
ments, and being liable to be turned out of his
farm, he is, for that reason, if he likes his position,
kept to his good behaviour.

I know an instance which occurred in the first
Lord Fitzhardinge's time at Berkeley Castle, and
which proves the good resulting to the tenant
from the system of tenancy at will. A tenant,
whose family before him had for years rented
under the Castle, came to me to ask me to
intercede for him, and to get his landlord. Lord
Fitzhardinge, to take the right of killing rabbits
away from the keepers. I have already given
my opinion respecting the doubtful wisdom shown
by a master in granting this perquisite to his
keeper.

In this instance, the tenant of Lugg's Farm

told me, ^^that he would not have cared for tlie

damage done to his crops if it had been done

e3

52 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

through pheasants or foxes, in wliich he knew his
lordship had a personal pleasure; but to see his
crops eaten down, and to see the keejier carting
off the rabbits to market for his (the keeper's)
own profit, in addition to his already good wages,
was more than he could endure ; and if such a
state of things was to go on, he must quit his
farm." I did my best to have the abuse altered,
but in vain ; as a good tenant, finding himself
under a thus disagreeable landlord, he availed
himself of his yearly tenancy, and, I am sorry
to say, ceased to rent under the Castle. In
this instance, then, the tenant found that being
a holder at will was advantageous to him ; he
knew in his own mind that he intended quitting,
and that he could go by giving sufficient notice
wlienever he pleased ; he had time at his com-
mand to look for another farm, and he was not
obliged to make his communication to the steward
until he had secured another aoTicultural home.
Now, if he had had his farm on lease, I care not
what were the stij)ulations contained in that lease
as to his farm and the rabbits thereon, the woods
being in his landlord's hands, and the keoj^ers
having a riglit to protect the grounds from illicit

THE KENTED MAN OK. 53

depredators, he would have been without the
means of redress, his homestead Avoukl have be-
come anything but comfortable, so he was much
hetter off by being a tenant at will.

We have now before as a pretty plain sample
of what tenant-right means in Ireland. Not many
years ago, in America, an idea was started, that if
a tenant rented a house and land for a certain
number of years, and expended toil and dollars
upon them, that house and land was then to be
lost to the landlord, and to become the property
of the tenant. It is much the same in Ireland;
agrarian murderers, abetted by a domineering
priesthood, have long since driven . many land-
' owners from their estates, and thus created an
absenteeism which has ruined the country ; and
now the idea has arisen in the naturally shrewd,
but, alas ! priest-muddled heads of the people, that
'^ Ireland is for the Irish," which, being translated
by those who have nothing to lose but ever}^-
thing to gain by savage irru^^tion, means tliat tlic
'^ Saxon " is to be dispossessed of his property,
which he has inherited or bought, as the Irish
Protestant Church has been plundered of hers, and
that the farms and the large landed estates should

54 FACT AGAINST FICTIOX.

1)0 parcelled off to the labourers — tlie original
landlord sent a-begging !

Surely tliat is not a state of things to be desired
by the great- body of English, Scotch, and Irish
landowners and farmers ; nor ought any of them
to allow themselves to be deluded by revolutionists
and blatant men, such as Odger, Podger and Co.,
to whom any sort of political mischief is agree-
able ! But I am not without hope that the true
yeomanry of England will still cherish and protect
that wholesome feeling for their landlords, if I
may so express myself, which has so long existed
and kept both classes together in one common bond
of obligation.

But to return to the management of an estate.
When the landlord joreserves the game, great care
should be taken res^^ecting the characters and
habits of the men appointed as gamekeej^ers. A
gamekeeper being more out of his master's sight
and more his own master than a butler is, should,
for that reason, be even more trustworthy in cha*
racter than the keej^er of the cellar. A master can
count his bottles and keep a cellar-book, and have
besides a personal knowledge of the exact quantity
of Avine in each bin ; but he cannot count his

THE RENTED MANOK. bi>

plicasants and liares, nor can lie know what liis
keepers are doing both hj night and day ; but liis
butler, being always beneath his roof, can at any
time be found in his pantry or in the housekeeper's
room. • A gamekeeper has it in his power, if he is
a rogue, dishonestly to make away with his master's
game; but a butler is so near his master, and his
truth is so easily tested, that he cannot covertly
consume the contents of many bottles Avithout being
speedily discovered, that is, if his master makes
use of a little precaution. For my own part, I
would discharge any keeper on the very first
proof of drunkenness, and I should do the same if
I ever knew him to go into a public-house for the
purpose of drinking. My head keeper also would
report his under^men if they transgressed in this
particular. If they want beer, they can drink it
at their lodges. An habitual drunkard is not fit
for any place of trust and when in liquor he is
very apt to create ill feehng or discontent with
those farmers over whose lands he is supposed to
hold supervision.

As in the course of my l^ook, and in another
chapter, I shall have to allude to gamekeepers,
and the choice of keepers, as well as their respec-

b(} FACT AGAINST FICTION.

tivc duties, I sliall, for tlie present, close my notice
of tlie rented manor with the following remarks on
passing circumstances of very recent occurrence.

Some blatant demagogues, at a late out-door
meeting in London, stigmatized the present modi-
fied laws relating to the preservation of a pro-
prietor's own tldncjs on his own lands as wicked
and ^n3loody"; but these Cockney orators, I take
it, knew as little about the subject on wdiich they
so foolishly descanted as they did of the lunar
constellation. Thev threw overboard the fact as
to how many thousands of the poor were main-
tained the vear throu":hout on wholesome food —
upon the millions of pounds of the much-abused
rabbit ; and they roared and screamed emphatically
against the sin of retaining such expanses of lieaths
and moors tenantless and uncultivated, as these
bhitant babblers asserted, ''' sim])ly for the preser-
vation of game."

Xow, I take it on myself to say, that there is
not a proprietor in England Avho wotdd not give
any just facilities to any rash man or men who
would undertake to cultivate and rent) on the most
moderate terms, tliose portions of the estates lying
idle. ]3ut corn or useful produce of any kind will

THE in<:NTEi) manoii. 57

not (jroiu on tliese barren lands, unless you give tliem,
so to speak, a subsoil of golden guineas, all of Avliicli
gold would vanish with the first crop cut from above
it, and the application of gold must, therefore,
amount to an annual outlay, which would in no way
be remunerated by an annual return. We, as sports-
men, would be glad to see these useless acres, as
far as game goes, in cultivation; for to the Y)Yo-
prietors of heaths and moors, if there are no moor-
game, there is no sporting enjoyment save as a
snipe, a hare, or rabbit.

I should like to lay hold of one of those political
bleaters, and set him down on many a heath within
my knowledge, and even giving him a sum of
money, with good sureties against bolting, tell him
to raise crops out of white sand and shingle, with
an iron pan beneath it, under which again there
was any deptli of sand, sj^arkling Avhen dry like
glass, and whiter still than the flints and sand of
the superstructure. I think He would be very glad
to let such sites return to the state in which they
were in when ho lavished on them and their pro-
prietors the senseless verbiage of his violent invec-
tive, and return to the more lucrative culture to
him, but not to the working classes generally, of

58 FACT AGAINST FIOTIOX.

imfouiKlecl discontent and dissatisfaction towards
tlioso employers under Avliom tliey so long had had
their fair share of gain. As long as there are men
in this world possessed of evil tongues and no real
wish to benefit their fellow-creatures, without one
useful quality by which to rise to the notice of
their fellow-menj such prating demagogues will, as
putridity ever does from the bottom of a river, rise
to the surface of the waters, after all to be looked
on but as ^^ scum."

In Scotland they very often make a great outcry
against the game laws and the deer forests ; but
there is a fact that has come within my notice, and
that is, that a deer forest in Scotland often affords
more employment to the labouring classes, in the
shape of gillies, than the forest would do if turned
into a walk for sheep. All heathery moors and
mountains will not carry sheep, but men who know
nothing of what they prate about, think that corn
and sheep will grow like grass on a moistened
piece of flannel.

In the course of my experience from among the
thousands of mortal-men-bubbles that I have seen
force themselves to the surface, and seek some
notice from better men than themselves, I have not

^niE KENTED MANOR. 01)

seen more tliiiii u very few continue as aqueous
blisters on the political surface or become more
than a transient bubble. Of these I have seen one
or two make themselves so troublesome to the
existing Government, that their pretended philan-
thropy has been utterly extinguished or bought off
by the gift -of place: one or two may have held
their own for a time, but all very soon grew stale
and unprofitable, or were bribed.

We do not meet those men on fair grounds, for
having nothing to lose they cannot be assailed by
loss ; and besides, there is an old saying as to the
consequent defilement on the touch of pitch. The
very little they have is in their pocket, — they have
no large estates, nor do they labour under difficulties
ever attached to landed property : so, like a vernal
frog Avho revels in weeds and mud, they can kick
up as much dirt as they please, and rise to croak
over the filthy confusion they themselves have
created.

GO FACT AGAINST FICTIOX.

CHAPTER III.

FAliMING AND ROTATION OF CROPS.

Tlie Superintendent should be well acquainted with the Nature of
the Soil — Difficulties in getting Remunerative Crops — Remedy
for " The Fly" — Wages of Labourers — Piece-work — Employment
of Boys never Profitable — Artificial Manures and Farm-yard
Manure — Scientific Crotchets — Cows, their Kindly Treatment —
Injurious Effect of Artificial Manures on Game — Legal Penalties
against Laying Poison — Xew Vegetation which sprang up after
the Fire at Alderney Manor — Game Preserver and Farmer.

When ladies and gentlemen have farms thrown
on their own hands, and are obliged to cultivate
them while in search of new tenantry, they arc
forced, particularly where there is a landlady only,
to call in aid to direct their proceedings over
the land; and, in such instances as those I now
refer to, they are apt to be taken by some scientific
advertisement which may catch their attention,
and to call in a periodical supervisor from some
distant county, not suited to the occasion nor

FARMING AND ROTATION OF CROPS. 61

the soil, and by no means the master of work in
hand. Soils are as varied in their exigencies as
are the constitutions of men.

The requirements of soils are essentially
different. What will suit one soil Avill not suit
another; and you cannot, with any reasonable
liope of success, catch from the northern counties
and heavy rich loams, a visiting bailiff, or audit-
ing steward, used to, and bred up, say, in York-
shire, who will at once understand the poorer,
liglit, and stony qualities of Buckinghamshire,
portions of Dorsetshire, and Surrey. If I knew
any one wanting a supervision over a home
bailiff, — sujoposing the caj^abilities of that home
bailiff were not deemed sufficient for the assump-
tion of exclusive direction, — I should advise a
county man to be called in, as the best calculated
to know what would be right to do in the
locality of his practical experience and exercise
of his daily life.

Though the steam plough is a most useful
invention when well directed and closely looked
after by the owner or manager of the estate, yet,
if not so looked after, and the depth of its
needful action strictly enforced, it is only a

G2 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

cause of considerable pecuniary loss, and also
becomes an unsightly and discordant nuisance.
It frightens cattle, drives away game, and at
some seasons destroys the nests of partridges and
pheasants, while on some soils it simply loosens
the flints and immensely encourages the growth
of weeds.

To send for a stranger, and to ask him what
it is best to do for the good cultivation of a
farm, is nonsense. There are some farms on
which even the tenant of years, born and bred
in the vicinity, does not know what is best to
be done all over adjoining acres, or the extent to
which the soil may differ within the fence of one
field. There are some spots, perhaps, on that
farm, where you cannot plough too lightly, for
if 3^ou go an inch too deej) you give to the sun
the dormant seeds that have long been hidden
from the light in innocuous obscurity, but, when
exposed to vivifying re-action, come forth like
giants refreshed, in such quantities as to choke
and smother tlie seeds or corn but recently sown.
The instance thus referred to is not the only one
tliat exists to fetter the designs of husbandry
when working l)y tlie plougli.

FARMING AND DOTATION OF CROPS. 63

Tlio farmer, not aware of the clanger of the
cloceitfiil nature of the acreage on wliieh he
lias embarked, perhaps, his all, may think
that he will plough beneath tlie latent wild
oats, or other seedling obstacles, and, by throw-
ing them on the surface, crush them from
existence, turning up a better mould that lies
beneath.

Here, again, a j)an of iron or of conglomerated
flint may stop him, and an obstacle is offered to
his eyes which holds the water, or, by its dura-
bility and hardness, walls him up from further
action, while, at the same time, it suggests to
him the idea that he must break through the
iron pan to attain a better drainage and a better
soil.

To this end, he goes to the heavy outlay of
spade husbandry and double trenching to break up
the pan, and to find, what ? Why, that beneath
tlie iron or intervening pan there is no other
soil — in fact, no soil of a productive nature, but
simply fine pulverized sand, of no service to any
one save for scouring grates. I enumerate these
as facts very well known to myself, and to show
how many more difficulties there are in the path

64 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

of tlio most industrious farmer than are dreamed
of in tlic pliilosopliy of casual observers. You
cannot lay down a law to suit tlio varying soils
in counties and estates; but a locally practical
man is infinitely more capable than is a stranger
from a distance to judge of what is necessary
or most likely to benefit the land, the uncer-
tainty of tlie peculiarities in which he has been
conversant wdth all his life.

When the difficulties of producing remunerative
crops are jmt before us, — entomological, atmo-
spheric, and arising from a combination of both,
— it is almost surprising that in some counties
such a thing as a man seeking to live by farming
should exist. To me it is certainly, so to speak,
an occupation of great pleasure, when all goes
well; but when you see your wheat or corn,
of wliatever description, turn from its fresh and
vernal green Inie, and, becoming yellow, droop
stalk by stalk, and, losing its stamina, fall to
the ground, having been eaten from beneath,
in its germ of existence, by tlie ^^wire worm,"
tlicn there is not much that is ^^ beautiful" in
thwarted husbandry, and little else than disap-
pointment left.

FARMING AND ROTATION OF CROP.S. 65

Ag'ain, when tlio expected turnip crop shows
its innumerable little green leaves above the
ground, and the farmer dreams of one day folding
his sheep in turnips two feet high, remarking to
himself, on an afternoon, how nicely the turnips
are coming up, to go to the spot the next
morning, and then to see that the little green
spots, that had once so rejoiced his eyes,
had in a night, or not much more, totally
disappeared, for they had all been devoured by
'' the fly."

While speaking of ^'the fly," I can most con-
fidently recommend a remedy against this devas-
tating insect, and that remedy is as follows. Over
the newly-sown turnips and rape, put in with a
view to '^spring feed," when the seeds are just
beginning to appear, let the customary roller be at
work, but with this addition. Behind the roller
there should be attached a flat light plank or board,
protruding from behind tlie roller, I should sa}^, five
or six feet on either side. To this board or plank,
to its full length, there should be attached a piece
or pieces of old sacking or carpet joined together,
ill length from the plank about from three to
four or iivc feet, and this thickly sprinkled on

VOL. IT. F

66 FACT AGAINST FICTION'.

its lower side with liquid gas-tar, spread on it
with an old broom dipped into an iron kettle hard
by. The action of the roller crushes the inequalities
of the soil, and dislodges the flies, who, trying to
escape to the rear, are caught beneath the tarred
sacking, and, stuck by its tenacious qualities, to
die from the powerful nature of the texture that
holds them. The tar should be sprinkled over the
sacking about every twenty miiuites, or as often
as the wear and tear of it requires. The very in-
telligent farm-servant and shepherd, whom I first
saAv using this sim|)le remedy in Surrey, on the
property of Lord Lovelace, assured me that it
thoroughly answered the purpose to which it had
been put. My brother agriculturists may have
been previously aware of what to me once was
certainly a novelty, but I now tell them in case it
should be of service. It certainly is not a costly
remedy as against ^' the fly," and it may be
most useful to some of my friends who have not
money at connnand.

The rate of wages in different counties varies
very nmch, as also the conditions of ^^j^i^ce^
work." In many instances, among amateurs in
agriculture, I have observed that in granting

FARMIJs^G AND ROTATION OF CROPS. G7

to a labourer a task to be accomplislied for a
stipulated sum, it lias been omitted to tie him
down to the time at which this task is to be
accomplished. It is, in such instances, in the
labourer's power to work or not as he likes, and
to keep his 'Apiece-work" in hand, if he leaves
or neglects it, for some short and, perhaps, more
remunerative job offered him by a neighbour.
By this he neglects, at harvest time, the reaping
or" mowing, or any other job he has undertaken
to do, and loses for his permanent employer the
golden opportunity of the sunny day. In ' Apiece-
work" the labourer should be tied to time, as
much as to the amount of money for which the
job is to be done.

Again, in some counties, the labourers A^mock
off" on a Saturday at four o'clock; but it is
perfectly at the employer's option to insist or not
on the old system of twelve hom^s' work for a
given amount (if pay. In Dorsetshire, in the
vicinity of Alderney Manor, the usual amount of
wages varies from eight to ten or twelve shillings
a week ; I give twelve, but then I insist on twelve
hours' actual work each day, and no ^' short time."

My servants must work from six till six, Avhen

F 2

G8 FACT AGAINST FICTIOK.

light enoiigli, with two cessations for breakfast and
dinner if I pay them accordingly.

To see men, in the midst of harvest, quit
their work early on a Satmxlay, when the week's
industry requires the most perseverance, in case of
a sudden change in weather, in no way meets
with my approval; and it is diametrically opjDO-
site to the interests of fair play if the labourer
undertakes, for a certain sum, to do, by a certain
day, what his emplo3"er requires. In piece-
work they should be tied to time ; in harvest
they should consider the exigencies that might
arise to crops that are cut from threatening
weather. The worst species of untrustworthy
labour that can be employed on a farm, is
that which may be expected, but in value is
never realized, at the hands of boys. They
cannot be trusted, if there is more than one,
with horses, cows, pigs, or poultry ; nor with
anything like an economical care of corn or

food of any • kind.

If ladies and gentlemen clioose to employ

boys, they ought to have an additional man to

every two boys, to look after them. One grown

man would do the labour of fom- boys easily

FARMING AND ROTATION OF CROPS. 69

and well ; and to tliat amount would the expense
of a farm be lessened if none l^ut men Averc
employed. I have elsewhere alluded to the fact
that an old gamekeeper at Ashdown Park, of
the late Lord Craven's, on meeting three boys
together, used to draw from his pocket a heavy
dog-whip of tlie kind carried by keepers, but
wliich ought to be exploded from the annals of
dog-breaking, and commence an indiscriminate
flagellation of the astounded youths. On my
asking his reason for this, to me, apparently
unprovoked assault, he invariably replied, — ^^ I
always docs it, sir, for, rely on it, you never sees
three boys together, but they be bent on some
mischief or other, so I likes to 1)e beforehand
with 'em."

If you employ labour, let the source of it be
reliable ; be liberal in the amount of hire, and
let there never be any sort of mistake as to
what you require for the money you agree to
give, or in what tliey^ the labourers, have to do.
Uncertainty induces mistake, mistake begets ill-
will ; and labour cumbered by dissatisfaction is
not worth half its value when thus apjoroached

70 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

'^ with tlio Avrono- leg' foremost," and really Le^
comes ^^labom' in vain."

In some places, or near largo towns, farmers
lose sight of their true interests, — the real well-
doing of tlieir meads for hay, — by grazing them
with tlieir milch cows too long and too late in
spring, and this particularly when near any large
or fashionable watering-place, where there is a
great demand for fresh butter, milk, and cream.
I have also observed, on some large estates, that,
because in a particular season hay and straw
were short or next to nothing, they, the tenants,
were permitted to sell what little hay and straw
they had at very high prices, instead of con-
suming it on their j^remises, on condition that
they would jjurchase and lay out on the farm so
much artificial manure. This system is death to
the productive quality of the land ; and, though
apparently harsh in some* cases to refuse to men
who may be, by circumstances, hard pressed for
money, still I would prefer an abatement of rent
on an individual rent-day, to giving any such
joermission as to exporting the hay and straw off
tlie acres where it grew.

FARMING AND ROTATION OF CROPS. 71

In tlio first place, a tenant lias tlie power to
evade tlie (pantity of artificial manure he had
promised to expend in lieu of the fodder sold.

In the second place, I know to my cost that
artificial manure is as liable as other things to
vary in strength and quality, and also that a
cheap, bad article may bo substituted for a much
better one, and superficially cloak a very grievous
error.

Artificial maimre applied to land reminds me
of dram-drinking in man. It is but a short-lived
flash of excitement to the one as to the other,
—wholesome only for a time when diluted with
water, or subjected to rain, and liable to be lost
in' too much heat and dust, or too heavy a
deluge from storm and cloud. There is nothing
like the old-fashioned farm-yard manure. Plant
two rows of potatoes side by side. When you
dig them, there is still left in the ground, and
holding tlie mould together, the remnants of the
rotten straw, still pregnant with the nourishment
of rich decay, while in the runks that had re-
ceived the artificial dust, not one vestige of it
remains — it has been washed away, blown away,
or been utterly consumed by the crop as a

73 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

^^ pick-mc-iip," leaviiii^ notliino: for cultivation
that is to come.

I deny that the crops we now see are in any
degree heavier, on an average, than those grown
by our forefathers under the wheels of their
heavy dung-carts, before ^' science," as it is called,
had taken the i)lace of well-tried system, and
ushered in novelties the success or failures of
which no man at the moment knows. It is
doubtful to my mind if we have not imported
or locally created some of the diseases which had
never been lieard of, and were certainly not
known, in the United Kingdom when I was a
boy. I allude to the ^^ potato disease," to the
^^foot-and-mouth disease," and to the ^^ plague
among cattle." Set these new inflictions side by
side witli the effects of what is called ^' science,"
and look at the condition of the farmer and of
tlie people, and I question if the world is better
off under our l)latant teacliers and would-be
scientific men of tlie present day, than it was
when agricultural practice kept at arm's-length
vain theory and conceited assumptions tliat only
tended to disturb the matter-of-fact study of single-
purposed men.

FARMING AND ROTATION OF CROPS. 73

I liavo lieavd — I never saw tliem — of wonder-
ful crops of corn being produced by circulating
liquid manures about their roots ; but it has
never been stated by any audacious narrator, in
my hearing, that these scientific inventions have
made the fortunes of any agriculturist who used
them, although they might line the pockets of
l)ipe and pottery men to very considerable
extent.

It is possible, as we all know, to lay out more
money on favourite maxims, methods, and pur-
suits than can ever be returned again to our
emptied coffers, by those favourite mythical
speculations. The double fructifying hen's nest
at one time suggested to the farmers' wives has
for a long time become addled ; but as it is my
desire to treat of nothing but what all who run
may read and comprehend, the following is a de-
scrijDtion of the once boasted nest.

The nest for the hen to lay in was made on a
curiously contrived and adjusted •sjDring, so nicely
balanced that a new-laid egg laid to the lighter
nest-egg, induced the nest to slide obliquely be-
neath tlie superincumbent fowl. The nest-egg itself
was an artificial one, and fixed to its intended place.

74 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

TIioii, upon tlie decline of the nest, the fresh egg
glided off into a sort of pocket made to receive it,
and when thus relieved the nest re-arose to its
position beneath the fowl. After a short time
s^^ent in clnickling bliss at the supposed fruit of
^'sexual selection," as Darwin has it, the doat-
ing mother arose, shook her feathers, and turned
round to look with admiring eyes on the pledge
she had given that ^^ selection" had born its fruits.
When, in astonishment, she saw it not, she deemed-
she had made a mistake in ^' counting eggs before
they were " laid ; so, to remedy the omission, she
resumed her nest, and laid another egg, and thus
a double fructuation was sensibly produced. The
rumour of this nest came from Essex, but I know
not witli what truth.

As to cows upon a farm, Avhenever more than
one boy is emploj^ed, the cows are always wild,
for even the man and the milkmaids don't spare
lialf enough of the caresses they bestow upon
each other to render the dairy herd affectionately
attached to tliem and docile. A cow, and, indeed,
all animals, are sensible of kindness when gently
and tenderly bestowed ; and all animals, and birds
too, liave much more power of tliought and wise

FARMING AND KOTATION OF CROPS. 75

tUserlmiiiation than foolish people give them credit
for. If I were to see or hear a loud, liarsli word,
and a rude blow, administered by a man of mine
to any creature under his care, I would not retain
him long' in my service. The dog-whip, if so
it can be called, that I carry in my pocket, was
the thong of her little donkey whip, given to me
by a little child who deemed it needful to her
quadruped's progression : it Avould not kill a fly
on the back of the dog, nor induce anything ap-
proaching to a cry of pain, but it is ample as a
signal of rej)roof To give a dog or horse a second
blow is, for the time, utterly useless. The dog and
liorse fully comprehend for why you struck them
in the first instance, but if you repeat the punish-
ment, all remembrance of the fault is lost in the
terror inspired hj the after circumstance : the dog
turns the tables and bites at the undiscriminating
hand, and the horse meditates the possibility
of kicking off his brutal rider, and running
away.

To a dog, whatever may l^e liis fault, one l)low
and have done with it ; to a liorse, one touch of
the spur, and let there be an end of reproof, at all
events, till dog or horse offend again. Let tlie

7G FACT AGAINST FICTION.

wliip be tlie lightest one possible, and the spur
tlie least severe, for it is not blood nor weals,
severity and pain, that reprove and educate — it is
the impression, not on the skin, but on the mind,
that achieves the desired consummation. If any-
thing I have written induces a hand to withhold
a blow, or saves from harsh usage any creature in
existence, then my occupation has not been in
vain ; and the beautiful, the faithful, and affectionate
creatures, the dear companions, as their races have
been, of my hapj^iest leisure hours, will not have
wasted their gifted powers on my pleasures, but
by the knowledge I have gained of them, and
their healthful use, they have made me their
friend indeed !

As to artificial manures, and regarding . the
feathered game on a manor, I am convinced, and
so are a great many agriculturists of my acquaint-
ance, that artificial manures have a destructive effect
on the game. It is difiicult to point out how or
wlience this arises, though the fact of the injury to
tlie feathered game has been to me very remark-
a1jle; but my opinion inclines to tlie lielief that
some artificial manures destroy certain insects
necessary for the food of game ; and on sites where

FARMING AND EOTATION OF CROPS. 77

there are no surface spiingSj brooks, nor rivorsj the
artificial comj^osition impregnates tlic stagnant rain
or soak water left on tlie surface sufficiently to
interfere with the young and tender brood, and to
thwart the old birds rearing them to perfection.

There is another fact that I have observed in
regard to the '' golden plover." I am aware of
sites to whicli these birds resorted as sure as the
winter came on, for they frequented a farm over
which I hold the preservation and killing of the
game, and one of its broad fields at certain periods
was never without a few golden plover — sometimes
more, sometimes less ; but during winter there they
assuredly were. Of latter years these birds have
been gradually diminishing, and from their numbers
becoming less and less, they have at last entirely
failed.

Again, there is another fact patent to my obser-
vation : there are some seeds that the wood-pigeons
eat, that when given by the old birds to tlieir
young, turns the flesh of the half-fledged birds
black, and eventually destroys them. Now, in the
earlier parts of my life, this sort of thing never
happened; and as nothing can happen without a
cause or reason, why is it, in these years of

78 FACT AGAINST FICTIOX.

artificial appliances to land, that around mc, in
Dorsetshire, black game and wood-pigeons have
ceased to breed, and the former have become
almost extinct ? I deeply regret to state, that
some dastardly villain, occupying land in the
immediate vicinity of Wimborne, has poisoned
several beautiful and valuable dogs. He has been
traced in his purchase of tlie poison of which these
dogs died, and I believe that he has disseminated
a report that ^'he bouglit it for the destruction of
rats." In the interests of humanity I hope that
he did so, and that no such dastardly and low
villainous implication, as that of j)urposely poison-
ing dogs out of revengeful spleen, can be laid at
the door of a man claiming the respectable position
of a Dorsetshire farmer. Whatever was the design
of the cruel poisoner, he would have done well to
remember that the law assigns a very heavy penalty
against a villain who, under any pretext whatever,
lays poison in 2:)laces to which tlie property of iho
public can attain to its destruction.

The law in such instances, however, does not
demand any great amount of jDroof other than
circumstantial evidence, for on crime so cowardlyj
so cruel, and so villainously destructive to animal^

FARMING AND ROTATION OF CROFS. 70

and, perhaps, as a contingency to Innnan life,
justice, sj^eecly and severe, is inclined to set the
seal of condemnation, and to brand such cruel
miscreants with tliat they so most unquestion-
ably deserve.

To return to what I believe to ho tlie effects of
foreign and artificial manures, I must recur to a
disease which has attacked my pheasants — it is
nothing more nor less than the foot-rot ; and it has
a similar effect on their feet that the foot-rot has
with sheep. The toes are affected, they swell at the
joints and are very sore, and by degrees the toes
rot off; the bird can't walk, the entire limb from
foot to hip pines away, and the poor thing dies.
The foot-rot in sheep, taken in time, is very easily
cured, — the sheep can be caught and the foot sub-
jected, to constant dressing; but the pheasants so
affected can be taken Avith no sort of certainty,
and, therefore, the disease continues its fatal course*

Strange to say, the longer we live the less we are
able to comprehend the cause of vegetation. In
the summer closely succeeding the heavy incendiary
fire which consumed the furze, heather, and trees
over the greater part of my manor, directly that
the ground was l^arc and cased in cinders, up

80 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

througli tlic black clust in all directions came tlie
potato plant, fresh, green and strong, and in some
places miles away from fields that had ever borne
such roots. There Avas no potato, even of the size
of a pea, beneath the plant — it could only have
sprung from seed.

The haulm had never shown itself before in the
memory of man on these aboriginal heaths, but
from some cause or other the seed had been de-
posited there, kept from vivifying by the wilder
and superincumbent mass.

It opens a very good lesson to a man's mind
to find himself merely a game preserver, and
then to view himself in the double position of
game preserver and farmer on an arable farm,
adjoining his woods. In my practice in this
double capacity, I have been very well enabled to
estimate the damage done by rabbits and game,
and to observe how much failure of crop is laid to
the game, which failure really originated, in effect,
from climate, blight, and insect voracity. At one
time, on a farm in my own liands, having the
shooting, not only did I know very well that the
rabbits were reduced within proper limits while
the agricultural portion of the acres were in tlie

FARMING AND ROTATION OF CROPS. 81

hands of a predecessor; but when tlie farni came
into my own hands, I continued, for my own sake,
to keep the rabbits down. This gave me very little
trouble, for a'j^est settled on the rabbits, and, so
to speak, they all died off. Against my will, then,
in that spring I had no rabbits, and I narrowly
watched the crops.

In the corn-fields, not at the sides so much as
out in the middle of the field, here and there came
the same bare places, the absence of corn on which
had invariably been charged against my rabbits.
On this particular season crops generally were in-
different, and the pest of agriculture, the '^ wire-
worm," abundant.

I am sorry to say that it has come within my
knowledge that tenant-farmers, under a game-pre-
server, have refrained from sowing the headlands
immediately adjoining the covers, and then, on no
crop appearing, charging the deficiency against the
game* In other cases, and on poor lands peculiarly
prone to the wire- worm, or to fail in very dry
seasons, I have observed that a bushel and a half of
wheat to the acre, instead of two, was all the light,
white gravel and sandy soil received; and then, when
paucity of seed, poverty of soil, and the ravages of

VOL. II. G

82 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

the wire- worm combined to prevcnt;any retmii, the
entire deficiency was laid on the rabbits, and the
tenant attempted to make property out of the bad
name the, in this case, mioffending creatm^es had
established for themselves elsewhere.

On the subject of farms, game, and rabbits, I
will reiterate my advice — never to give the tenant,
imder any circumstances whatever, permission to
kill the rabbits. It is not in his power to ^' destroy"
them, iior can he keep them sufficiently under.
The owner of the game and the shooting, with his
keepers, alone can effectually accomplish the desired
and really needful object ; and I have no hesitation
in saying, that it is the duty of the game-2)reserver
as carefully to protect the tenant's crops, as it is
his pleasurable desire to preserve his own game.

ailE THIEF A^■D I'OACHEU. 83

CHAPTER IV.

THE THIEF AND POACHER — PRESERVATION OF GAME.

Characteristics of the Poacher — Poor Families not thankful for
Food, but prefer Money — Mischief of Indiscriminate Charity —
Giving Tracts, Anecdote — How to Treat Petitions — Vigilance
best tends to the Suppression of Crime — State of things at
Alderney Manor when I first took it — Preservation and Non-
Preservation— Stump Orators— Strikes— Fair Pvemuneration.

Perhaps there is no subject on Avhicli so much
nonsense has been talked as on the above, nor
any m which so much false sympathy has been
set on foot, by way of screening a low villain
from the consequence of drur^kenness and crime.

What used to be denominated '' poaching," is
now regarded by the law as '^ theft," for, the
moment game is killed by unqualified or uncer-
tificated persons — or, indeed, by any man, without
permission, on another man's land — it becomes

private property. The fact of private property

g2

84 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

is determined by death ; and to steal dead game
so situated really amounts to felony.

With the act of poaching, or theft of game,
the love of sport in the rural depredator has no
concern wliatever. It used to be the promulgated
idea, in the false commiseration of crime, that
the thief or poacher, like his betters, had a love
for the chase, and could not abstain from gratify-
ing it. No such sentiment ever entered the
villain's head. His chase of feathered game was
carried on by night, when the ^oot creatures
Avere asleep, or when pursuing his calling by day
he was never on the spot to witness the capture
of the creature he sought, save on rare occasions,
when with a lurcher he set and then drove to
his nets or wires. The poacher slunk, under
cover of the night, to shoot the beautiful and
unsuspecting pheasant from his perch, or he crept
among the paths used by pheasants, hares, and
rabbits, to set wire nooses or lay nets to strangle
or entangle game after whom he had no exciting
chase whatever. Before essaying on his nightly
depredations, he and his fellows usually meet in
some public-house or beer - shop, Avhere they be-
dizen the little brains they had with drink, till

THE THIEF AND POACHEK. 85

they reel to the adjacent manor ripe for murder
— all going out, in their maudlin phraseology,
for ^' death or glory."

If the house they thus left was a receiving
house for stolen game, and they had not money
enough at their command to purchase what is
called ^^ Dutch courage," they bargain Avith the
publican, rogue, and sinner, for an advance of
beer, binding themselves to let him have the
proceeds of their thefts in game at so much less
than the market price, so as to insure him a
considerable per-centage for the risk he ran of
losing his money in the event of their being
captured, or designedly absconding from the
neighbourhood and his claim.

The village poacher is always a dirty, idle,
drunken, ragged, bad man. He will never do a
day's honest work if he can help it ; and his
wife and his children, if he has them, are always
dirty, illiterate, and half-starved; while the
lurcher that follows him, or lies at his cottage-
door, is sleek and in fair condition. If he has
a successful night or day, and receives any money
on tlic immediate transaction, not one farthing
of it is expended on his wife and famished

86 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

children. He looks on the cash so earned as
pocket-mone}^, to be spent in the public-house
in gambling and drinking, and a portion of
what he has thus to eat is given to the lurcher,
to keep the dog in running condition. I com-
menced this work by a promise to illustrate my
book by facts, and I now offer one to my readers
that came immediately within my own know-
ledge, in support of the miserable and heartless
depravity as so correctly charged against the
village poacher.

My custom having invariably been to give the
little in my power to bestow to some poor person
or j)ersons, if they deserved it, in the dead of
winter, or at the approach of Christmas, on one
occasion I selected three families from the mud
huts near me, to whom resj^ectively to assign a
dinner for the wives and children. The families
consisted of a mother and five children, a mother
and three children, and a mother with two, and
to these three families I intended to give beef
and plum -pudding, &c., according to their number
and ages. To this end, the women were warned
to come for what I had to give. On being
warned, one of them came to me as spokes-

THE THIEF AND POACHER. 87

woman for tlie otliers, andj to my utter astonish-
ment, asked me ^^ not to (jive them foociy In
reply to further questions, she assured me, that
^^if I gave them food, they and their chiklren
wouhl be none the better for it, for their three
husbands woukl appropriate it all to themselves
and take it to the public-house. The larger dinner
— the one appropriated to the woman with five
children — would be sold for beer, while the two
smaller dinners together would make a sufficient
repast to accompany the liquor, and afford a
public-house jollification, in which neither mother
nor child would be permitted to share." — '^ Well,
then," I answered, ^^ your husbands I always
knew to be bad men, but of you (the Avomen) I
have neither heard nor known any harm ; I would
aid you and your children if I could, l3ut what
you tell me renders it impossible." — '^Give us
the money," she replied, ^^the cost of our dinners
which you contemplated ; the men will not know
how much you give us, and whatever it is we
will keep to ourselves."

It ended by my giving them some money
but whether they (the women) spent it in food
or in gin, of course never came to my knowledge.

88 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

Ill some places I have known what have been
by no means a ^'deserving poor" permitted,
without any restriction, to come to the mansion
for rabbits. Never many together, but repeated
ajiplications by detached old women have been
made, until the aggregate of the rabbits thus
obtained has l3een considerable. On these occa-
sions, no reference was ever made to the head
gamekee23er as to the character of the persons or
families, or whether or not neglected industry,
sickness, or misfortune, had incapacitated them
from their usual course of living. On one occa-
sion, an old woman came to the house, and
applied to the housekeeper for several consecutive
rabbits, giving no name, as usual, but simply
requesting food, under the plea of her and her
family having '^met with misfortin." That ^'mis-
fortin " came to light one fine day, through the
head keeper having met her leaving the house
with a rabbit in her hand, of which he took on
himself forthwith to divest her.

On the matter being explained, the fact came
out that this old Avoman's husband had been
convicted of stealing game some little time
before, in addition to a former imprisonment

THE THIEF AND POACHER. 89

for a felony as to wood, and by these un-
restricted and indiscriminate <^ifts of rabbits, the
penalty inflicted by an, as usual, too lenient
miscalled Bench of Justices^ had been more than
paid.

There is nothing so mischievous in a parish
as indiscriminate charity — it amounts, in fact, to
a premium upon vice. I have had a really hard-
working labourer say to me, "• What use, sir, is
my good character to me, and what good have
I done myself in never having had my family
chargeable on the parish ? Here is Jack, as
lives close to mc, whose family is always a re-
ceiving parish relief, and who never does, and
never has done, any regular work in his life,
and who finds money, someliow^ to get drunk
with; he gets as much given to him at the big
house, and a Christmas dinner to boot, and
broken victuals beside, or even more than I does ;
so what 's the use of honesty ? You gets no
more by it than if you'd been a dozen times in
gaol ; they says, or, leastways, the parson does,
as ' virtue is its own reward,' and burn my shirt
if he ain't about right, for you never gets any
good for it."

90 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

Now, these arc facts ; and tliis Is the rustic
logic that arises from ajoparently little things.
But my experience teaches me that many of
those owners of large mansions who like the
name or reputation of being '^ good to the poor/'
by indiscriminate charity to all evil-disposed
persons as well as the really deserving, do in-
finitely more harm than good. When the young
ladies of the mansions select to run about with
or after parsons throughout the parish in which
they live, with a big, mysterious bag, and sundry
baskets of buns and old clothes, or new clothes
made up for the occasion, it has come to my
knowledge that the scum of the population tliere-
abouts have resorted to all sorts of imposition to
arouse pity, — such as tying up a leg or arm,
alleging that they had been run over by a
waggon, or lost an eye from a supposed blow
from the bough of a tree they were sedulously
and honestly felling. Xo questions are ever asked
as to the truth or otherwise : it is sufficient for
the applicant to be in rags ; and the parson of
the parish, nine times out of ten, is so soft and
easily imposed on, tliat he never makes any
effort to direct attention to the only channel in

5
5?

THE THIEF AND POACHER. 91

wliicli kindness and reward can be effective. I
shall not easily forget the indignation of an
lionest ^Har," then in the Preventive Service,
when, as he sat on the ste]3s of a bathing-machine
^'look-out" glass in hand, a ^^Drusilla Clack
like lady, a miss, though old, and very much
amiss in the direction of her parochial preachings,
came suddenly upon him and thrust a little book
into his hand. The man-of-war's-man saw and
recognized the donor of the book, touched his
hat, and began to look it over for '^ the picters."
In doing so, the fly-leaf of the book escaped his
observation, till, having ascertained that there
were no '^picters,'' it caught his eye. On it,
in large characters, obtrusively written in the
lady's hand, were these words — ^^ Sinner , this is
for thee."

His spell of duty being over, he shut up his
glass with an emphatic slap, and, sliding furiously
from the steps of the machine into the sand, he
strode, or rather rolled angrily away, direct for
the front door of the liouse whence this dis-
criminating philanthropist had emerged to per-
form her so-called Christian duties. Covert ap-
proaches and back doors were no longer to be

92 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

tliouglit of by tliis lionest fellow; but going at
once up to the front cloor, he aclmmisterecl such a
tlmndermg knock, that a flunkey came out almost
on his nose.

^^Here, guv'nor," said the offended royal and
loyal tar, ^'take this here book back to your lady
what shoves 'em about, and tell her I won't have
it nor none of it ; I never was rated as a ' sinner '
afore by any skipper under whom I sailed, and
she 'd no sort of business whatsomever to put me
down as sitch in that blessed log of hers."

So saying, the mortal breaker, having broken
on the philanthropical beach, he receded, and left
the flunkey puzzled in the spray.

Of such anecdotes as these, if I tliought it would
amuse my readers to narrate them, there are many;
but as my chief object is, at this moment, to show
the extreme mischief occasioned in a rural j)^i'i'*^h
by indiscriminate charity, I leave the donors of it
and tlie j^retendcrs to extreme godliness, to the
oj)inion pronounced by that eminent solicitor,
Mr. Bruff, in Wilkie Collins's admirable tale
of ^ The Moonstone,' which runs as follows,
where the learned gentleman sjoeaks of Godfrey
Ablet wliyte : — '' I am told he is an eminent

THE THIEF AND POACHEE. 0'>

pliilantliroplst, wlilcli is decidedly against
liim."

I wisli every lawyer was as wise and honest as
Mr. Bruff, for philosophers and philanthropists
not only very frequently make egregious mistakes,
but the latter, in the most uncharitable opinions
which they obviously form of all their neigh-
bours, forget that it must be decidedly wrong to
let boasted religion be a cloak for cruelty, and
detraction of character the main staple of all
their proceedings. The slap which Wilkie Collins
gives to the innumerable ^^ Clacks" and ^'Able-
twhytes" that labour to make j^eople miserable,
while in the gloomy-looking cells of their own
souls they frisk about and kiss each other in all
secret levity, is well deserved, and I commend its
perusal to a secret Clack and Abletwhyte Society,
who at one time used to post to me from South-
ampton every month pink salvations in the shape
of little books. As long as the papers of these
imiDudent intrusions lasted, however, they made,
when torn up. and tied to lines, very good '^stojis"
for running game.

The plan for the owner of a country house and
manor, I suggest, is this : it has been my custom

94 FACT AGAINST FlCTIO^^

always to be guided by it. If poor people apply
for charity, either by bringing to the door a
paper, signed, of course, by the clergyman, alleg-
ing the accidental death of cow, horse, donkey,
or pig, if the truth of the tale, when inquired
into, is found to be correct, — the signature of the
clergyman to such a document as this being no
sort of guarantee as to its real value, — give in
money what is deemed fit, but on no account
append your name to the paper, and, if you can
stop it, prevent the petitioner from doing so.

If you append your name to a paper of this
kind, your name and the names of all wlio sign
it when that ^^ plaint" is over, may be detached
and pasted on to fresh applications, and, by the
number and respectability of the signatures, carry
with it a weight it in no way deserves. The
names in Hudibrastic phrase acting

" Like nest-eggs to make clients lay,
And on a false opinion pay."

In speaking thus of the clergyman's signature,
it is not my intention to charge an intentional
error against all the gentlemen clothed in black;
all I design to attribute to him is a very mis-
chievous over-zeal to appear in his parish on the

THE THIEF AND rOACHER. 95

side of charity, however misplaced and undeserved
any approach to favourable consideration may be.
The people in the parish always well know how
easy it is to cheat their parson, by ^^ outward and
visible signs," into the belief ^^ of the inward and
spiritual grace," and on his credulity they endea-
vour to trade.

As to the good or evil effects of a large preser-
vation of game, the real fact stands thus. It is the
little amount oi unprotected gci^me that fosters crime.
There is just enough on the unprotected lands to
promise to a dissolutely inclined man enough illicit
game to bring him beer, without the slightest chance
of his being taken and punished.

On the other hand, where there is a large head of
game, it must have many vigilant protectors — capture
being almost a certainty if inroads are made on
the lands. In addition to this, when there are
watchers, the farmer's roots and turnip-tops are safe;
his hedges cannot be pulled nor his gates thrown
off the hinges without an almost certainty of detec-
tion; cattle cannot get cast in ditches, nor sheep
in grips ; nor can sheep be stolen, nor corn from
the sheaf either, when there is a large preserve of
game, and men out night and day to look after it.

96 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

Preservation cannot exist without due care, and
agrarian crimes of all sorts, from sheep-stealing
to robbing hen-roosts, must, by the vigilance of
keepers, be considerably curtailed. In fact, if the
owner of the large preserve issues proper orders,
and his men do their duty, everything on the
manor must be held in watchful supervision.

In illustration of all these things, I now come
to facts brought before me in the place whence I
write the present volumes. On leaving Winkton,
which I rented under my dear good friend, the late
Mr. Weld, of Lulworth Castle, and which the late Mr.
Mills, of Bistern, subsequently bought, Itook Alderney
Manor. The game on it consisted of three pheasants,
some partridges, a few hares, and a great many
rabbits — a great many rabbits, of course, as always
is the case when the farm bailiff \\^^ what is erro-
neously called '^ the keeping of them down," which,
being translated, means putting them down his
throat, and selling them — the possibility of these
two facts, of course, rendering him desii^ous of
keeping up a good stock. Tlie very poor, idle, and
dissolute squatters in mud huts, who had put up
places in which to live, finding a wide stretch of wild
heaths, not commons, abandoned to their disposal.

THE THIEF AND POACHER. 97

All these men kept lurcliing dogs, and many
of tliem liorseSj a cow or two occasionally, and
doid^eys, and grazed these animals on the surromid- ■
ing pro2)ertyj they not possessing any other land
than the little plot on Avliich the mud cottage
stood.

Now, I take on myself to say, that every man of
these mud huts, not only would not work at any
honest labour, but that most of them lived by theft
and on the trespass of their cattle. On Sundays,
during church-time, they used to assemble on the
heaths, every man with his lurcher, and run at
rabbits, and at a hare if they accidentally found
one, for money to he spent in heer.

So habituated had these ^^poor" become to the
illegal use of what belonged to other people, that
at last they began to think that anybody's property
within their reach — from a watch, a fowl, wood,
turf, game, or rabbits, by a common right of
equality or communism — was theirs.

In fact, there had been no gentleman or landed
proprietor capable or willing to protect his own,
or what was let to him, or kindly assigned him, by
other people ; and when timid people, or maudlin
men, took some of the lands or the house, to

VOL. II. H

98 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

pretcud to jn^eserve game on, or to live In, tliey
openly lauglied at lils ineffective gamekeeper, and
not content with .shooting or snaring the little wild
life there was in fur or feather, they absolutely
infracted the premises, and stole the barn-door fowls
that roosted in his laurels at his door. In short,
no one ivould live at what was then called Alder-
ney Cottage, until that hapjDy state of things
existing in its vicinity w^as broken through by my
under-renting it of a Mr. King, who had taken it
of Sir Ivor Guest, and kept it in a very neglected
state.

Here, then, is an answer to the Bright, Ho dger.
Dodger, Dilks, and Doddle cry of the harm done
by the great, or what these ^^ dodger" people
call '' the over-preservation of game." By day
nor night was there any proper notice of the
lawless state of the district, save such as was
confided to the public supervision of the county
police, wdio, of course, could not specially absent
themselves from the highways to see what w^as
going on in more remote places. Tlie tenant-
farmers in the vicinity Avere trespassed on by
night, and their ricks fired if they tried to j^rotcct
themselves.

THE THIEF AND POACHEK. 99

And tills because there was no Immediately
resident gentleman, and no sort of preservation of
game.

One miliealtliy state of things induced another.
Every idly-inclined and dishonest man, seeing
how his fellows could fare, then tried to erect a
mud hut, in order to enjoy the illegal pursuits
he saw luere not restrained by anj/ exercise of
landed power ; and, on the suggestion of the
previous squatters before him, he was told
'^io bide some high wind setting the desired
way towards the fir woods, and then in the
nocturnal hours to light a fire" — the habit
having been, on occasions of these really in-
cendiary fires^ to give the loppings of the
dead trees, and the half-charred poles, '-'- to the
poor'' — to the very men who purposely set the
woods on fire. If this encouragement of the most
serious crime is what is termed being ^^good to
the poor," why then Heaven, in th.at respect^ make
me '^had'' to them for life.

If it is ivromj in us, the game-preservers, to

keep in our woods a quantity of game, for our

anmsement and tliat of our friends, and to the

very great employment of labouring men and

IT 2

100 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

servants, how much more erroneous It niust he,
in the eatmg-houses or cook-sliops of the metro-
polis, to expose to the London ''poor" all sorts
of roast, boiled, and pickled eatables, Avith but
the texture of a fragile piece of glass, not the
fifteenth part of an inch, between their mouths
and the joint they long to dine on.

The same may be said of the silversmith and
jeweller, and the pastrycook, and even to the man
who dares to walk the street Avitli a visible watch
or jewel on his person.

I had obtained, but at this minute I cannot lay
my hand upon it, a computation of the amount
of pounds of meat sold by the poulterers of the
large cities and towns in wholesome food in
rabbits alone to the labour hig classes, and to
those who come within the fashionable denomina-
tion of '' the poor.''* I think at Southampton
fourteen thousand rabbits, or couples of rabbits,
sold as food for the people, w^as about the annual
numl^er ; so that if you put each rabbit at about
three pounds' Avortli of animal food, it would be
difficult to include them in the audacious nomen-
clature of a blatant farmer or speech-maker at

* This shall be appended to the close of this volume.

THE THIEF AND POACHER. 101

some of tlie farmers' clul)s, — I think, in the Stour
or Avon vales, — wlio in liis wine-ancl-watery wrath
clenoimced these creatures to l^c rendered ex-
tinct as ^^ useless vermin." I can understand the
minds of some tenant-farmers being* ^^ riled," sup-
posing them to know the millions of pounds, in
the United Kingdom, of rabbits iDought by the
poor for their families during the twelve months,
in preference to butcher s meat — the poor so ob-
taining a hetter dinner for the same amount of
money than they could have had if they had
gone to lay it out in the butcher's shop. But
understanding this, and looking on either side
the slice of bread, it does astonish. me to see how
completely led astray a vast number of the people
are, as well as some of the leading press, by the
false abuse lavished on the large estates — lavished,
I repeat, for no real object of humanity towards
^'the poor" themselves, but in order to sow dis-
affection between landlord and tenant, and to
destroy the influence of acres on those wlio in-
habit under the lord of a manor. In short, the
whole but tried-to-be-disguised object of Codger,
Dodger, Snooks, and Noodle, or wlioever the firm
consists of, has been, and is, to create disaffection

102 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

to the Crown, to the Peers, and to tlie Squire-
archy, for political purposes; but, like the moun-
tain, if so large a name can he assigned to a
conclave of such little molehill men, liaving no
mouse, all they could produce, after all their
labour, was^ the miserable, half-witted hand of
a boy armed with a lockless pistol, and sub-
sequently whipped for his folly, Avho endeavoured
to frighten the Queen. Labourers, servants
of all grades, have been striking for a rise
of wages, taught by these Hyde Park bloaters,
and tauo-ht to strike as the neo^roes in the West
Indies were taught to strike by ^'missionaries,"
who liad better far been ''cold," — that is, tlie
blacks were taught to strike just at some period
wlien it Avas ruin to an employer or possessor of
sugar plantations to lose all the hands he had.
Had I a thousand tongues and a million pens I
would stamp those men who counsel such strikes,
and the poor classes who thus league together to
force the money from their employers, as the
lowest villains that disgrace tlie name of English-
men, or that over robbed on the high road.

If any labouring man, artificer, or farm-labourer,
feels that he is aggrieved by liaving less wages

THE THIEF AND POACHER. 103

tlian he conceives to 1)0 liis due, let liim go to
the face of his master, like an honest, fearless
man, and tell him that he will quit his employ
unless his place is better.

If he feels aggrieved and keeps his grievance
smouldering in his breast till he can get others
to be as disaffected as himself, and then, leaguing
together, he and the rest of his companions wait
till the moment when employer, farmer, clothier,
or mechanic must be ruined if he does not on the
instant, at whatever cost, secure his hands by
compliance with any extortion, then I hold such
men, in suck a strike, to be worse than the robber
who holds a pistol to the head, threatens life, and
demands a purse.

Worse, because the villains on strike cannot
be severely punished for what they do; though,
fairly speaking, do they ^^ not take a man's life
away," when the}^ seize ^^the means by which
lie lives " ? If sugar-canes are not cut the very
instant they are ripe, if corn is not similarly
disposed of, it deteriorates, and hay the same ;
and if not carried when fit to be so dealt with,
it becomes worthless, and the loss so occasioned
is a scandalous robbery; while, if the owner of

lOrt FACT AGAINST FICTION.

the goods, wliatever they may he, complies with
a demand lie kno^Ys must he his ruin, and which
cannot in its extortion continue, why, then he
pays his money to men who stand in the position
of mean and worthless robbers.

It is high time that Peers and Commoners,
and all grades of employers, should meet this
mischief by a league, — a league not to take from
the j^opulation anything, not to extort from them
anything, not to force them to accept less wages
for their industry tlian they deserve ; but to point
out to them that there are two ways of obtaining
things in this world, other than by ^^strikes"
and robbery; and that they could quit their
employer's service at times that would be just
to him as well as to themselves, if they could
l)ottor themselves 1)y it, and then not put it in
the power of any peoples, at home or in foreign
countries, to refer to, and liken them to, a nest
of predatory villains.

No man has spoken more clearly or correctly
on this head than the Duke of Buckingham ; and
no set of designing, selfish men have over deluded
their poor dupes more than the clique of stump-
orators who have been permitted to make the

THE THIEF AND POACHER. 105

public parks a iiuisancc to all well-disposed and
properly-guided people, or to pollute tlie foun-
tains in Trafalgar Square witli their pestilential
presence.

It is farcical to combine two facts that to every
thinking mind must 1)0 diametrically ojoposed to
each other, and imjDossible of completion. The
two facts I allude to are increased wages for less
duration of work. Surely, if these deluding
slieplierds had intended to gain for their silly
flocks the better pay they called for, the}^ ought
not to have coupled with that increase of wages
a very great diminution of time in which to earn
them. They should simply have demanded better
pay, if they thought that they could get it for
tlie twelve hours' toil — not twelve hours' toil,
for from the hours have to be deducted break-
fast, ^^ lunch," and dinner.

I do not agree that any labourer • on a flirm
should have any land to cultivate for himself
over and above his sufficient garden or plot. No
servant or labourer of any kind should be, or
expect to be, remunerated on a system of per-
quisites, for that system fosters dishonesty and
induces discontent. The labourer of any kind

106 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

should be paid every week in hard eash ; he then
knows exactly what he lias to trust to, and can
lay it out in the way that coincides with his
own wishes.

There is a vast deal of clap-trap nonsense
respecting ^Hlie improvement of the dwellings of
the poor." I take it on myself to assure my
readers that, if the entire population of the rural
classes were polled for and against what is called
'^the improvement of their dwellings," there would
be an overwhelming number of votes for the old
cottages, and an immense chorus would arise of
^' Oh, give us our lowly thatched cottage again."

However, ^^to improve the dwellings of the
poor" sounds well, and is an ostentatious extra-
vagance or showy ceremony, much delighted in
bv the rich of the present day. No one can say
anything against the abstract fact, but as to its
rendering the labouring classes more contented,
warmer, and better off as to the cost of living, the
improvement of their dwellings has done no such
thing. No really usefully-inclined man seems to
me ever to ask an honest labourer, i^er se, why
he is discontented, and what it is that he wants,
or thinks would l)enefit his condition.

THE THIEF AND POACHEK. 107

111 nine cases out of ten, if this question was
put to a union victim, he would make a very
natural but stupid reply, and say, ^' more money
and less work," the very two things that cannot
go together. As to the Improvement of their
dwellings, they would ask for some straw to
thatch their dwelling, and not for a gaudy stack
of chimneys, very necessarily inducing an in-
creased outlay of fuel. The really worthy and
hard-working labourer, if quietly left to explain
himself, would simply ask to 1)e paid in hard cash
for his luork, and not to have the amount of that
hard cash staved off with very sour cider or
other supposed benefits, which really are to the
labourer and his family no benefits at all.

Whatever mischiefs may have been achieved
Ijy these strikes and unions, they must consume
tliemselves, from their very want of reasonable
or well-arranged foundation. You may, I regret
to say, delude the English masses for a time,
and induce its component heads ^^ to imagine a
vain thing " ; but as the gloss of the false gar-
ment thrown over them wears off, the heads will
cease to cling to vain, unjust, and sedulously
inculcated deceits, and come back once more to

108 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

tlio lioncst reality of their position — the fair
remuneration of their labour, at shorter pay for
lessened work, and to the full pay, say twelve
shillings a-week, paid every Saturday, for twelve
hours, deducting half-an-hour for breakfast, a
quarter of an hour for luncheon, and an hour
for dinner, Avliich gives not twelve hours for
labour, but ten hours and a quarter for actual
industry.

With such terms as these, an agricultural
labourer would have every reason to be, and ought
to be, contented and happy.

ON THE THEFT OF LIVE GAME.

109

CHAPTER V.

ON THE THEFT OF LIVE GA:\IE.

Night Poacliing— How to Defeat tlie Poaclier's Object— Stacks or
Feeding-Places to be well Watched— Months in which Poachers
are most Active— Game-Dealers and Poachers— How the Thieves
Proceed— A London Poacher Caught; what he had in his
Pocket— How they Deceive the Keepers— Over-Preservation—
Good Sense and Vigilance will get over Difficulties— To take
the Wind out of the Sails of the Stump Orators.

In describing the various ways of stealing game,
perhaps it will be best to begin with night poach-
ino-, and the use of the poacher's gun; for as
regards this noisy way of depredation, very great
mistakes have arisen as^to the nights that arc
likeliest for this robbery to be attempted : foolish
songs about its being the nocturnal thief's " delight
on a shiny night/' whereas a bright moonlight
nia-ht would be the furthest off from the thief's
selection when contemplating this inroad on private
property. Pheasants will not sit to be shot at on

110 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

a bright niglit, after the first gun has alarmed the
Avood, therefore tlie night selected is generally
when there is a bright sky but no moon, and a
very higli wind to drown as much as possible the
villain guns.

If a gang of these rascals have sallied forth
half drunk, and for the time being possessed of
Dutch courage, gained at the low beer-shop or
public-house, they always select some man among
them less drunk than the majority to act as
leader, and he is generally a well-known thief.

If the attack is to be made by the gang on a
considerable sized cover, holding many pheasants,
these thieves draw up at the verge of tlie cover,
and, receiving their orders to keep silence, they
all go into the wood together, and proceed in a
body through it for a considerable distance.
AYlien they have got far enough into the wood,
then they halt under some tree or trees where
they can see a roosting pheasant ; on that sjDot
they leave the first man. The rest of the thieves
then retrace their steps, taking up positions under
roosting birds, till the last man is posted — all
these villains having orders to wait till the last
man posted fires ; then all of them have orders to

ON THE THEFT OF LIVE GAME. Ill

fire and fall back as quickly as they can, shooting
on their way back if they pass under a pheasant ;
after that they decamp^ if not caught by the
keepers, with their booty as fast as they can.
Thus, supposing there is no ^^set watch" out,
tlie whole thing is over in half-an-hour, and by
tlie time that the keeper in bed has got his boots
on, the scoundrels" have departed.

NoAV, in this hurried attack — for I have insjpected
the ground on the following day — there is very
seldom a valuable booty obtained; and for this
reason — many of the pheasants are, of necessity,
at such short distances from the gun, to enable
the thief to see them, that they are blown beyond
all possibility of sale for cooking, many of them
fall into briars .where they are not found, and some
of them have life enough left to run away. I have
known these gangs to bring a dog with them to
find their game, and, if I may judge of the mass
of feathers, tails and all, that this dog pulled out,
what between the dog and short distances, there
could not have been many birds fit for sale.

These nocturnal gangs are now very rare since
the establishment of the Police Force, and the nidit
shooting is generally confined to one or two thieves,

112 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

who ^^ listen a bird up," shoot him, unci run away.
These are the most difficult of such depredators to
catch, as you never know when or where to have
them, and they are off at the first alarm. When
a keeper knows what he is about, he has it in his
power to make his master's well-enclosed woods
very dangerous to walk in at night. He has a
right to dig holes in his master's woods as deep
and as frequent as he likes ; he has a right to strain
very small but strong wire from tree to tree, al)out
the height from the ground of a middling-sized
man's face. A nocturnal villain has no business in
that wood, and if he cuts his nose nearly off against
a wire of this kind, he has no one to blame for it but
himself. Very strong pliant growers may also be
bent down, and held down with strong whipcord
and a peg to a hole in a strong post, which said
growers fly up Avith great emphasis if the peg that
holds them is displaced by the foot or leg of a
man, and if the grower should catch an intruding
chin, a jaw so struck Avill not masticate food for
some days.

Those excellent but dangerous spikes for men or
dogs are said to be as illegal as the spring-gun,
so it is best not to set them, and, indeed, without

ON THE THEFT OE LIVE GAME. 113

Slid I dangerous things a wood can be made, if well
enclosed to keep out cattle, as ineligible a spot for
a niidniglit walk as can well be imagined. The
owner of a Avood has as much right to put large
tenter-hooks in his trees, if he likes it, as he has to
put them on the top of his palings or walls ; and if
hooks are suspended on stout cords, combined with
deeply dug holes and growers to spring up when
touched, the wood thus treated will not be much
troubled with intruders by night or day. How-
ever good it may be to have these adjuncts for
the maintenance of privacy, in my own mind
there is nothing like a force kept on watch on
every succeeding night.

Wires set for game must be left, at least for a
time, and this, of course, affords the chance of the
keepers finding them and being ready for the return
of the intruder. AVhere there is game, there are
stacks or feeding-places for the pheasants, and at
these stacks, during the day, by snares much mis-
chief may be done when the ground is badly looked
after by the keeper.

I have known stacks visited by a poaching thief
in the day, and he will very likely lie hidden in
the cover till tlie keeper pays a visit, perhaps to

VOL. II. I

114 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

liancl-feecl in tlie straw wlien tlie stack holds but
little corn, and then the intending thief will Avatch
the keeper go away. Eonnd the stack he will set
snares, — nooses of horsehair or of wire in the
pheasants' runs, or even small steel traps, — and
then, hiding again in the bushes within ear-shot,
he is ready at the first fluttering wing in any of
tlie snares to creep out and 2:)ossess himself of the
bird. Another plan at the stacks which thieves
sometimes resort to is, to lay fish-hooks on short
lines, or horse-hair baited with a pea or bean, at
times with a raisin, vulgarly called by this class
of men a ^^fig"; but the latter is by no means a
successful bait, for not one pheasant in a hundred
will eat it. To get a pheasant to eat a raisin is
to establish in the bird an artificial appetite, and
that, after all, is but a waste of time.

Hooks with short lines, the fish-hook baited
with an acorn, will take a wild duck at some
shallow feeding-j^lace, but if there are other wild
ducks feeding there, when one is caught by
swalloAving the hook, the fluttering of the duck
so caught will scare the fowl away from that
identical spot for man}' months to come.

Neither wild ducks nor pheasants, hares nor

ON THE THEFT OF LIVE GAME. llo

rabbits, can bo caught as easily as some people
siij)pose. A hare or a rabbit won't go through a
snare in the hedge, or take the run in the grass
Avhere even a wire is set up- wind of them, that
is if the hare or rabbit approach with the wind
coming from the snare to them. If they come the
other way, or down-wind to the snai-e, then they
are very likely taken in it, for their nose is the
only thing besides the ear which warns them of
danger ; their eyes, in this respect, if the danger
is stationary, are of no use to them whatever.

• The worst season for poaching or thieving
game is precisely that when people who know
nothing about it suppose that depredations against
the game are all over — I, mean the entire months
of February and March. It is then that the
large game-dealers in London, and all over the
country, have a demand for live pheasants. Pro-
prietors Avho have over-shot their manors, and
renters of manors newly taking possession of
them, and finding nothing there but air and
exercise, all alike ap^ily to ^Hhe trade,'' and
then, in league, many of them, with the local
thieves, they send down a man, with a roomy box

or well, attached to a sort of mercantile phaeton,

I 2

116 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

to put himself at once in communication with
rural rascality, and to set about stealing the
pheasants. Very likely the man from London
employs the rural and local thieyes to steal the
2)heasantSj promising to pay the fines for them if
they are caught ; but I have kno^^i strangers to set
about the act. In that case, however, it is generally
when the Avoods are small, and, from some adjacent
road, the London thieves can first see how the land
lies, and get acquainted with the position of affairs.
If there happens to be a gamekeeper a fre-
quenter of public-houses, the plan adopted is to
get the fool fond of beer drinking, and to ph'
him well with liquor, making him safe for a
given time. If the woods are small and w^ell-
stocked with pheasants, and of the shape which
best suits the thieves — that is, narrow, but of a
certain length — in the course of an hour, or an
hour and a half, a large booty may be caught
and carried away. Suppose the cover to be long
enough, as well as narrow, for two beats, the
poachers go to the middle of it, and set it across
in every run Avitli wires, with a knot on them to
prevent their drawing tight enough to strangle
a bird, and with '' purse nets," made of silk or

ON THK THEFT OF LIVK GAME. 117

twine — the silken ones are best. These snares
being so set to face one end of the cover, the
thieves go to the other end, tap the stems of
the trees very cautiously as they come along, and
set all the pheasants rmming. They j)i'oceed
thus cautiously up to their snares, and take out
the pheasants that may be caught; when, revers-
ing the position of their purse-nets to make them
catch the other way, they then go to the other
end of the cover and reverse their beat, con-
cluding in the same way. If the covers are
narrow, and the pheasants many, this depreda-
tion takes up but little time, and the thieves
of the game are oflP with their valuable booty
before the drimken or neglectful keejDer knows
anything of the matter. I remember one of
these London men being caught at this work
by an old servant of mine, but not then in my
employ. He gave chase to the tAvo Londoners,
who ran for it, and very wisely selected the man
who seemed to have the heaviest pocket. This
man^ in jumping the wattled hedge out of the
cover, kicked his toe against the top binder, and
fell with his stomach against the edge of the
ditch in the field. The keeper very wisely

118 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

jimiped, and landed with his feet in the back of
the thief, and secured him. On searching him,
there were live pheasants in his pockets, and
one dead cock pheasant, which, no doubt, had
been killed in the fall. There was, therefore,
a penalty for the trespass, and for the possession
of dead game out of season — when, on the
magistrate convicting, the thief plunged his
hand into his pocket, and flung on tlio table a
heap of gold and silver, a game certificate, and
a licence to deal in game, and insolently told the
magistrate's clerk to take the fine, whatever it was.

Taking live game, and stealing the eggs when
keepers are slack, are two of the easiest as well as the
most mischievous and lucrative manorial aggressions.

Thieves, when setting their snares for all or
any kinds of game, to be. left down all night, will
very often select what they think is the keeper's
dinner-liour to go and look at them. Then, if
there should 1)0 a head of game caught, they will
come to the spot, stoop down over it, make a
bundle of their smock-frock or jacket-j^ockets, rise
up again, and appear to sneak away. Then, if
the keeper is deceived by this, he rushes out from
his hiding-plnce, and seizes the supposed delinquent.

ON THE THEFT OF LIVE GAME. 119

wlio has no game in his possession, for he only
knelt down and pretended to take the game,
just to test if there was anybody watching him.
The poacher will also make almost imperceptible
marks aromid their snares, but at some distance
from them, in order to see if since they set them
the keeper had been in their vicinity. Keepers
ought always to have marks all over their covers,
by which they could ascertain if, in their absence,
any strange person had been there — a line of
worsted, a lightly-twisted bough or bramble, or even
a dark thread, would give ample testimony of any-
thing of a certain height having passed that way.

There is a very vulgar phrase very often in
the mouths of men avIio ought to know better, it
is ^^the over-preservation of game." Now, there
can only be one system of preserving game and
prevention of trespass, and that, to be of any
good, must be strict and efficient in every respect.
To get up a certain amount of game and then
only half or inefficiently to preserve it, is to put
a temptation in the way of drunken thieves, who
will not do any honest work for beer, which is
the only thing they live for, and really to make
a certain amount of ill-protected game an induce-

120 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

inent to rel)el against the law. If by tlie words
'^over-preservation of game" is meant an enor-
mous amomit of birds and beasts to eat up all the
crops, and to do harm in the woods and fields,
to arrive at that immense amount of hares, phea-
sants, and partridges — rabbits are not game — is, on
some manors, totally impossible. On some extra-
ordinary land that suits game, it might be done,
if the game was not usefully shot for one season ;
but when game is so foolishly kept, beyond Avhat
the woods and lands will fairly carry, the fault
brings its own remedy, for the ground will get
what we call '' stained," all sorts of diseases will
break out in feather and in fur, and in succeeding
seasons there will be very little game of any kind,
attempt to preserve it, or what is called '^ over-
preserve it," to the fullest extent, as you may.
Because things may he done injudiciously, and, in
very harsh and mistaken ways, by wrong-headed
owners of manors, wdio by injustice and morose-
ness make enemies where none need exist, that
is no sort of reason why a man with his senses
about him, and a wide knowledge of human nature,
should not com])letely support his own interests,
enjoy them to the full, }'et by tact, resolution to

ON THE THEFT OF LIVE GAME. 121

insist on the laws and the rio-ht that the hiw "ives
liim, restrain all evil-doers from infractions. Thus
showing to the poorer classes that it is the unmistak-
able side on which their bread is buttered to serve
and to please the man in power, whose hand and heart
alike incline him to justice, charity, and good will.

On the well-arranged and sensibly-ordered manor,
there really is little ill-will and no difficulty. In
the first instance, authority, of course, must be
manifested and strictly enforced, and the incor-
rigible ruffians brought to their senses — made to
see that they must either obey the laws, abstain
from theft, or suffer the punishment awarded to
crime of every description.

These incorrigible dwellers in a village will,
when they find they can no longer revel in bad
beer, bought by the proceeds of worse crime,
remove themselves from the locality, and go to
sites where there is less^ restriction, or to the
purlieus of a royal forest, which really is the
recejDtacle for ruffians sped away from places
they have made too hot to hold them. In a
royal forest in England there are always inefficient
keepers or woodmen, and every noble lord and
gentleman, during the time that he may have been

122 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

Ranger or head of the Office of Woods and Forests,
in the event of his having an old servant who,
through drinking or other incapacity, he wants to
be rid of, has been always inclined to stick him
into the hole for which he was totally unfitted,
and put him to serve the CroAvn, because he had
it not in him to serve anybody or anything else.

Those incorrigible ruffians in a village as above
alluded to, were best away from the site where
they had so long revelled in ill-earned beer and bad
example, and, if driven away by the full and fair
administration of the law, — whether of the Game
Law or any other statute, matters not, — their
absence on the surrounding population has a
more beneficial effect than their presence.

I have, in my time, written so much as to game,
tliat I fear to be charged with saying the same
thing over again. But silent as I might wish to
be, there are so many aggressions now made,
at every corner of the land where a ^^ stump"
demagogue can get a ragged audience, upon the
landed aristocracy, that I must speak up for those
who must ever be regarded as tlie brain, and in
war as the gallant right-hand of old England in
the dangerous hour.

ON THE THEFT OE LIVE GAME. 123

Let lis, then, for once, take tlie wind out of
tlio sails of the stump and ckih orators, and, after
showing them that their cry is really to roh the
l^eople of the food— the wliolesome meat from
rabbits that they have the power of purchasing at
tlie poulterer's, and because they cannot buy
butcher's meat at the present prices, — let the
landed gentry turn all those wide wastes that the
demagogues have alluded to, as being ^^ sinfully
kept for private pleasure," netting ^' no food for
the people " of any kind, into rabbit-warrens.

When it is known, as I will take care that it
shall be, how many, many millions on millions of
pounds of meat furnished by the rabbits to the
working classes, from those wastes so cultivated as
warrens, and assigned to the only crop that they
can grow, stump orators Avill have to drive another
trade. It will afford the means of bringing down
the high prices demanded by the farmer and the
butcher, prices to which the humblest labourer or
artificer cannot at present by the sweat of his
brow attain. If it is really desirable to cheaj^en
meat food, how is that good to be consummated by
lessening the supply by millions on millions of
pounds ?

124: FACT AGAINST FICTION.

CHAPTER VI.

ON THE REARING OF PHEASANTS BY HAND.

Mistakes of Keepers — Best Method to Adopt — A Mystery cleared
lip — Constant Watchful Attention requisite — Food and
Diseases — Minute Insect Food on the Under Side of Oak
Leaves — Errors of Learned Men — Protective Laws — Farmers
and Ptabbits — Mistakes of Professors — The Wood Duck.

As it lias now loecome one of the necessities of
the day to provide sufficient sport for the present
generation, each gunner armed with three double
breech-loaders, and accompanied by no dog,
some further remarks on this artificial practice
will not be out of place. Perhaps there is no
phase of game-preserving wherein so many lords
and masters are deceived by their servants as in
the asserted number of young birds reared at the
coops. The number of young birds hatched out
under each barn-door hen or bantam no doubt
can be easily ascertained, but then what very
often follows ?

ON THE KEAKING OF PHEASANTS BY HAND. 125

Some keepers very erroneously mow a swartli
in tlic long' meadow grass, and put their coops
into it, and never cover up the fronts of their
coops at dusk, or before dusk, every evening, as
tliey ouglit to do. The consequence of this is,
if rain comes on, the young birds get into the
grass, and, to use a keeper's expression, get
^^ draggled," and, becoming chilled, never reach
the coops again. Or in the long grass, during
the day, a stoat, a weazel, or a rat may get
hold of them, the A^ermin not visible to the
keepers, when, on feeding, if the right immber
of young pheasants do not appear at the expected
coop, the keeper at once concludes that they
have gone and got mixed up with other broods,
and takes no more trouble about it.

Wlien coops and broods are put out, select
as fair and open a piece of short grass as possible,
so as to be able with the eye to command every
yard of the ground. By way of shade and cover
for the little birds, place in the vicinity of each
coop scA^eral boughs of trees, laid for sufficient *
support, and for the sake of keeping hollow,
lapping the one over the other. Furze boughs
will answer the purpose of sufficient protection

126 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

from the rays of the sun, and for cover for the
young birds to run into when the keeper feeds
at the coop. They will be content to remain
under the boughs till they see the feed put
down, and till the consequent call of the lien
lures them back.

Su23posing that, instead of this, the coops are
put by the side of mowing grass, as before alluded
to, young pheasants at their earliest period may
run into it, and get lost; that accident is com-
pletely avoided by having the ground completely
under supervision. I know an instance of a keeper
losing every day some of his very young birds,
and being totally unable to account for it. They
were by the side of mowing grass, and he searched
every bit of it over Avhen near that particular
cooj), but could find nothing to clear up the
mystery. He was a painstaking man, so he cut
a considerable square patch of grass around the
coop, and saw nothing more than what he might
have seen anywhere every day, and that was, an
open mole's run, or a small orifice in the sujoer-
ficial run which moles often make just beneath
the surface. He left tlie cooj), and before his re-
turn another little bird was missing; so he sat

ON THE REARING OF PHEASANTS BY HAND. 127

down to watch, for lie knew not wliat, perhaps
because it was a liot day, and he was tired. He
had not watched long, when, withm a couple of
yards of the coops, on the spot he had newly
mown, he thought he distinguished in the short
grass a small brown spot, that was not there a
moment before, so he sat for a minute or two
speculating what it was — whether it might not
be a dead leaf that had blown there, or some
other accidental thing. The mystery was soon
cleared up, for the spot rose to a few inches
higher, and the substance assumed two sharp
little black eyes, which turned, with the inquisitive
head to which they belonged, from side to side,
intently surveying the vicinity for danger or for
prey. The gun rose slowly to the keeper's
shoulder, and with even the cautious motion he
adopted, so as the better to escape notice, ^^jjop
goes the weasel " out of sight again — as the vulgar
song has it — away went the vermin, leaving the
keeper possessed of the knowledge he sought, the
way his young birds had gone, l)ut tliat was all.
However, with that restless curiosity which dwells
in some animals as well as in the minds of some
women, u}) came the little sharp face of i\\Q weasel

128 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

again, to ascertain wlietlier the sliglit motion pre-
viously detected originated with an enemj^ or
not, and the keej^er, knowing the restless nature
of liis foe, having kept the gun to his shoulder,
shot the head off before its owner could again
take it out of sight. No more birds were there-
after lost.

When keepers return an estimate to their em-
ployers as to ' ' how many pheasants they have
at the coops," they give in the number thcu have
IDut out J not the number that are still then there,
or that may be there at subsequent periods, —
that number often much lessened by neglect, by
disease, by accidents, or by the ravages of winged
or four-footed vermin. A keeper can only know
the truth of how many birds he has, by shutting
up the face of the coop every evening, and count-
ing the young at each coop as he lets them out
every morning. Then, as the birds get larger,
if some of them stray to other coops, he will be
able to ascertain, by the numbers let out at each
coop, his exact position. To some men this is
too much trouble ; and because it is more trouble
than they like, they tell their employer that it is
l)est not to shut the young birds in at night.

ON TITE REARING OF PHEASANTS BY- HAND. 129

The fact of sliutting tlicm up at niglit necessitates
their being let out soon after daybreak in the
morningj and that additional trouble to some men
is distasteful. When the birds are very young,
and the ground at the coords is full of herbage
and clear of other impediments, before the very
young birds are let out in the morning, it is good
with a broom to brush away the dewdrops ; but
in rougher ground, or in mowing grass, this cannot
be accomplished. The young pheasants should be
kept to their coop always, for two or three days,
by a ^' crate" in front of it until they are not
afraid to take their food from the man in attend-
ance. The food should be. varied, every crop and
stomach is fond of change, and should consist of
hard-boiled egg, finely minced boiled rice, onions
chopped as fine as possible, oatmeal rubbed with
the egg or barley-meal (the oatmeal is the best),
and grits and buckwheat. Fresh watercress, finely
minced, and a bunch of the same, pegged to the
ground, for them to peck at if they like. A fctu
ants'-eggs, once or twice a day; if of the great
wood ant, they should be scalded, to kill the hard
bitten ant, and to mellow or reduce the strength
of the insect eggs. Maggots may also be given,

VOL. 11, K

130 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

but only when turned reel and in a clnysalis state,
on no account when fresh and alive from the carrion
in which tliey were bred. The diseases which
usually attack the young birds are ^Hhe gapes,"
^^the cramp," and a species of '^cholera," accom-
panied by blindness — a very strange blindness, for
it consists not in the pupil of the eye, but in the
closing of the lids. In this case of superficial
blindness, the eyes of the young birds must be
opened several times a day for them to feed, but
usually before they have had time to get a suffi-
ciency of food the lids close up again. A weak
solution of camphor for the eye, and a camphor
pill of about the size of a small pea, are remedies
recommended J but I knou: no certain cure for any
of these complaints : rue - tea, nettle-tea, alum-
water, water imjDregnated with rusty iron, all of
these may be given them to drink ; but though
some of the patients recover under some of these
remedies, all seems to me to depend on efforts
of nature better than on outward apj^lication or
internal medicine. Of course, if a man recom-
mends an hitherto untried remedy, if the young
bird in the course of natural effort recovers, the
recovery is claimed as proof of a certain cure •

ON THE REARING OF PHEASANTS BY HAND. 131

but my readers may take my word for it that
life or death hangs on the constitutional power
of resistance. Partridges are much more easily
reared than pheasants, and may be fed on much
the same food, only the smaller ants' -eggs may be
given them in greater profusion than to the phea-
sants. Black game are the most difficult to rear,
and with them the same food will suit, with the
addition of some young shoots from the heather ;
but there is something which they require more
than either pheasant or partridge, the nature of
which I have not been able to ascertain. Always
let the game-coops be put, if possible, on fresh
ground, — never attempt to breed up in consecutive
years on the same spot ; if you are obliged to do
so, during the intervening winter give the ground
a slight dressing of lime or chalk, but on no account
whatever have anything to do with gas lime, for
it is death to insect life, and baneful to the tender
vegetations. The great difficulty lies in giving to
the young pheasants a light but strengthening food,
such as the mother finds for them in the immense
variety of insects scattered over the surface of the
lands within her haunt. Every inch of ground,

every blade of grass or corn, every leaf, and every

K 2

132 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

(lead stick, is tenanted by insect life, more or
less, Avliicli serves for tlie food of the '' nide."
Among different kinds of beetles and grubs, the
wire-worm forms a considerable quantity in the
daily food. In the crop of one hen pheasant,
feeding in a clover lay, and shot from off it,
I found nearly half a pint of the wire-worm,
which is, in my opinion, the worst enemy the
farmer has. To meet this necessity for a mild, but
yet a rich or sustaining food, maggots, in the
chrysalis state, as before remarked, are good,
hard egg, minced rabbit's flesh, but, on no
account, the stomach or milky part of an old doe ;
and last, though by no means the least, really
old, coarse Scotch oatmeal, such as I should give
to my foxhounds, together with some fresh-boiled
beef or mutton fat, to my mind are the best
substitute for tlie insect food sought by the
pheasant in field and wood. Good greaves are de-
cidedly the best for spare use in a kennel when
fresh flesh cannot be obtained, and are much less
heating for dogs of all kinds tlian those unwhole^
some cakes of tallow which are usually given* A
very little boiled greaves may be used for pheasants.
In short, I can lay down no directions as to the

ON THE REARING OF PHEASANTS BY HAND. 133

rearing of pheasants which are not to be devi-
ated from through circumstantial change ; l)ut
much must be left to the watcliful vigilance of
the keeper in attendance, and, in fact, there are
very few men capable of understanding the re-
quirements of the young lives entrusted to their
charge. Some people think that if they clothe
a man in a shooting-jacket, and put a gun
into liis hand, calling him a keeper, he must be
able to breed up the most difficult birds to rear
that ever came under the liuman hand.

For a long time it puzzled me to know how
young pheasants of the season, when in the
autumn or commencement of winter they had
become full-grown, could live when all the corn
had been swept from the fields by reap-hook,
scythe, the gleaner, and the swine, and there
were neither acorns nor beech-masts, nor the
little root which in some ^ places is called the
pig-nut, of wliich pheasants are very fond. Of
course, the one and only way to clear up the
point was by examining the contents of the crop,
and in each case I found the crop to be full of
the habitation of an insect that lives in a little
blister-like excrescence which may be found, in

l'3i FACT AGAINST FICTION.

the fall of the year, on the under side of almost
any oak-leaf lying withering on the ground.
Some oak-leaves, on closer examination, I found
to have some of these excrescences, while others,
but only a few, were free from them. The little
blisters were cleanly picked off the leaf by the
pheasant ; but in no instance; at that season of the
year, could I discover the occupant of the little cell.

I must not leave this suljject without mention-
ing the rule that should ever be kept. The
rearer of young game should always keep at
hand powdered chalk, and the French prepara-
tion of charcoal, for when there is any scouring
among the young birds, the use of both of these
may be very important.

It is very amusing the rearing of young game,
and the frustration of vermin, in their attempts
to destroy them, both with gun and trap — as
amusing, but certainly not so ridiculous, as it
is to hear the nonsense talked by bearded men
about not destroying certain things, for that we
should have much more game, and be all the
bettor, in all respects, for keeping up the just
balance of nature. Would the world be benefited
if Ave patronize vice ?

ON THE REARING OF PHEASANTS BY HAND. 135

When people let tlieir tongues run so loosely
on subjects tliey can practically know nothing
about J and when ''philosophers," or ''professors"
— professing a knowledge of things they are
obviously unacquainted with — declare we are to
jDreserve all things alike, so as to maintain the
equilibrium of nature, — predatory, venomous, or
otherwise,— they must give to rats, mice, ticks,
fleas, and meaner vermin still, the same protec-
tion that they assign to hawks, cats, polecats,
stoats and Aveasels, kites, crows, jays and
magpies. I marvel much if these professors of
they know not what, would abstain from activity
unto death did they feel a trespass in their hair,
or a lively visit to their skins, paid in a hop,
step, and a jump, when they supposed them-
selves comfortably in bed. A man once claimed
to be able to give the Promethean sj^ark of life
to a flea he had created out of coral dust, and,
I suppose, some other more vivifying ingredient ;
and the same man even descended in his claim
to be a creator, for he asserted he could trouble
the human head of a professor by worse things
than fleas, in whose composition, base as the
insects were, Avas the dust of diamonds. Such

136 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

stuff as the necessity of '^ keeping iqj the balance
of nature'- is really scarce worth alluding to,
save as it serves to afford a ^^assing derision for
those who moot such absurdities.

We pass 23rotective laws for sea-gulls, which
cannot be made food of for mankind, while we
deny protection to the most useful and delicate
things we have for the well-arranged table, and
also, in a great measure, for the humble tables
of the poor. Protection to the pheasant, partridge,
grouse, and hare and rabbit, is growled at. They,
the first four, may be sought as delicacies for the
rich man's table, but the rabbit feeds tJiousands
of the poor^ who say that '^ they can get more
meat for themselves and children out of a couple
of rabbits, at the price they give for them, than
they could got for the same sum laid out in
butcher's meat, beef, pork, or mutton. It is this^
perha})s, that makes farmers call the rabbits
^^ vermin," for when it is taken into considera-
tion how much money I may say a million and
more of people lay out annually on the rabbits,
which otherwise nuist be laid out on the farmers'
stock, wliy, there may he more reasons than one
for tlic agricultural abuse sputtered on a j^ortion

ON THE EEARING OF PIIEA.SANTS BY HAND. 137

of a people's food, tliat it would bo liarsli ruin
to take from tliem. In Southampton alone, — I
like to quote some town not far from "the Vale
of the Avon," — the annual sale of rabbits, in one
winter, to the j^oor, without including the skins,
is seventeen thousands of pounds.

None but a farmer then, I think, would call the
rabbit a '^ useless vermin"; but men abuse things
according to their kind, and, therefore, the farmer
objects to rabbits because he thinks his crops make
them good to eat, and to be sought after by the
poor. If he wishes to run a tilt with reason against
the rabbit, let him reduce the price of his bullock
and his sheep, and put them more within the
culinary office of the cottage.

It is amusing to hear men talk of things they
know not what, — at least, it would be amusing, if
their gabble had not a very mischievous tendency.
A cannibal, or man of colour witli that aj^petite,
provided he is not white, is exalted in rhyme by
somebody, who says, "wild in woods the noble
savage ran," or he is by other enthusiasts in glaring
compassion, said to be a gentleman — I suppose, in
all but his chops. In short, led by bleating demo-
crats against an imaginary slavery, or by dissenting

138 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

stump (n- field, preachers, it has not been deemed
imj^ious to clothe that first step to manhood without
the tail, — according to Darwin, — the hideous bush-
man or the Ashantee with the alles^ed ^' ima^'e of
God." While this is done, multitudes of the white
poor at home, because they are u'lilte and at home,
are neglected. So, in a less degree, do we find
that a similar state of things exists as to the birds
and beasts of our own country ; laws for the
j)rotection of the fish-destroying gulls are made,
the gull not being food for the masses, but mas-
ticating or swallowing with innnense and quick
voracity a vast deal of fish, which otherwise might
have gone to supply the different markets.

At the same time that this protection is voted by
the wise men in Parliament, ^'protection" to the
food of the well-to-do man's table, the pheasant,
partridge, grouse and hare, and to the wholesome
fare supplied by the thirty thousand tons of rabl)it-
mcat to the exigent poor, is growled at and sought
to be obviated. The rabbits under-sell the farmer,
the farmer, therefore, hates them, and so does the
l3utclier, who sees the poor pass by his board, and
seek the poulterer's shop.

If I had time to mark the amazing ignorance of

ON THE REARING OF PHEASANTS BY HAND. 139

some aiitliors, and the babbling- nonsense indulged
in by sundry professors, I might fill half a volume
with their blatant mistakes. Darwin, let alone his
daring attack on the historic Deity and origin of
man, fails in his mere ornithological lore, and
declares that tliat well-known bird, ^' the snipe,"
^' never breeds in England." Professor Owen did
not know a whale's tooth from the canine fano- of a
badger, while other professors have declared that
some of the skulls of the Bovine race, in my posses-
sion through the kind jDcrmission of his Grace the
possessor of Haddon Hall, were the skulls of
the Bos longifrons of the ancient Britons. And
Avhen I replied ^^ that they ivere not,^^ the answer
made was, ^Hliat of course My. Berkeley, as usual,
knew better than anybody else."

And in this instance so I dldj for the beasts
belonging to the skulls had been killed each by a
bullet , and gunpowder was aiot a commodity used by
the ancients referred to. For my own particular
amusement, I had kept the bullet-marks out of sight.
Again, Ave have in the work which Yarrell left
behind him, a picture of what he called a ^^ rare bird,
supposed to breed in Norway or Sweden," to whicli
he gave the name of the '^ bimaculated duck."

140 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

There was a male specimen of this hybrid, for it is
notliing else, in the British Museum ; and in order
to prove what the hivd really was, I bred a mate for it
in my garden, and sent it also to the Museum, just to
upset the dictum of one who, in liis day, was deemed
to know much, but many of whose dicta were
based on mere hearsay, and whose work noiu
stands little more than a milestone (like many
otliers of ancient date), left on the old coacli-
road of science before the commencement of the
better-informed and faster train, simply to show
where the public in former times were wont to
travel.

Before closing this chapter, in passing, let me
remark, that of all the amusing birds of the duck
tribe, the most beautiful, as well as the most
amusing, is the American wood or Carolina duck.
The plumage of the male is gorgeous in the ex-
treme^ while there is a beautiful simplicity in the
female plumage, in hue and neatness, reminding
one of a very well-dressed Quakeress, without that
worldly tip-t(jp tile of affectation, the ugly Quaker-
bonnet. Tlie wood-duck will breed in a tame state,
and, if pinioned, reside contentedh^ on any orna-
mental water, or on the waters of a decoy for other

ON THE REARING OF PHEASANTS BY HAND. 141

fowl ; and certainly for the table, as I have ascer-
tained ill tlic Far West, no Avater-foAvl surpasses it
in flavour. The time when they are most amusing
is when they pair : this often takes place as soon as
the young male and female are full-grown ; and once
paired, in direct contradiction of Darwin — I mean
as to the Darwinian theor/j, not as to his own pro-
clivities or inclinations whatever they may be they
never desert their first love, but, in spite of other
attractions, year by year the pair continues to hold
good.

The wood-drake is .the only duck that I am
aware of who picks up food and gives it to liis
mate from his bill ; and it is most interesting
to behold, to those amused with ornithology,
— and it ought to be to all men icho have paired^
— how sedulously he attends on his mate : how he
protects her from and keeps her from contact with
the vulgar or designing l^rowd • swimming before
her and heading her off from '^ plumps," or utlier
fowl ; kissing her cheeks, and murmuring to her
of her better course in keeping to herself and his
devoted love.

The common wild mallard ow^is no such love as
this; he pairs with one, or " bides," as the country

142 i^ACT AGAINST FICTION.

people say, with one, two, or three, as the case
may be, and all that time he is a slave to any
momentary whim or passion for the pairs of others
that may seize him. Not so the wood-drake, he
owns no passion but for the one thing he loves,
and if that is taken from him, he will not, for
the season certainly, and very likely never, pair
again.

WASTE LANDS AND WASTE WATERS. 14:0

CHAPTER VII.

THE WASTE LANDS AND WASTE WATERS OF THE
UNITED KINGDOM.

Enormous Acreage of Waste Waters — Lake at Fontliill Towers —
Carp, Perch, Pike, Eels — Crosses tried at Taymouth — Large
Acreage of Waste Lands — What can they Produce ? — llabbits
find a Living on them — Potato Disease, Cattle Disease — Disease
among Game — Fish — Steam Cultivated Farms.

There has appeared in the Times, newspaper a
long discussion, originated, I believe, by Mr. Frank
Buckland, in regard to the enormous acreage of
water which lies neglected by the proprietors, and
returns not a fowl nor a fish for the general amuse-
ment or consumption of society.

Mr. Frank Buckland is right in liis lamentation
over this fact, but scarcely fair to the originator
of the idea he has adopted, in not stating from
whom he borrowed it. The subject was mooted
long ago in one of my works by me, and to some
readers Mr. Buckland's suggestion can be nothing
new. In the letters on this subject that liave

144 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

passed as alluded to, there is only one wliicli
deserves much notice, and it is that written by
Mr. Vere Fane Benett, of Pyt House, wherein he
states, that the club-headed carp he caught in his
ponds were utterly unfit for human food ; ' ' nor
could he even get their bodies removed as a
gift by the labouring poor."*

It would certainly not be advisable for any
labourer with a fjood appetite and not much time
ill his mouth for careful mastication, to be seated
with a pond carp, or any carjD, for dinner.

Conceive a carp of this description under cottage
hands for cooking, boiled with a bit of bacon
and some cabbage, perhaps, sent up in greasy,
thin gravy. The bacon would give it a savoury
smell, and if he, the hungry parent of a family,
persisted in eating the mess, two mouthfuls swal-
lowed without caution would do the Calcraft's
office, and choke him as sure as he was born.
Any rash man tvith an appetite, sitting down
to the bony fare of a carp, ought to have a
surgeon on one side and a parson on the other
to minister to his certain agony and probable

departure elsewhere. Like the cautious Scotch-
■■■ Mr. Beiiett has since taken some splendid carp from other pools.

WASTE LANDS AND WASTE WATERS. 145

man, who, wlien asked if a man for whom there
was an inquiry was ^' still there," gave for the
reply, — ^^No, that he was gone.''

^' Gone I where to ? " was the rejoinder of the querist.

^'I canna tak on myseP just to say whar he's
f/one to, but he 's dead,'- was the cautious conclusion
to the dialogue.

The only way in which we can account for all
old ponds, from time immemorial, to have been
stocked with that horrible fish, the carp, is, that
in days long gone, when there Avere more Roman
Catholics and less sea Jish, it was deemed necessary
to have something like a fish to put before the
poorer ecclesiastics or l^rethren, and perhaps to
eat a carp might have been deemed, and very
naturally so, a penance for sin. I doubt very much
if an abbot, or any soul who had anything else
to cat, ever touched that fish for sustenance. This
strange love of the carp has been handed down
to many unthinking Protestants of the j^rescnt
day ; for, with astonishment, I have had the
question of ^^Wliat fish were in the ponds I
saw?" answered with the unblushing assurance
that '' thei/ liad put carp into the ponds, but had
never seen them again."

VOL. II. . L

146 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

^^ Nor will you," I exclaimccl, ^Hill you let off
the water ; yon may occasionally catch a starved,
l^nll-headed, scaley ghost, that is not worth 'the
worm at one end of the line,' that the creature,
rudely called a fool, at the butt-end of the rod can-
not eat ; but as the carp stick their heads into the
mud to let the lead line of the net draw over them,
nothing can ever be made out regarding the contents
of tlie pond till you drain off the water, and ruin
every other fish there may be in it."

The best French cook in the history of kitchens,
though he may cover a carj) in a dish with sauce
of the most exquisite descrijition, cannot make
the flesh on the fish firm, nor can the bones in it
be reduced or removed sufficiently to avoid the
proximity of a suffocating death.

In the corrcsj)ondcnce I have previously noticed,
and wherein my friend, Mr. Vere Fane Benett,
alludes to great quantities of this horrible fish,*
I must observe that there is one use to which
these fish can be put, that thus regarding it, may
be made useful to the community, or to the poor

■^' He has since discovered much better carp, and sokl them well
in London to Jews who, being " unbelievers," disbelieved in bones,
and passed them . over as in duty bound.

WASTE LANDS AND WASTE WATERS. 147

distracted child, wliosc tottering ^^Constitution"
has so many blatant nurses offering different
remedies.

If Mr. Eenett, or any other of our landed gentry,
have large quantities of these, in all instances, far
overrated fish, let him order his teams, with the
leave of the surveyors, to collect the heaps of road
sand from the sides of the highways, and let him
make a heap as large as he likes, or sufficiently
large to overpower the smell of, and to absorlD
the quantity of carp. Let this heap be turned
over at given periods, and the carp thus amal-
gamated in its proportions, and as far as that heap
goes, he will have the finest manure possible. If
his lands are light, let some old thatches that
have chanced to he pulled off ricks or cottages,
be mixed in this heap also, simply to hold the
manure together, and then, I am sure, when Mr.
Benett, or any other large proprietor, sees in the
following spring the effect upon his crops, he will
wish for more carp for that purpose ^ for more carp
anywhere, in fact, than in a dish before him.

The most extraordinary sight in regard to

carp I ever saw, was in a still, liot day in the

summer of 1872, in the lake situated in the midst

L 2

148 FxVCT AGAINST FICTION.

of the lovely woods of Fontlilll Towers, one of the
seats of the Dowag'er Lady Westminster.

That is a lake, so to sj^eak, of considerable
dimensions, and, in places, of very considerable
de2)th ; indeed, in spots I am told that it is almost
nnfathomable. Besides its volume of still water,
it lia,^ its sunny shallows, witli a clear, clean, stony
bottom, and everything suitable to many kinds of
useful and delicious fish, were they but there.

I do not hesitate to say I have seen thousands
on tliousands of small carp, with thin bodies
and large lieads, basking on the top of the water
in hot, still days ; and I have seen them pretend
to be trout from very hunger, and rise at and take
any fly or moth that accidentally dipped on the
surface near them.

This wooded lake, so beautifully situated in
the Ijosom of mighty trees, is fed by very small
springs ; tliose that reach the eye are very
scanty, l}ut as the lake always keeps to the brim,
I think tliere must be a larger and natural
underground supply — a supply which no ^^soak "
from adjoining uplands could administer. Here is
a ivaste of water, so far as any valuable produce
is concerned, for that great, over-grown, and

WASTE LANDS AND WASTE WATERS. lid

now misused baby, the '' constitution" — a waste
of water, so far as the English appetite for food
is tliought of, but not wasted, in regard to the
splendid landscape, and the well kept-up wood-
land garden, or the enjoyment of the kind and hos-
pitable lady, who so generously and widely really
watches over the interest of the working-classes, for
slie does enjoy the beauties of her gifted domain.

Here is decidedly one of the lakes that does
not yield fish or fowl to the larder, but which
might yield both. I take this as an instance of
the theme under discussion, and I put the ques-
tion to myself of how this fine sheet of water
could be turned to more useful and enjoyable
purposes? The usual remedy, on all occasions
put in force for carp, cannot be resorted to, to
drain the depths of this lake — must not be
thought of: liow, then, are you to get out the pest
of carp, and to make room for other fish ? You
cannot sufficiently do this with nets, and, there-
fore;, there is no visible way, keej^ing an eye to
the maintenance of the water and beauty of the
woods, by which success can be obtained unless
you resort to two remedies which seem to me to
be possible — tlie one remedy to follow closely on
the other. I w^ould stupefy and take out the

loO FACT AGAINST FICTION.

carp, and this could be done without in any
Avay injuring the purity or healthiness of the
water, — at least, such is my present opinion, and
I have full belief in its success. The remedy to
be resorted to there is no need to dilate on, as
it is one that should be publicly referred to as
little as possible, though I am well aware that
a portion of this remedy for carp is known, and
that it has been and is often resorted to by the
thieves of fish, and that the fish — the common
white fish, chub, roach, and dace — thus taken,
have been and are sold for the table by thieves to
any customers who will buy them.

If, as I believe, the thousands of the larger
carp could thus be safely and profitably reduced,
into such a lake situated like the one referred
to, I would then put as many pike as by possi-
bilit}^ could be procured to keep down the carp fry
that would be perpetually struggling into existence.

The question may here be asked, if those
2)ike are thus encouraged and grow to an im-
mense size, as I am sure that in that lake they
would, what, then, is to l)econie of the feathered
inhahitants of tlic water proposed to be kept on
it, for the huge j^ike would destroy their young?

My re})]y to tliis is, tliat on a lake of deej)

WASTE LANDS AND ^YASTE WATERS. 151

water, witlioiit adjoining shallow swamp, Avarmed
in its masses by the sun, wild fowl could not
breed up their own young, on such an expanse
of cold, deep water, ''cramp" must kill them, but
their eggs, Avhenever the old birds laid them far
and near, could be carefully watched, and taken
and put under barn-door hens; the young reared
at a distance on the grass, like pheasants, and taken
down with their coops and old hens to the margin
of the lake when half-fledged and too old for any
sized pike to swallow.

There would be no objection, by way of
experiment, to turn into this lake some large
trout, if they could be got, with the pike. The
generality of the store pike would be small, and,
until the pike grew, the large trout, growing
also, would take care of themselves. But in that
lake I do not think that trout would breed, for
want of the necessary beds of sandy gravel and
insufficiency of running streams. Perch might
be put in also to any amount, and as many
large ones as could be procured. I am certain
perch would do there, and they would assist to
keep down the carp fry. Perch are the most
prolific breeders within my knoAvledge, and there

152 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

is thid following fact, and it in all my piscatory
experience lias forced itself upon me.

In large waters, lakes, or rivers, I have ever
caught the finest trout, and perch, and pike, when
the stock of fish has been of every sort and kind ; the
fact being that they subdue the too prolific progeny
of each other, and give the room and food required
for each to thrive and come to the best perfection.

In the lake to which I have thus particularly
referred as a water eaten up by carp, there are
eels ; but at present, with the exception of eels
and carp, I do not know that there are fish of
any other kind; and, of all lakes in the world,
the one at Fonthill Towers offers the finest field
for the experiments I have suggested.

In my visits and travels it is astonishing the
enormous tracts of water in the aggregate that I
have seen and known to be in the neglected and
useless state referred to, affording not a mouthful
of food to tlie big, ill-used, over-dosed baby, the
'^ Constitution"; nor a delicacy, nor a fowl of any
kind to the proprietor s table, nor to his amuse^
nient with the rod or gun.

This dearth in amusement and utility extends j
more or less, in certain sites, over the United King-

WASTE LANDS AND WASTE WATERS. 153

dom; but in Scotland tliere is a speciality and a
Avaste of that excellent fish the eel, for thousands on
thousands of tons of eels might be caught with
proper ^'stages" on the rivers, near their outlets
from the lakes, and, indeed, from their whole river
extent, whicli, whatever may be the Scottish dis-
taste for that excellent fish, would amply repay
the construction of the stages, and, in some places,
return a handsome income to the proprietor.

Proprietors seem to me to forget (they have
always forgotten) that railways noio put fish that
are taken in Scotland at once alive and fresh in
the London market, as well as in all the nuirkets
of all the towns in England ; and that for tlie
fish which in Scotland is shuddered at and despised
tliere is an immense demand, hitherto to an enor-
mous extent not half sup2:)lied, only to be made use
of and increased by a little attention and trouble.

Years ago, when on a visit to Taymouth, in
the late Marquis of Breadalbane's time, some
time before his deeply lamented death, I had sug-
gested to him the taking of the countless and
beautiful eels in his various lakes and rivers, and
transporting them at once by rail to the market
■which I knew full well could ])e liad, and he

154 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

tlioroughly entered into the idea. We had other
plans in regard to the crossing of bison coto with
the Scottish bull, which I am sure would have
answered admirably; the breed before I got to
Taymouth having been made the reverse way, and
through that mistake, the bisonic hump nearly cost
the life of the mother — a fact that a bailiff with two
ideas ought to have foreseen.

The offspring, however, of this erroneously
arrived at cross, came to the butcher, quicker and
fatter than any other beast of the pure breed.
We had also a project for ascertaining whether
the cross between the male capercailzie and the
greyhen were mules or merely hybrids. I sus23ected
that they were the latter, and would prove fecun-
dite, for capercailzie and black-game are essentially
^^ grouse," and I saw no reason why that cross
should not be a perfect success. We mooted also
a large cross uf the red deer in park and forest
— a fact that is wanted all over Scotland, for,
generally speaking, the red deer have terribly
deteriorated in size ; but all these curious, useful,
and interesting experiments were cut across by
tlie death of a nobleman, gentleman, friend, and
man, whose likeness I have nevei^ looked on again,

WASTE LANDS AND WASTE WATERS. 155

and do not expect to, were I to reach the ago of
a hiuidrcd years.

Well, then, in the United Kingdom there is cer-
tainly, and to all intents and purposes, ^' a waste
of water^'' that might be made advantageous and
pleasurable to its possessors; and Avhile they them-
selves got pleasure and income out of it, a vast
store of wholesome and delicious food might go
to fill out the pinafore of the restless baby, the
'' Constitution," some of whose pretended nurses
in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square are per-
petually sticking pins and needles into its pillows,
to make the uneasy bantling call out and cry to
them for their removal.

But if we agree to the position, and none of us
can help doing so, there does extend over tJte
United Kingdom a large watery extent that re-
turns neither food nor pleasure of any kind, save
as a bath, and that the stump-orators of Hyde
Park and Trafalgar Square, and other sects, always
avoid, what am I to say of the vast portion of
waste land which exists, like the water, with
very little amusement or food upon it, so loudh^
referred to by demagogues, as sites purposely
withheld by peers and large proprietors from

156 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

tlie growth of food for the people? It was
by the blatant stump men claimed as a visible
sin to be laid on an overbearing and cruel aristo-
cracy, who, while the ^^Constitution" was starving,
kept that wide extent of barren land for their
own immediate and selfish pleasure. This is a
grave charge, though made by vague minds, and
one worth a few moments' serious consideration.

Granted, then, in the first instance, that there
is a very considerable acreage at present put to
no available resources whatever, either as a site
for the production of the craving appetite of the
'^ Constitution," or for the pleasurable amusement
of the proprietors.

If a proprietor, or one of the much-abused aristo-
cracy, cannot derive any income out of these at
present unprofitable acres, surely, in the absence
of all derivable income, he has a perfect right to
get as much pleasure-profit out of this ^^ waste,"
so-called, as he can. But, alas ! so desolate and
poor are the acres and the soil, and subsoil, that —

" Far as the eye could reacli no tree was seen,
Earth clad in russet, scorn'd the lively green ;
No bird — except as bird of passage — flew.
No bee was heard to hum, no dove to coo ;
No streams, as amber smooth, as amber clear,
Were seen to glide or heard to murmur here."

WASTE LANDS AND WASTE WATERS. 157

111 iiuiny of these sites, air and exercise after
a snipe "or two — not the ^^ solitary snipe," for he
would be more worth the trouble — are the only
solaces to the cruel (so-called) and aristocratic
proprietors, who avail themselves of wliat the
^^stumjo" and Cockney orators call ^Hhe bloody
Game Laws," though those laws, in this instance,
afford scarce any blood at all. Fancy a large
landowner retaining a desert under his control for
one shot at, perhaj^s, a jack snipe !

Now I. would ask these stump men and ^'hest^^
abusers (I borrow this word, in this instance, from
my late friend, the ^^ O'Connell, " as the stump orators
l)orrow from liim the scmgninarij name they apphj
to the WJdgs, they could not liave invented
a strong word themselves) to point out to that
universal, and soon to be, if left to them, bandy-
legged bantling, the '' Constitution," what is to
be, or can l)e, done with the at present unprofit-
able land they allude to ? — what ought to be done
with it, what can be grown on it, and what
manner of produce from it is to fill the poor
bantling's stomach ?

I ought not to ask tliese restless men this ques-
tion before I have described to them the nature

158 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

of surface and subsoil as to which they speak,
because I venture to say they liave never seen it
nor tested it, and that they know very little of
rural affairs. To be sure they can know nothing"
of things they have never seen, so I am most
happy to give them that ^^bolt hole" for escape.

In many of these ^^ waste districts" thus claimed
as sinfully kept barren for the jDcrsonal joleasure of
the aristocracy, and to starve the '' Constitution,"
the land lies thus.

There is a scanty growth of poor heather upon
it, drawing its nourishment from a slight covering of
its own decayed roots, those roots lying on a white,
glassy sand and white flinty gravel on the surface
soil.

I think I hear some of these self-constitutional
nurses (Heaven save the mark!) exclaim, ^^ Oh, aye,
but v/liat about the suhsoilV^ Of course they have
parroted that word from some market-gardener's
discourse over a pipe of tobacco, through the
fumes of which he quietly derides his questioners.

The subsoil on many of these sites, as examined
by me, has l)een white, glassy sand and flinty
gravel, and, perhaps, beneath that an iron pan
holding unprolific water.

WASTE LANDS AND WASTE WATERS. 159

^^Well, then," exclaim these markct-garclener-
taug'lit professors, ^^ break tlirough the pan, and
tlien voii will come to productive soil." Not so,
for beneath the pan, of whatever kind that pan may
bo, there often is a worse sand and gravelly flintago
than there was above in the siiperstructm-e, for
luiderneath the pan the sand is quite white, and
shines in the sun like pulverized glass, and perhaps
below that a rock of stalwart stone or flints.

If these stump orators are really anxious to grow
food for the tottering ^^Constitution," whose detri-
mental limbs they themselves assuredly represent,
why do they not take to agriculture ? I will pledge
myself to the assurance that they can have large
farms of these so-called ^^ waste lands" at a very
moderate rent, giving good security for their tenure
of course, on which to try to grow anything they
like. They will find it a healthful recreation, with
as much air and exercise as they can desire, and,
iDOsides, it will relieve them from the unpleasant
charge of being ^' vox et prceterea nihil,^^ or likened
in an unsavoury simile to a young crow, the mean-
ing of which reference I leave to their more
profound judgment and self-application.

If we cannot let these impossible-to-be-cultivated

IGO FACT AGAINST FICTION.

lands to a tenant-farmerj or grow anything on
them ourselves but a jack-snipe, wliat truth or
justice is there in charging the landowners with
a cruel privation upon the starving poor? The
poor, indeed ! Why the poor are really put in
want by ^'unions" and ^^strikes/' both of which
are advocated by tliese evil and selfish-purposed
orators, wlio stump it now in every direction, and
do incalculable mischief.

If in England we cannot let certain districts,
wliy are we not to preserve a jack-snipe, or wild
duck or hare, if these are the only products that
the land gives us ?

If in Scotland we cannot let our rocky moun-
tains for agricultural purposes, they will not carry
sheep, why not permit us to keep deer, and so
employ a vast proportion of the labouring poor in
the shape of gillies ? In Wales the same thing would
apply in some places ; so, if we cannot get income
and a supply of food for ourselves and the public,
who can really liave a jusfc quarrel witli us for getting
some pleasurable recreation, derived, too, from among
the l^urdcns ever attending on landed property?

Having thus looked into the real state of the
so-called ^^ neglected waste lands," let us now look

WASTE LANDS AND WASTE WATERS. 161

to what available source of })rofit for the owner,
and food for the labouring classes, could be got
out of them.

The only article of food that could be deduced
from them is the wholesome meat of rabbits, at
present so largely consumed by the labouring
classes in cities, towns, and country, and without
which food, at the present price at which the
farmer and the butcher sell their mutton, yeal,
and beef, they and their families must go tcithotit
any meat at all.

Now this is an incontrovertible fact, and one
well worth looking into for many reasons, as a
certain class of agricultural orators, if tlieii' speeches
deserve that name, essay to fix the name of ^' useless
vermin" on the rabbits — on the animal, in fact,
which supports millions of poor people, and
undersells tJie farmer !

There is, to my mind, a vast deal in this latter
fact as to prices of meat, and it is one that legis-
lators would do well not to forget when the
pretended or mistaken advocates of cheaper food
for the people try to take from them that by
which so many of them live, and which many

farmers dislike, because they knotv that but for
VOL. n. M

162 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

the rabbits tlio poorer classes would be driven
by starvation to the butcher instead of to the
poulterer or dealer in rabbits, or they must eke
out an existence on potatoes and bread.

Now, holding to the theme of the waste lands
which the revilers of all that is respectable put
forward, I grant that, at the present moment,
there is an enormous acreage of hitherto un-
productive land — unproductive of food, of pleasure,
or of profit that might be turned into sites for
warrens^ and by the sites inillions of i)ounds of
delicate and wholesome meat might thus be added
and made cheaply available to the poor. The skins
of rabbits pay well, the meat from the rabbits can
always be sold at a remunerative though at a cheaj)
price ; and then the paunches of the rabbit can
be made to do, — as to my certain knowledge they
are at this moment made to do in parts of Ireland,
— they will keep a poor man's j)ig till he is " top^Dcd
up " witli a little meal for fattening. There are
districts in Ireland where the labouring classes
are glad to kill the rabbits for a proprietor, in
instances where they have increased too nnicli,
and tlie proprietor cannot spare the time of other
servants to do it; the reward of these labourers

WASTE LANDS AND WASTE WATERS. 1G3

for doing tliis being no more than tlie gift to
tlieni of tlie paunclies of the rabbits killed. The
rabbit, according to liis size, is as useful as the
sheep, and, size considered, can be bought at a
much cheaper rate than the farmer or butcher
demands for mutton.

Well, then, let the proprietors of these so-called
^Svaste or useless lands" grow on them food for
the people.* The turning waste lands into rabbit
warrens is not expensive, for a mere bank, properly
constructed^ will keep the rabbits within the re-
quired bounds. Rabbits will live and get fat
where nothing else could similarly exist ; and
here then I suggest a means of adding to the waist
or ^^ waist-belt" of that knocked-about baby, the
" Constitution."

The late political Gamps, the v^^orst nurses that
ever pretended to watch over and guard a ^^Con-
stitution,"— the Constitution, that blessed babe of
three fathers, the offspring of a ^' Co.," — have
destroyed many of the well-aired churches which

* If any one doubts the immense quantity of food afforded to
the labouring classes in the shape of rabbits, in town and country,
let him satisfy himself by calling at the poulterers' shops in his
vicinity, and thus ascertain the number of rabbits that each shop
annually sells.

m2

16-i FACT AGAINST FICTlOX.

used to shelter the babe in prayer and good
behaviour, and surely now they should aid us,
by all just means in their power, and of course
without hurting themselves upon tlieir own waste
lands, if they have any, in producing more food
for the community.

Many a noble duke and peer of my acquaintance
would be only too happy to get tenants — re-
sponsible tenants, of course, — for tlieir waste lands ;
but tenants are not to be found who will under-
take a too visible failure, and it would be insanity
for even stump-orators to urge that the proprietors
themselves should attempt to cultivate their wastes,
when the said proprietors had ascertained that no
useful product except rabbits could be induced
to grow.

There is another fact that men in their walk
through life should have noticed before theij attempt
to say what lands could or could not be made to
do. There is scarce an extensive heath in England
but that a searching eye can discover on parts
of it the remains of ridge and furrow. Therefore,
some predecessors had attempted cultivation on
that spot, and found that it would yield notliing I
Depend upon it; in other times of experimental

WASTE LANDS AND WASTE WATERS. 165

liusbancliyj if those lieaths, thus once ploughed
up, could have been turned to useful and remu-
nerative purposes, they would not now have
been permitted to go back to heather and remain
abandoned.

Alas ! in my opinion, the present generation
liave taxed the temper of the earth and of nature
far too much. So much have they over-taxed the
soil and ^^ quacked" it, that Nature now seems
to be kicking against this grasping tyranny, and
hurling at the attempts of assuming man all sorts
of diseases unknown to this country until the
introduction of artificial manure. The potato
disease came on the j^ear after the artificial
manure came in. This, as before mentioned, has
been succeeded by the foot-and-mouth disease in
cattle, and, according to Lord Eadnor's statement,
it has attacked his hounds.

Since the introduction of this dram-like stuff, —
for, as far as the interests of land are really
concerned, it is but a ^' flash in the pan,"— the
featliered game all over the country, particularly
the partridge, have been gradually decreasing.
I believe my friend Mr. Sturt, of Crichel, has
noticed this on his beautiful partridge ground for

IGG FACT AGAINST FICTION.

many successive seasons^ aud tlie pheasants in
many places too have been wasting away.

Now — in the autmim of 1872 — there was some
disease which none of us ever knew before, utterly
devastating the ground of hares ; and the same,
but not to so great an extent, with the much-
abused rabbit.

Disease, or the same kind of malady, had
ascended, — by contagious properties, I suppose, in
the air, — to tlie ptarmigan on the highest moun-
tains of Scotland, and had devastated the black-
game and grouse on the hills and lower level.
Turkey's on the farms in some places had
sickened with it ; and with chickens the e])i-
demic terminated in the most fatal case, of the
gapes.

Those partridges that I ventured to kill
merely for the table in my own manor, though
to the liand in good condition, when picked were
black in the skin, and when roasted for the table,
under the hands of a good and careful cook,
were as black as tliey looked to be when merely
divested of their feathers. So hlacJc did they
loolv, tliougli in some instances 2:)lump, that I
forbade tlieir l^eing served at table any more

WASTE LANDS AND WASTE WATERS. 167

and on my manor refrained from partridgc-sliooting
for the season.

If I were to continue to write on these signs
of fiiiling times, I would still reiterate to all landed
proprietors not to permit the strmo to he sold off
their farms, as has been done under a pledge
from the tenant to purchase and use so much
artificial manure, in place of the straw sold away.
Though there may be, and to my certain know-
ledge there are, many most honourable men
among the yeomen farmers, still tliere may be
some who might, for the certain good sold away,
the j)roceeds of which were in the vendor's pocket,
lay out so7ne money in a stipulated quantity of
inferior stuff', for the best worth of artificial
manure can be lessened or adulterated to almost
nothing.

I see the mischief of this mistaken course in
farmyard produce and artificial stuff. I see it
ir. the amount of grain, and more particularly in
the straw. If, with the aid of dishonest farming,
— dishonest and unfair to the land and to the
landlord, and really to the farmer himself,
combined with the frightful diseases with
which we are assailed, — a famine, or something

168 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

like one, does not visit the land, I am much mis-
taken.

Distracted, dismiited, disestablished as men and
religions have been and are, — truckled to as crime
is, and bold as sectarianism has become, what Avith
bad government, bad farming, worse speaking, and
foreign, plague-like poisonous introductions, which
Nature — hitherto dear, prolific, and patient Nature
— now seems violently to repudiate, — I hold the
United Kingdom to be far from happy, and, indeed,
in a dangerous state, out of which it is very difficult
for the wisest statesman who has since come to the
reins of office to see his way.

To return once more to the food that might be
grown in the waste waters. I see, in one of the
letters published, that the dace is classed as a
fish of the same indifferent quality as the roach.
Now, the dace is freer from bones than the roach,
and a much better flavoured fish. The gudgeon
ranks as the freshwater smelt, and the snig is the
most delicious of eels — an eel, in fact, in its
best season. Chub are much about the same in
bones and flavour as the carp, but the chub is
not what Ls called ^^ muddy." The bream is a
very good fish when in season, and the bony back

WASTE LANDS AND WASTE WATERS. 169

can bo avoided by eating only the sides, wliicli
are very good indeed. Perch, trout, and greyling
there can be no dispute about ; and pike the same,
when you know how to dress them.

We then come to an excellent fish, of which
tliere are millions in some rivers — the lamperne.
They abound in the Avon, near Christchurch, and
they are found in the sister river, the Stour ; but
in that locality these fish, which are prized by us
in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, on the banks
of the Severn, as the greatest delicacy when
stewed, all but its salmon and shad, are, when
caught in Hampshire, thrown away. In Hampshire
they are vulgarly called the nine-eyed eel, and
people will not eat them. In London, Avhen I
rented a fishery on the Avon, at Winkton, I could
get no sale for them, so I caught large quantities,
and what I did not use at table I turned into manure
for the garden and the vines. The lamprey —
larger and much more rare than the lamperne — is
a most wholesome and delicious fish, but if the
great baby, the ^' Constitution," has no stomach
for them, what are his nurses to do ?

I see that we are invited, through the public
press, to visit ''the steam-cultivated farms of

170 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

Messrs. Howard, near tlie town of Bedford." To
meet the strikes now going on among the agri-
oultural population, I would implore all people
to do the work that is so wrongfully thrown on
their liands, if possible, by machinery. Some
great effort will he made to achieve this, if these
foolish strikes continue, and thoroughly rejoiced
should I be to see the strikers met thus by an
enemy of their own creation.

SCIENCE OF THE WILDS, POETRY OF SPORT. 171

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SCIENCE OF THE WILDS, AND THE POETRY OF

SPORT.

Presentiment of Impending Evil Manifested by Animals — One
Object of this Work to Win Better Care for tlie Brute Creation
— Three Cheers for the Prussians — Wounded Wild Ducks —
The Gunner not the Sportsman — The true Sportsman finds
Inexhaustible Beauty and Interest in Nature — Wheatears —
Instant Recognition of the Distant Hawk by Birds — Anecdote
of a Lurcher and her Whelps — Lessons to be Learned from the
Book of Nature.

In the matter under the above head, it will be my
endeavour simply to deal, in as plain a narrative as
possible, miencmnbered by theories, and void of all
assmnption, save where subsequent realities tread
so closely on things that have undoubtedly gone
before, that an inevitable conclusion awaits upon
the simple facts disclosed.

In a former work of mine, to which I have pre-
viously alluded, ^ Tales of Life and Death,' I had
endeavoured to show how much more strange and

172 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

wonderful truth was than any fiction that could
be composed for the purpose of creating '' sensa-
tion." In those tales, instances were given of the
mysterious link which occasionally manifests itself
as between man, animal, and bird, rendering their
lives, to some extent, when least they seem to have
anything to do with each other, as curiously and
circumstantially conjoined. That narrative of facts
thus far has shown liow", at times, some omnipotent
will ordains, that when all the ingenuity of the
most cunning and experienced men, detectives and
others, have failed to bring the hideous crime of
murder liome to the guilty hand, some dog or bird,
some beast, or an ^^ eagle," as referred to in the
tale of ' Tlie Colleen Rhue,' appears on the scene
on heavenward wings, points out the murderer,
and even soars, a speck in the immeasurable vault
above, as if to witness the execution.

There cannot be the smallest doubt but that
the human race, tliough in occasionally rare in-
stances, have felt upon their souls an unaccountable
depression, prophesying approaching misfortune or
death. No more doubt is there also than that the
same occult feeling of pending misery has as fre-
quently overshadowed the mind of the sagacious

SCIENCE OF THE WILDS, POETRY OF SPOUT. 173

and faithful dog. I have seen it three times in dogs
in my own possession : of those, the case of my
retriever Diver was the most recent as Avell as the
most remarkable. Early in the morning of his
accidental death by my hand and gun, he got
loose from the house where he was chained on the
hiwn, close to the front door ; was seen to pass
round by the back door (the front door had always
been free to him when at large, but he did not in
this instance come near it), thence he left home,
and subsequently was reported as lying in the grass
by the side of the high road, near some men mend-
ing the road, whom at any other time he would
have avoided or bitten. Thence he was re-called
by the gamekeeper, and, returning with him, seemed
for a moment as willing to serve and as affectionate
to me as ever, and, as usual, on the sight of the
shooting party, ready to do his duty. He did his
work that day as well as usual, save that at periods
of the morning he seemed dull, which I attributed,
at the time, to some slight lameness or passing
indisposition. In the afternoon he sprang too
quickly from my lieels as I fired the second barrel
over a bank ; the charge caught him on the extreme
l^ack of the skull^ and killed liim on tlic spot.

174: FACT AGAINST FICTION.

Be it remembered J that that dear and faithful
dog had never wandered from his home before that
morning, and that if ever he escaped his collar and
got loose, his invariable custom was to come to
look for me at the front door. In this instance he
left his long-cherished home, and hid himself in
an unwonted place, and near distasteful company,
evidently in some inexplicable fear of impending
death.

It is not ]iow my intention to enumerate all the
instances I have seen in beasts, and birds occa-
sionally— but more rarely in birds — indicating a
connecting link between what is rather arrogantly
termed the inferior mind, and the asserted supe-
riority of human reason. It will, I hope, suffice to
show that I have a better foundation for what some
people iiwi/ call my ^' theories," than that most
amusingly clever, but in many ways erratic reasoner,
Mr. Darwin has, when he tells his talc of tailless
growth, and claims a jelly-fisli as the ^re-Adamite
parent of tlie apple-tempted joair.

One of my great objects in this work, if liot the
greatest, is to win for horses, hounds, dogs, and
even every other innoxious beast and bird, a better
care from man, and to teach man that by restraint of

SCIENCE OF THE WILDS, POETRY OF SPORT. 175

Jtl^ own temper, more gentleness and greater limiia-
nity, w4iicli costs him nothing, lie himself may be a
great gainer by not only rendering the creatm^es
that belong to him, or are placed in his care, in-
finitely more valuable in the market, but, by gentle-
ness and good usage, he may win from them far
more and better service than can be brought out
by harsh, unappreciating, and foolish conduct. For
his own sake, man should be kind and gentle to
all things under him — things that can only implore
by their speaking eyes and humbleness of action.
When opposed in fight personally man to man, or
assailing marauding beasts, such as a lion, tiger,
boar, or wild bull at bay, then man, in liis unyield-
ing animosity, may be as resolutely combative as
he likes, for ever remembering that ivitJt- coiKjueat
pitij should ever come hand to hand.

For myself, save when in following up my game
of sport in whatsoever form it may consist, with
that, perhaps, thoughtless zeal to which the hunter
and the shooter are so prone, if with the gun I
wound a harmless creature, my first idea is to spare
its life, and to take it home, to cure and tame it.
With the combat or the chase should end all harsher
feeliiifj ; and under tlie blessing of a sensation akin

176 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

to pity sucli as this, I have frequently added to
the numbers of pets who feed from and out of
my hands — creatures who, in their earlier lives,
regarded the human race as paramount beasts of
cruelty and objects for terror.

While on this topic, a strange fact has been illus-
trated in my decoy for wild fowl in the month
of November. After the first shooting day (mine
at present is a decoy for shooting ^ not for netting) ^
in which five guns obtained in single overhead shots
one hundred and seventeen head of duck, besides
teal and widgeon, and three snijDcs, — of course some
others were wounded and lost, — we shot the various
pools on the moors, never disturbing, nor attemjDt-
ing to disturb, the fowl massed thickly enough in
a pool which is never disturbed, and in which it
is my delight to feed the birds myself

Apparently, the flocks who were driven over
the guns at '^ the gazes" were very wild, and
at last so wary that they kept flying round and
round their haunts, high enough to be out of reach
of any gun or charge. I then went to my favourite
pool, called on the birds there, as I had done
all through the French Avar, for ^^ three cheers for
the Prussians," which they immediately gavCj and

SCIENCE OF THE WILDS, POETKY OF SPOKT. 177

ill passing from that valley to another not yet
disturbed, fed the fowl as usual, observing that
all my immediate 2)ets, as far as I could disceni,
were safe.

On the following day, when feeding the safety
pool, my eyes were oiieUj in case of a wounded
bird, when among the ^^ruck" of fowl, say about
two hundred in number, I observed three who,
though anxious to come to my foot, did not look
happy, and at the same time were much disinclined
to be pushed about in a scramble for the corn by
their fellows. Two of these were wild ducks with
broken wings only ; the third was a mallard with
a wing badly broken close to the body, and also
stricken in the breast by one or more shots. He
came at once to my hand, and there being no
chance of saving his life, I picked him ujo, feeling
like a culprit for doing so, as he had crejot to
my foot in confidence for foOd and comfort in his
distress. The other two ducks seemed only to
have broken wings, so they fed, and on the next
day were joined by a third wild duck, disabled
also in the wing. These three birds survived and
recovered of their wounds.

I state this fact to show that even when joined

VOL. II. N

178 FACT AGAINST riCTION.

to wilder companions, and subject to errant flights,
the remembrance of one kind hand, food, and
shelter, will be present to tlie recollection of a bird
when the hands and gmis of others have scared
and wounded, even to a broken limb. There
is a little seat by this jDond, on which three
wild ducks will jump up and sit beside
me, while dozens of their fellows come be-
tween my feet and feed, and, inserting their
necks into the bags of corn, greedily swallow
the contents.

It seems to me tliat in all field sports, to render
them doubly interesting and variedly beautiful,
there should be, to the mind's eye, a combination
of events, all adduced by, as it were, the great
chess-board of Nature thus laid bare for observation.
Yet many there are who think, when out on tlie
moors, of nothing but the grouse and tlieir gun.
When after partridges, they only see the stubble-
fields, turnips, or potatoes, grasp their guns, and
hear, alas ! to me, the wretched and mistaken
noise of an army of beating feet, tramping, to
startle to the wing the bcwihlcred birds. The
gunner on tlie moors must shoot to dogs, but tlie
^^ranuin^i'" of and the use of those doors he leaves

SCIENCE OF THE WILDS, POETRY OF SPORT. 170

to the keeper. He looks at them only Avhen they
point; and let their hehavioiir be good or bad,
to use the old, and, in its first instance, misapplied
saying, he has not a word — a kind word, '' to
throw to a dog."

Pie, this' mere gmmer absorbed in his gun and
grouse, sees not the loveliness of the scene he
wanders over. He takes no heed of the sur-
rounding beauty of nature, the blooming blush
of her honey-bearing heather reflected back as
caught from the mountain brow by the still
waters of the placid lake stretched in the vale
below ; nor does he care for the painstaking,
mysteriously-gifted, and carefully-educated dog,
who laljours the day throughout, not to find any-
thing that he (in this instance the dog, not the man)
can eat, Ijut with an unselfish unweariness which
never tires tlie setter or pointer, labours only
to please the gun-man and to give him delicacies
for his table. Of course I speak of the gunner,
I can't call Iiim a sportsman, of the present day.
There are some men still in existence, and perhaj)s
a few young men coming on, who love tlie poetry
of sport; but very few are they wlien com-
pared to the headache gaining gunners of mere

N

91

180 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

slaiigliterors wlio now infest the moor, the stubble,
and the cover.

AVho, when jDartridge-shooting, noio thinks of
the setter or pointer, those gTaceful and grateful
companions of the leisure hour? What gunner
now cares to pause to snatch a momentary
glance at the yellow stubble, the ripened shocks
of corn, or the bright green of the fresh and
healthily-scented turnips ? The pigeon-educated
gunner cares only for the smoke, noise and
death, and puts his trust in the tramping
men in line to put up the partridges under
his feet; or if it is in a country where the
red-legged partridge abounds, the gunner seats
himself under a hedge, pipe in mouth, to have
the birds driven to him.

There is no poetry in this — to me there is
little enjoyment; but, in my opinion, 'Hhe drive"
is infinitely preferable to the tramping up birds
in line.

To me, on moor, on farm, or in the wood, it
is most delightful to have time to pause, and, so
to speak, to worship the beauties that surround
me. Wliat can be more delicious than on a fine
October day, when alone, and wandering for

SCIENCE OF THE WlLDS^ rOETRY OF SrORT. 181

a pheasant or two, a wood pigeon, a hare, or
rabbit, to call in the obedient and loving spaniel, —
I detest the nietaplior of '^the fawning dog," —
and to bid him and the retriever to sit by my
side, and to. be quiet in their search for death.
Then, dm^ing this temporary rest, to see the
varied hues on the boughs of the forest trees,
to inhale the sweet scent of the earliest withering
leaves, and to feel that art lies still, and all else
lives to praise creation, and to bless the strange,
unexplained, and still promisingly mysterious
power, that in some hours of a happy life makes
mere existence quite a mortal heaven.

What man of any observation is there that has
not observed and wondered at the universal
mind exhibited from the largest animal, the
elephant, down to the smallest ant; if reason —
if instinct, still it is mind; and we trace the
pervading gift as possessed by everything in
life, station, clime, and habits, obedient to a
providential will, that prompts the obtaining of
food, and teaches the needful attention and care
to guard against the dangers of the life into which
each living being is called.

Strange things meet the eyes of the naturalist

182

FACT AGAINST FICTION.

and s23ortsman; there cannot be a good and
successful s2)ortsman unless he is fully acquainted
with tlic habits of the creature he pursues. Some
rules it is impossible for the most studious
naturalist to compreliend, and the little and most
delicious bird, the wheatear, affords us one of
them. To follow the example of Darwin (not
a good one) to account for the nervous state of
terror in a wheatear at a passing cloud, wliichj
when sailing in the atmosphere above him, induces
the bird to seek shelter in the nearest hole, w^ould
lead a theorist to suppose that in former years,
when two-legged beasts of prey w^erc fewer, and
eagles and rajjacious foes were many, these pretty,
graceful, little birds had been inveterately pur-
sured by Avinged tyrants even to the death, and
then, from a habit of living in terror of some
flying monster, the nervousness had been handed
down by '^sexual selection" to the birds of the
Sussex Downs. The shepherds on the Downs
are so aware of tliis nature in tlie bird, that tliey
raise a turf on the short greensward^ Avhich,
without artificial means, affords no shelter, to
entice the wheatear to seek it, when in terror,
from a passing cloud, or from a more real cnemyj

SCIKXCE OF Tin: WILDSj rOETKY OF SPOKT. 18o

a liawk, and thus tlicy snare thorn with a horse-
hair noose for the gourmands of Brighton, or any
other neighbouring town.

What can be more curious than the knowledge
which wild fowl, teal, and ducks sliow of a mere
speck approaching from the distant horizon ? Be-
" fore the eye of man has power to ascertain the
nature of the approaching bird, tlie wi-ld fowl are
well aware of tlie foe and his predatory habits.
They at once distinguish, when not a hue of
feather can be seen, between the falcon and the
kite or buzzard-hawk, and act accordingly to their
never-failing perception. If it is a falcon that is
approaching, they sit still on the Avater, or creep
beneath the banks or overhanging willows, because
they know the noble falcon will seldom ^^take"
but on wing. If it is a buzzard or kite, they
take to their own wings, because they know, from
the slow flight of the for, as well as from his
inclination to '^pick up," that the use of their
swifter wings gives them the best chance for safety.
Even the flocks of starlings which roost in my
laurels around the house, to the great detriment
of shrubs and the annoyance of pheasants, afford
me a lesson j for by tlicir bearing and flight I know

184 IWCT AGAINST FK.'TIOX.

if that very destructive vermin to game, the
spaiTowhawk, is on my premises or not. The
hawkj aware of tlic many starlings that come
into roost, with a quick and noiseless flight slides
beneath all boughs, and suddenly ascends to
the laurels or ever-green oak, and sits as still
as the bough he is on till some restless and
chattering starling gets within his reach. The
starlings, however, very soon get aroused to
tlieir danger, and they keep a watch after they
come in, to see what becomes of the liawdc, and
by the precaution they adopt they l)ring me as
an able ally, with my gun, to tlieir assistance.
If it is time for the starlings to be cliattering to
each other in tlieir selected bushes for roost, and
silence reigns, and they are not there, then they
have, by their vigil, been made aware of the pre-
sence of the hawk, and, mounting liigli in air, they
keejD soaring around in flocks, watching for the
hawk to take his departure.

It is, of course, impossible to say in which
direction the hawk will go, when he has to seek
his own roost, so that in aid of the starlings, or
rather to be rid of a bad vermin, myself and my
men can only post ourselves at a venture, many

SCIEXCE OF THE WILDS, rOi:TRY OF SPOIiT. 185

times uiLsuccessfully, but at times we succeed in
slaying the depredator.

There was a white oayI that used to come by
night into the bushes after the starlings, and for
a time met with Avonderful sport, for his bag of
birds was occasionally so large that he lias brought
in and left in a cow-shed, where he never roosted,
as many as seven starlings. I liked the owl better
than the starlino-s ; but his nocturnal visitations
were attended with so much fluttering and noise
among the birds, that tlie retriever, in his house
on the lawn, Avas perpetually barking at what he
supposed was mischief, and arousing me.

One anecdote as to the beautiful affection of a
lurcher to her whelps, and then to other matters.
Had I been aware of this fact in time, there is,
or was, a chance of my saddling myself with a
colony of lurchers for life, for I must have loved
the dam and all her litter.^

One morning, at day-break, one of the keepers
found the lurcher caught by the foredeg in a
severe steel trap. While in that })Osition she had
given birth to a litter of puppies, if I recollect
rightly, five in number, two dead and tln-ee alivCi
With the poor little paw left at liberty she had

18G FACT AGAINST FICTION.

scratcliecl for herself and lier puppies a sort of
bed of earth and grass, and, as fiir as the trap
Avoukl let her do so, in the cold winter's night
and morning, forgetful of her own pain, she had
curled herself round her puppies to keep them
w^arin. The fact Avas reported to me — I, luckily,
saw nothing of it; mother and puppies were re-
moved, and I Lelievc that an excitement to haste
in this matter arose among my men, from a know-
ledge possessed by them that, lurcher or no
lurcher, had the natural affection of the creature
existing under such difficulties been known to
me, not a hair of herself or her puppies would
have been injured. On the 3'ounger portion of
my readers, then, I would most sedulously endea-
vour to impress that it is possible, in som'e degree,
to refine the roughest amusement ; gold can be
made to shine even in addition to its lustre,
and the lily delicately treated, though not ab-
solutely ^'painted," will raise her pure head and
look UKjre lovely, ere, alas ! like other things, she
fades away. Passion of every sort, even the intensity
of love, should be governed by a spell that held
all else but affection in a bondage irreproachable,
and l)ound every thought of man to the interests

SCIEXCE OF THE WILDS, rOETP.Y OF SrORT.

187

of the loved one in stronger ties, far, far beyond
those inculcated 1)y mere nature. Pity, com-
passion, generosity, and forgiveness of attempted
ill, should adorn the successful hero, let him kill
or conquer what he ma}'. Those feelings should
rule in the battle-fields of armies, in arms — yes,
in arms of every sort; for, if possible, man should
never be over-exalted by any success, nor lose his
wits as drunkards do from passing intoxication,
which, while it lasted, brutiiied even the beast,
and banished the remembrance of every just and
generous refinement.

For myself, I am arrived at that time of life
when summer brings me more enjoyment than
winter. The return of spring, wdtli its tuneful and
joyous minstrelsy, its budding boughs, its prim-
rose, violet, and scented air, though rudely checked
by cold as our springs now are, brings to me
many memories of happy ^ hours ; and deprived
of the glorious steed, as I have been for so long,
perhaps that has helped to turn me to seek a
quieter field for sylvan recreation. If the loss of
my horses has brought or assisted to briiig this
about, the gun and rifle have never left my hand
yet; still, at tlie present time^ I love more to rear

188 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

by I land the rising covey, and to sec tlio wild
duck and the pheasant bring out their young,
than to pull the fatal trigger. To watch a happy
bison calf now in the far West frisking round its
cow, w^ould j^lease me more than the chase and
combat with the bison bull ; and yet, as to strength
and activity, I cannot detect much failing, though
the close of a sportsman's life cannot be far off.
Of this I am perfectly sure, that year by year,
almost hour by hour, the great book of nature
yields fresh mysteries to the seeking mind, that
seem to have been unaccountably passed over;
perhaps in turning the 2)ages the leaves may have
adhered together, and thus the information has
been lost. If succeeding men, then, really wish to
find the truth, if they would divest ancient lore
of the tricks of the only men who had the power
to hand it down, as what they pleased, or served
the priestly purpose, let them seek the rock-bound
testimony braced in the bosom of the earth, sealed
under the ini])erishable pen of departed worlds :
a remaining record of the life that oiice rejoiced
in the same sun that Avarms us now. In these
terribly tenacious truths the assertions of priests
have nu part; tliere is iiotliing there that even

SCIENCE OF THE WILDS, POETUY OF SPORT. 189

points to Adam or to one great deluo'e, nor
that reveals a vestige of fossilized man. The
longer we live, the wider the boasted good
of education, and the much-lauded increase of
civilization and learning, tlie more schism and
dissent and discontent increase, till where there
was one seceder from what was once called ^' the
established faith," dissent now numbers many
thousands. The schoolmaster has certainly been
abroad, l3ut he is all abroad now, for his teacli-
ing has taught hypocrisy, and, with a certain
class, utter contempt for the oath sworn on
what used to be called the Holy Bible. As a
county magistrate, I am most reluctantly forced
to confess that the working-classes, generally, — that
is, the lowest class of labouring men and women,
— set no more store by an oath, when they wish
to prove an aliJji for a friend in trouble, than they
do by the sighing of an idle wind.

190 FACT AGAINST FICTION,

CHAPTER IX.

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL.

Two Kinds of Decoy— Description of tlie Ancient Decoy, for
Taking — Decoys at Berkeley Castle — Birds do not distinguish
Friend from Foe by Scent — Their Keen Discrimination of
Sound — Modern Decoy for the L'se of the Gun — Decoys at
Alderney Manor — Ducks Taught to Obey the Word of Command
— Method of Forming and Sheltering the Decoy Ponds — Bearing
from Wild Ducks' Eggs — How to Proceed with the Old and the
Young Birds — Curious Incident — Decoy Ducks — Attachment
to Place — Feeding — Friendsliip with Birds — My Friend the
Black Cock — Wire-Fenced Pool for Teal — Extermination of
House Bats — Creatures most Destructive to Wild Fowl — Poison
should Never be L^sed.

The decoy, tlioiigli in former times an appendage
to most large domains, lias been for many years
almost entirely neglected, save in some few comities,
where it has still been retained or flirmed for the
supply of the public market. Wander where you
will over most of the English counties, you
frequently stumble on the remaining marks of
an ancient decoy, the same as you do on the

DECOYS roil WILD FOWL. 191

little mound denoting the spot of the vilhigo
cock-pit.

There are two sorts of decoys; the ancient,
and by far the most profitable in a pecuniary
point of view, and for which a protective law by
tlie l^egislature was j^rovided and is still unrepealed,
is that for the ^Haking " of wild fowl; the more
modern decoy pool, or, properly speaking, pools, is
simply a breadth of water kept quiet and provided
with pinioned decoy birds, for the purpose of
collecting fowd sufficient for the 1)ag to be made
by the gan.

The decoy for faJcinr/ fowl is the first to which I
will invite the reader's attention.

In the olden time these decoys generall}^ con-
sisted of an artifi(3ial piece of water, from one to
two acres in extent, square in shape, with four
pipes leading from the four corners, to suit, as the
old boys used to say, the four different points
of the wind, as it Avas a supposed matter of neces-
sity for the decoy man to keep down wind of the
ducks, lest they should '^ smell him out," and be
scared by their noses from the pool !

Some of the smaller decoys were made with
one, two, or three pij^es, according to the con-

193 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

venience of cost attending tliem ; but the full-sized
old decoy liad generally the four pipes, for the
reason I have stated.

The entrance to each pipe was commanded by
the broad water, so that the collected fowl should
be able to see the decoy dog, as he passed through
the several holes along the small bank, or sitting
that was made for that purpose within the fence
of the decoy. Each time that the dog came
through one of the lioles and went out again at
another, and so on, he got nearer to the entrance
of the net, and at last within or beneath the front
entrance to tlie pipe, when, if the ducks followed
him out of curiosity, or from an inclination
inherent in all birds to ^^ mob a vermin," the
deco3^man '' showed " behind them, through oblique
gaps made for the purpose in the screen of tlie
decoy, and by a suddenly created panic drove
the scared birds completely up the ^'pipe," till, by
the decrease of the hoops that supported the net,
tliey all fluttered in a helpless mass, one upon
the other, in a termination not much more
extensive at tlie end than a very large cabbage-
net. Extracted one by one at the end, their
necks were broken without the displacement of

Di:COYS FOR ^^'1LT) FOWL. 103

a fcatlicr. Tims duck and fowl, and every sort
of the connnon and lesser Avild fowl, as well as
tlie rarest kinds, were taken in any quantity.
I believe it is on record that one decoy in one
season, in Lincolnshire, captured as many as
fourteen thousand head.

No wonder, then, that in those blessed and
blissful days of more ducks than men, enactments
were made for their protection, and guns on
adjacent land to a decoy were forbidden to be fired.

It will be understood by the reader that the
entrance to the pipes commenced with very high
hoops to support the net, and that the water at
the entrance was the breadth of a small brook,
diminishing gradually both as to height of net
and breadth of water, until terminating in the
large cabbage-net — I use that expression to suit
the knowledge of my reader — into wdiicli the
scared fowl were ultimately driven.

All round, or all on one side, the broad Avater
of the decoy, there should be what is termed a
'^ sitting.". A sitting is a bank abutting on the
screen or felice of the decoy, and extending six
or eight feet from it to the edge of the water. It
should be raised above the level of the pool, say

VOL. II. o

104 TACT AGAlNSr FICTIO^T.

about six Inches, so that the fine level turf with
which the sitting sliould be covered, could be kept
jDcrfectly dry as well as smootli, and be easily
ascended to by the kixuriously inclined water-
fowl, who appreciate a dry warm place for their
feet when not upon the water, and they Avill not
haunt a decoy permanently unless this luxury
is provided.

The slanting ^^ shows," when the decoy man
suddenly lets himself be seen by those ducks who
follow the dog to the entrance of the pipe,
are so contrived bv the slant in the screen,
that the body of the fowl left on the pool
that have not followed the dog do not sec
the decoy man while he scares his intended
catch, and tlie further the frightened birds go
towards the end of the pipe, the more they are
out of sight and hearing, the curve of the pipe
taking them well distant at the back of the screen,
and out of all earshot of the broad water. Little
^^ gazes" are made in tlie screen of the decoy for
the man to look througli, to see what fowl he has
on the water ; these places are termed by some
decoy men ^^squinnie holes," derived, perhaps, from
'^squinting" through; and it is one of these

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL. 195

gazes wliicli enables tlie first man to see if
the fowl follow the clog to tlie pipe within taking
distance, and then, if they do, he makes a sign
to the man who works the dog, to '^show'^ behind
the fowl at the rio'ht moment. Sometimes the

a

ducks are sleepy and too idle to be decoyed;
sometimes, from some reason or other, they are
shy and too wary ; sometimes they are slack, and
come a little w^ay and pause. In the latter case,
the man at the squinnie hole makes a sign to
the man w^orking.the dog, and the dog is made
to repeat his first entrance before going on for
another, until the birds come on or decline to do
so altogether.

If no fresh fowl, or ^^ foreign flights," happen
to be on the pool at the time at which ^^a take"
is designed; those that are there may consist of
some of those ducks who have not gone in with
tlie rest far enough up the pij)e to be captured,
but who have had time to turn back in the face
of the man attempting to scare them. These ducks
may remember the dog as the cause of their
being frightened, and decline to follov/ him.

I remember one day returning from hunting

at Berkeley Castle by the ^^old decoy" (the then

o2

i06 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

existing Lord Fitzliardingo had two decoys in
full work), and we dismounted to see some ducks
taken. The usual Avell-trained little cur-dog was
shown through the accustomed holeSj but not a
duck would follow him, there being no strange
birds there, or, if there were a few, they were
so few that they w^ere kept back by the wary
flock, and failed to come on. Having a fox's
brush in my pocket, I tied it to the cur-dog's
tail, and put him through again. This appendage
was a novelty to the birds — a novelty there, but a
sight they were, no doubt, well acquainted with
elsewhere, for the Vale of Berkeley was full
of foxes, and all the ducks without further hesita-
tion came after the fox's brush up to the pipe,
and we made a very good caj^ture. To do the
thing well by these '^ taking deco}^s," the fowl
should be regularly fed with barley; the corn
put in every night while the ducks were out.
In times of hard frost, the ice on the pool should
always be broken some little time before daylight,
time enougli to complete the w^ork Avell before
a symptom of the dawn, so as to receive the
ducks on their return, and then, when the fowl
arc in any quantity, they will keep the water

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL. 197

sufficiently open to tlieir selection and use all
day.

There is an expression very commonly used,
it consists in the word ^^ decoy-duck." I believe
such birds so-called were used by the ancients
in decoys, because I have found birds so called
kept by some old decoy men in the present day ;
but in the decoy for taking ducks there should
he no decoy hircl, nor half-tame birds whatever.
It is best to be without them. In the olden time,
men were not so wise in some things as they are
now, though in many they might be infinitely
more jolly than they are at present; and they
used to attribute to ducks less sense or cunning
than they really possessed, and more natural gifts
than Nature ever gave them. Thus they attributed
to waterfowl the keenest possible sense of smell,
and thought they could wind or scent humanity
when behind the screen of the decoy, if the wind
blew from the man towards the fowl. It was this
erroneous supposition that induced the ancients
to have four pipes to tlieir decoys, as before
explained, so as to suit each wind.

This power of smelling was a myth, like many
of the dicta of the ancient writers on natural

198 FACT AGAINST FICTION. •

lilstorvj as ducks do not use the olfactory nervej
if tliey have it, for any purpose of guidance
whatever. Neither does the pheasant, nor any
bird with the habits of which I am acquainted.
But in times of danger, they have, particularly
the waterfowl, and ducks especially^ the keenest
sense of lieariiuj. If in a decoy the most minute
sound up-wind of them comes on the favouring
air, the ducks will at once take wing ; and it is
this fact that makes uneducated men, with hearing
less acute, and prone to disturb profound silence
even with a yawn or a hasty breath, or even an
exudation of tobacco, attribute the disturbances
of the ducks to the wrong cause. ,

I remember going one day, when at Combe
Abbey, with the late Lord Craven,— whose death
to this hour I have never ceased most deeply to
deplore,' — to take some fowl in his decoy. We
were accompanied by the young ladies, who wished
to see how the pool was managed ; and when we
reached the screen, the old decoy man approached
us with pieces of dry turf or jocat, one end of
which he lit before putting it into our hands, — •
this he did by the young ladies as well as by
Lord Craven and myself, and then took the same

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL. 199

precaution in regard to his own piece of burning
peat ; so, knowing that this jpeat affair was of no
sort of use, I winked at Lord Cravenj and we
both put our fires out, kiughing, at the same time,
to ourselves when we did so. When these burnino-
pieces -of peat were given to us, I remember
whispering to my host, that if, as he (the decoy
man) said, ^^ the smoking turf was to prevent the
ducks from smelling our breath," we were all
expected to hold the burning peat close to our
lips ; if the young ladies were to have one con-
siderable sized piece, I supposed the old decoy
man would put his own head into a 2^eat stack,
as there must be degrees of offence in which the
breath should assail the birds ; so the whole affair
was nonsense from one end to the other. It was a
funny idea, I thought, to see these j^retty faces
inhaling smoke, and no more smoke than that
old man, the sigh from one lip and the rude breath
from the other deemed, even in their terrific effects,
to need no more disguise the one than the other.
The end of this peat-smoking farce was, that we
caught some ducks with all our artificial fumes
frustrated by common consent.

In lying by moonlight under a very little bank,

200 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

tlie wind setting direct from me to the water, I
have had wild ducks come swimming and feed
so near me, that I coidd have touched them with
the barrel of my gmi.

To illustrate the fact that birds of any kind
distinguish neither friend nor foe by scent, I take
the pheasant, — as all sportsmen of any knowledge
must have remarked, that if they are in ambush,
and completely hidden from sight, and not making
any noise while a cover is being driven towards
them, pheasants, up-wind or down-wind, will come
running to pass within two yards of them, and
not be in the least aware of man's immediate-
presence.

Not so the hare and rabbit ; if they come hopping
by up-wind of the gun, even if the man stands
against a tree, fully confessed, if the man stirs
not hand nor foot, the hare and rabbit having
no appreciation of dangerous proximity but by
motion and their noses, will pass as if the entire
coast was free. But, on the other hand, let man
be ever so masked by ambush, ever so completely
hidden, if the hare or rabbit comes down-wind
of him, the instant they catch the tell-tale
current of air, they stop, look bewildered,

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL. 201

liastily turn back, or bolt off in some contrary
direction.

Nothing more is needed than this fact to prove
tlie fallacy of supposing* that birds have the faculty
of sniffing the approximation of a foe.

Immense care must be observed, in a decoy for
taking fowl, to keep the paths by the ''screen"
a couple of inches or more deep in the atoms of
tan from a tan-yard, or with sawdust, or very
fine sand ; for ducks can hear with the keenest
discrimination of sound, and if down- wind of the
decoy man, of course they hear much better than
if they are iip-unnd ; and this it is that has led
to the delusion in vulgar minds that the birds
smell the men out, wdiile really they have dis-
tinguished some almost impalpable sound, that has
not been noticed by the man from Avhom it
proceeded.

If in a decoy you take a duck once called a
decoy bird, the tamer the decoy-duck is, the sooner
he comprehends man's trick, and ''turns up an
eye " at it for the future when needed to lead
to the pipe again. These decoy-ducks, tlius awake
to the place of capture, will, by keej^ing away
themselves, prevent more ignorant birds from

202 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

following the clog, and utterly mar success. The
easiest and the largest takes are invariably the
strange and wildest birds ; and I would sooner
have to do with a foreign flight just arrived,
than with ducks indigenous to the surrounding
country.

It is my intention, the first opportunity I have,
of arranging a 'taking decoy," to do away with
the use of the dog, and, in place of the dog, to
substitute stuffed animals of different kinds and
colours, such as the fox, the polecat or ferret,
the stoat, and various coloured cats, so that there
should be no sameness in the decoying object.
A stout wire running clean round through the first
two holes, and tlie same to the next two, and so
on, will enable the stuffed decoy to pass round
the two holes, and appear at the first hole again
if the ducks have hesitated to come on. Or
if the first represented ^^guy" does not draw,
then it can be changed to another till the desired
effect is produced.

A few rollers for the wire to run on would
suffice, and the guy could be attached by
small clasps, whicli would allow of its being taken
on and ofi". Thus, with this wire so made to

DECOYS rOK WILD FOWL. 203

every two holes, whatever guy was first put
on could be used at all the holes throughout.
This, I believe, would be a complete novelty in
decoys, and, properly contrived, the effect of it
would be immense. The cost, trouble of training,
and imcertainty of behaviour in the dog, would
be done away with, and the object sought com-
pleted to much better purpose.

And now to the decoy for the use of the gun.
In many estates there are wide tracts of moor and
bog of no use whatever. In their present state
they return no income^ and are fallow as to profit
or pleasure, their only occupant, perhaps, a snijDC.
They may be impossible to the j)urposes of culti-
vation ; and if there is a considerable l)og, in
nine cases out of ten it is not merely occasioned
by surface Avater, termed a '^soak," but there is
sure to he a spring, and, perhaps, in a s]3ace,
many springs, that hithertx) had been hidden by
superincumbent moss, or the constant growth and
decay of vegetation. Many of the sites of such
bogs as these that I allude to lie between narrow
hills, and often being out of the way of receiving
any artificial drainage from higher lands, tliey
are not subject to floods other than such as

204 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

may bo easily regulated by a very simple
method.

The manor which I hold while writing this,
had two of these narrow bogs,, that suited the
purpose I liad in view. There were other bogs,
but tlicir position was wider of the most retired
places than those selected for my decoy, and
hence, in my own mind, the matter was resolved.

The bog in question, now called ^^ the home
decoy," had been drained to the last dregs of
moisture, as if the former occuj)ant, wlio had under-
leased it to me, had been querulously afflicted with
hydrophobia.

If this utterly superfluous drainage had been
done with a view to cultivate the ])og, then I
can understand it, because the stone wall of impos-
sihle cultivation would have been uncovered, and
the white shingly sand made manifest, so as to j^ut
an end to the attempt ; and the state in which I
found matters would have been sufficiently explained.
But if it never had been the intention to attempt
the cultivation of sucli white sand and shingle
mixed with very poor and scanty peat, why take
all the trouble of these drains, the bog itself
being so very low that no other drainage to the

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL. 205

useful lands above was needed? All superfluous
water from tlie higher level went to the bog, and
ran off in a little stream to the sea by natural
position. The moment I set my eyes on this
bled-to-death useless waste, — several little natural
springs asserting their impossible-to-be-exhausted
presence by trickling into the main deep drain,
— I imagined my present shooting decoy. The
place was let to me for its shooting, with the
house in a very bad state of repair, and im-
furnished, save one old carpet, no bells in the
house, and a roof letting in any amount of wet
in rainy and windy weather.

The ' shooting consisted of two pheasants ; I
bestowed on each a Christian name, for I soon
got to know them by sight, the one from the
other; and, finding themselves no longer shot at,
they very soon became tame to me, and took up
their residence in tlie laurels round the house.

I do not think that on the land let to me for
shooting purposes there was more than a brace
of hares ; but there was a fair show of partridges
on the distant farms, and in the Pinaster Woods,
close home, any amount of rabbits, as you in-
variably find, if tliey are tacitly or otherwise let

20G FACT AGAIKST FICTIOK.

to be the perquisite of a mere farm-labouring
bailiff, who told a master, incapable of judging
of the matter liimself, just what suited his purpose.
There were also a few black-game, hitherto always
shot down on the 20th of August, under the
Cockney term of '' heath-j^oults," at a time when
the male birds Avere not distinguishable from the
hens.* As to snipes, there were some at times ;
and but one duck was all I saw on the moors
within the first twelve months.

In one of the lower home-fields there was a
small circular pond, perhaps a little over ten
yards across it either way ; and this was fed by
a beautiful little rill that rose in the upper part
of the same long field. This I at once surrounded
with rabbit wire-netting, leaving a margin for
sittings, and planting some cover in the way of
shelter; and into this were put some pinioned
fowl, some of them of the rarest and most beautifid
kind. The American wood-duck, tlie little Pernam-
buco goose, less in size than a duck, the j^intail,
and, above all, the Bahama drake. This lovely
little bird was given to me by Lady Winchelsea.

^' The blackgame in the New Forest and in Dorsetshire arc three
weeks behind the northern birds in coming to perfection.

DECOYS FOR WILD F()^yL. 207

The Pernambuco gander, for it was not a goose,
attaclied himself to me, and after a time became
perfectly tame ; and the gander held me in high
repute as the only creature that could talk to him,
by imitating his call, among the ducks with wdiom
he was associated. This bird lived with me about
nine or ten years, and then died. While speaking
of the attachment of a gander, my foes cannot
call him ^^a goose for his pains"; but I wish
some of the featherless bipeds of my acquaintance
would obtain ganders and geese of that kind, for
fowl capable of greater domestication I never saw.

The round pond, after being thus dealt with,
was enlarged, and now it is the key to the whole
decoy. Never shot in, and never disturbed, and,
since the Franco-Prussian war, for my amuse-
ment, and to the muttered consternation of the
ignorant boors, and in an ornithological attempt
to glorify the greatest nation now known, I have
taught the throng of birds in that pond, whenever
I call on them from a distance to do so, to give
" three cheers for the Prussians." They never fail
to reply, and the shrill Avhistle of the Pernambuco
gander used to lead them all, like a toast-master
calling on a company ^^to charge tlieir glasses."

208 FACT AGAINST ITCTION.

Wlicn three or four liunclrecl ducks all sliout a
prolonged quack togetlier, if tlic wind sets that
way down the hollows of the moors, it can be
heard two miles off. One day a Bournemouth
inhabitant Avas riding through the village of
Kinson, and pulling up his horse by a cottage
garden hedge, he asked tlie labourer digging his
potatoes, ^^What extraordinary noise that was
coming down the wind ? It sounds, my friend,
as if all the ducks on earth were gone mad ! but
it must be something; else."

'^ 'Tain't," replied the matter-of-fact rustic ; '^ 'tis
his honour's, Mr. BurJcly^Sj ducks a cheering for
the Proosians."

The rustic never raised his head in making this
reply, and his equestrian querist rode on, muttering
to himself that '' the man was mad ! "

To dam successfully across narrow valleys is
not difficult, if }'ou can get a sufficiently stable
foundation ; giving a slanting and an ample
back, so as to hold up a sufficient front to sustain
the collected weight of water. Some peoj^le say
that the supporting back should have the same
amount of slant behind and before ; but that course
I did not pursue, because I expected a consider-

D1::C0VS FOli WILD TuWL. ' 209

able amount of cluck-traffic on and over the banks
to })ools below, and I desired to give no hold to the
nails of the ducks' feet so as to wear away the bank,
but to force tliem to hop or wing up to its
summit. Though I knev\' that no great landward
floods were to be apprehended, in one of the
dams, however, I had not provided a sufficient
^^esca^ie" in the right place, when the springs
were caused to be in partial flood. The con-
sequence of this was, that in a ^iavt of the dam
where the chief weight of water rested, near
where I had made the escape, tlie escape was
overpowered, and, giving way itself, the rush
of water beneath cut the dam completely in two,
carrying aw^ay great blocks of earth more than
a hundred yards towards another pool. The dam
of that pool, however, held good, and no further
damage was ex|)erienced.

This was a lesson to my ^engineering skilly and
I there and then made all the escaj)es on the
hard, imbroken gravel at the end of the dam at
the foot of the hill ; and these have answered
their purpose, and all holds good, and has held
good for several years under this precaution. I
have constructed them so that in summer, and

VOL. II. p

210 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

moderate wet weatlier in winter, I can keep
the pools up to their brim, with about from three
to four bricks. If there is the chance of a flood
mastering the usual confines, the removal of two
or three bricks opens a valve to entire safet}^
The wet weather over, the bricks are replaced,
and all becomes full as usual.

AVillows of anv kind will not o^row on these
peaty-flavoured banks, even when the banks are
artificially made, and, of course, their roots
always moist — not even the common copse
willow, which was recommended some time ago
in the Fidd as a nevv^ sort, under the denomina-
tion of the '' bitter willow." I saw specimens
of this Fleld-hovii '^new willow'' growing in
the garden of a most intelligent tenant of Mr.
Vere Fane Benett's, of Pyt House, where the
tenant assured me that his cattle Avould not touch
it. In texture, twig, and growtli, in my own
mind, I recognized it as the common copse
willow, and being well aware of the occasional
impositions practised by some designing corre-
spondents through the public press, against which
sufficient authority is not interposed, I asked my
friend to give me a few cuttings to take home

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL. *211

for investigation and experiment. This new-
fangled AvilloWj as I expected, proved to be
nothing more than the common copse willow,
Avliich game will very seldom interfere with. On
this slight contingency there was attempted to
be built up a W'ide, and, perhaps, to one a
lucrative, Ijut to the public a most mischievous,
conclusion. I thought that in my long experi-
ence I had come to the end of hearing ignorant
assertions in regard to wild fowl and game; but
such is not the case. I was told by one gentleman
that he had lately been instructed by another
gentleman that if he wished to have some snipe
shooting he need but flood a coarse and almost
useless piece of ^^ grass land," called a Avater
meadow. All he had to do was to plough it up
and sow it wath barley. Snipes w^ere so fond of
the grain. ^' it Avould attract them in any number."
My dear reader, fancy a snipe hored with
grains of barley which he could not eat if he
tried, and essaying to swallow them instead of
horimj the moist sands after worms and the larvse
of the insect tribes, that sort of soft diet being
readily sworn to by the nature of his bill. Soft
heads in the human race can often be detected.

212 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

not by tlieir long noses, but still by their hills.
In this anatomical reference I intend no insult
to the snipe, for his bill was handed to him from
his birth. We make our bills some time after
we have run away from our mother's leading-
strino^s !

If it can be so managed in regard to a larger
space necessary for the shooting decoy as com-
pared with the one for taking fowl, that also
should be sheltered by willows and trees as well
as banks. There should be, however, a succession
of pools of broad waters for the shooting wliere
there are no lakes nor rivers, so that the fowl
may fly from pool to pool, and each pool thus
afford a succession of sport, the fowl flying either
way, thus permitting the beat to be reversed.

In some situations gazes may be made for
each gun. Gazes are small huts of v»'attled
hurdles, or of boughs and furze, and tlie fowl
may be driven over these gazes when the guns
cannot approach them on tlie water. Ducks are
more easily directed b}' the driver than teak
When Lords Malmesbury and Ashley shot my
decoy with me during the winter of 1870, though
there were from three to four liundred teal on

DKCOYS FOR WILD FOWL. 213

the water, we only killed one. The ducks having
come over the guns first, the teal refused the line,
and kept flying hack into the driver's face Ijcfore
they took their departure for the sea, and thus
we only got one. The bag picked up on the
spot was fift}'-one wild ducks at single over-liead
shots, and one teal ; in all, fifty -five ducks were
killed, the additional four retrieved when the
day was over. Lord Malmesbury had thirteen
ducks down around him before he left his first
gaze.

We then beat a little, straggling, scanty cover,
and got nineteen pheasants, a w^oodcock, and
a cou2:)le of rabbits, which, collectively, made
a very nice day. We lunched within thirty
yards of the little home or round pond where
nothing is ever shot at, and while at lunch I
called for ^^ three cheers for the Prussians,"
which was instantly complied with by all the
ducks within hearing, though among them
there were two wounded mallards and a duck
who had escaped thus hurt from the other pools.
I mention this to exhibit the correctness of my
narrative, and to show the truth of w^hat I say.

While at lunch, and while the keepers at a

214 FACT AGAINST FICTION,

little distance were having something to eat,
I heard one say, after tlie three cheers were
given, ^'Well, I'm blessed if I should be in a
hmnour to cheer, after having had such a
bucketting as those ducks have had to-day."
Since the shooting day above mentioned, the
next bag consisted of one hundred and seven-
teen head of fowl, duck, and teal.

In every part of a shooting decoy there should
be made varied ^' sittings " for the ducks. The
larger and more important ones should face the
east and south-east, to catch the first rays of
the morning sun; for the ducks just then come
home from their night flights and feedings,
and want to dress and dry their feathers, just
as much as we should do on retiring to our
firesides. They like nice dry, short, velvety
turf to do this on, it being comfortable to their
feet, and of a texture that will not dirt nor stick
to their breasts ivhen in a recumbent posture — a
sheltering bank of three feet in height behind
them, as before alluded to, and tlie sittings in width
of from three to six feet, so that there may be
room for all and no o^uhhing of tails against the
back of the sitting, for that is a contingency ever

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL. 215

slumnocl by every bird in existence, sitting- on the
ground or on a tree.

I had to make all my pools ; but from knowing
the humom^s and necessities of wild fowl, great
care was taken to meet all peculiarities attached
to their very little understood nature. When I
say ^^very little understood," I speak of the surface
sportsman or mere gunner. I always loved to
study the nature of wild things, and now am
happier in their happiness than in their death ;
and I love preservation and the more genial sun
of the breeding season better than the ^Mjag"
and frost and snow.

A young sportsman one rainy day, or day not
comfortable for shooting in (wet covers spoil
pheasants in their death as well as sport), kept
teasing his host to go out, so there was a con-
sultation as to whether the cover should be beaten
or not.

If I mistake not (I was not present), a noble
lord, much this young man's senior, at length
stepped in with this pertinent question, — imper-
tinent by some it may be deemed, but with the
causticity of it I most heartily agree, — ^^ Is it
not possible," said the elder of the two, ^^for you

216 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

to pass one day of your useless life without Jdlllncj
something?'''^

Many, many montlis, weeks, and days of my
I hope not useless life, are passed in liappy
and trusted friendship with the birds and beasts
around me, watching their curious and varied
luibits, studying" their natures, and endeavouring
to obtain their confidence instead of rousing their
fears. There is scarce a bush on my manor which
does not hold a friendly robin. The l^ird comes
to meet me at my approach, sits close to my foot,
with its little brightly shining black eye, and
craves by look and a sujDpressed warble for the
crumbs in my shooting-jacket pocket. If by chance
my crumbs for tlie birds have l)een exhausted,
which is seldom the case, it makes me quite
unhappy to read the disa2)20ointment even a robin
can exhibit in the poor little eyes, when I walk
close-fisted, but still, I trust, open-hearted, from
the solitary bush which never fails to shelter thus
even the smallest creature under heaven.

But to return to the shooting decoy.

After my line of pools had l)een estal)lished,
the few passing wild fowl, who at flight time,
or soon after dusk, used to be attracted bv

DECOY« roll WILD FOWL. 217

the sig'lit and call of my pinioned birds in tlie
home 2^ond, and occasionally drop in to pay
them a passing visit, began to use the new-
made pools, where they were for some time
never disturbed. At first that most objectionable
jiopping at the distant rifle-range, when tlio
wind set towards the l)irds, annoyed them ; but
they very soon got used to it, and now care
nothing for the distant noise. Teal, duck, and
widgeon began to drojD in the moment the breed-
ing season was over, and very soon '' a lead,"
as decoy men call it, was established. All this
time, too, I took such wild ducks' nests as I
could find, however near to my pools, and reared
them sometimes under their mothers, when they
could be caught and put into coops, or under
hens.

When I first commenced rearing fowl for the
decoy, of course it was necessary to take as
many wild ducks' eggs as possible, and breed
them up under hens, and this led to a fact
which, in succeeding seasons, puzzled me for some

time.

It was this. About the second or third season,

being short of hens for pheasants and ducks, I

218 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

*

caught all tlie old wild ducks that would bo
caught, as described, at the moment they hatched
out, for the purpose of cooping them with their
young. But these wild ducks so caught, and
taken in mucli the same wild districts, were as
unlike each other in their tempers when caught
as black is to white. Some of them flew at and
beat themselves against the bars of the coops,
frightening and trampling to death their own
young, while others remained perfectly contented
and docile in their coop, ^' hived" or nursed the
brood, and did very well.

Everything is, can be, or ought to be, accounted
for. So to unravel this mystery for the future, I
ordered all young ducks from the sea district
and wildest ground, when hatched under hens,
to he marked. By this we should know in catch-
ing old ducks from their nests, or in the bag
after shooting, Iioav they came to hand, whether
known to us before or not. The mystery of the
different tempers when cooped was at once ex-
plained. Those wild ducks that had been reared
in a coop, wlien brouglit back to it, took to it
at once again, while those wild ducks that liad
never been in a coop flew at the bars and re-

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL. 219

sistccl all detention, even to forgetfulness of their
young.

If a cluck can be found, and her time and
method of sitting on her nest watched, and she
is visited just about the time when she is hatch-
ing, her nest will generally be far from any
water, and in the heath or furze. When first
alarmed by the approach of man, she will flutter
along the ground in an attemjot to lead the sup-
2^osed pursuer from, her young. Before she is dis-
turbed, two or three purse-nets should be set in
low places, or in such positions as she would be
likely to cross in her designing retreat, and into
one of these, if properly set, she is almost sure
to go.

Having taken her thus alive, at a time when
maternal affection is at the ftill, pull out the flight
feathers from one wing to prevent her flying
away, if by any chance she should escape her
coop, and then put her into a cooj) narrowly
barred to prevent her squeezing through, and put
a board or ^^ crate" in a square in front of the
coop, fitting close at both sides. A crate a couple
of yards long, by the breadth of the cooj) wide,
and a foot high; is quite suflicient to j^i'cvent the

220 FACT agaiNkSt fiction.

escape of the yoimg brood. A disli of water at
the bars of the coop, and food within reach of it
for the old as well as the young birds, is then
all that is required. The old wild duck, as pre-
viously explained, who has never been in a coop,
will not do, but the old bird, who was herself
reared from it, she never loses her interest in
her brood, nor her remembrance of her artificial
rearing; and her young ones, not feeding from
the bill, as the young of the landrail and moor-
hen do, will, the very day of their confinement,
learn to feed themselves; very small seeds of any
kind, buck- wheat, &c., grits, and little pieces of
worm and finely-chojDped white of boiled egg,
should be put in their dish of loater. They
soon will recognize their feeding place, and
when the food is mingled witli very small bits
of thickly-kneaded meal, then the young birds
will begin to thrive. Barley or maize should
also be placed in the water for the old duck,
who will be sure to drink, for ducks are '' thirsty
souls," and will discover that tliere is a dinner
too for her.

In less than a week the crate may be removed,
for by that time, if cautioudjj approached, and

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL.

221

never frig-litenccl, tlic little clucks are tame, and
will run to meet tlie hand that has always fed them.

As soon as the young ducks are strong, then
shift them, old one, coop and all, to some little,
Avarmly-sheltered shallow pool — on no account to
deep water; and then, when they begin to get
well into their first plumage, let the old duck
out. Her wing by that time will have begun to
re-moult the pulled-out flight feathers, and she will
soon fly as well as ever ; but she w^ill not desert
her brood, when there are plenty of pools to
hold them. Deep water always kills the greater
number of the wild-bred young broods upon it.
They are seized with and die of cramp, or Avhere
there are pike, they are eaten.

In the first instance, take all wild ducks' nests,
however near the newly-made decoy ponds, for
the following reason. The old duck never had
looked for water where the new pools w^ere, but,
when she w^as a wild bird, she took her brood
to the harbour some two miles ofi", or to some
swamps in the tidal way near it, where everything
was instantly destroyed by what the Glohe news-
paper so properly termed the invading '^scamps''
of the vicinity.

222 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

How I came to tlio knowledge of tliis want
of trust in, or ignorance of, my pools, was thus.
In one of my bogs, not where my best decoys
are now, I had, in the first instance, made a small
pool, surrounded by an aboriginal swamp, and
there in two instances I had dropped mallards to
my gun. In each case, as there were one or two
other mallards flying round, I crouched, with my
retriever at my heels, in tlie hope of another shot.
When the birds on wing had disaj^peared, the re-
triever was sent for the mallard that had fallen. The
dog had seen the bird fall, and went immediately
to the sjDot, but was, for an instant, misdirected in
his search in the water by a rabbit. The dog,
however, soon set himself right, and returned to
where the mallard had fallen ; and then, to my
surprise, instead of continuing in the shallow water
and rushes, adjoining the deeper pool, he set off on
dry land over the heather up the hill, stern down
and head in air, and was liidden from further obser-
vation by the rising brow.

'' That nmst be a hare or rabbit," I thought to
myself; but as a tried retriever, knowing well
what he had to do, had a better facult/j to judge hy
than I had, as is my invariable custom, I let tJie

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL. 223

dog alone. When once sent upon a difficult cluty,
in wliicli a man cannot direct liis dog, man should
be silent and stilly and interfere no more.

In a very short time my dog came over the liill
with the winged mallard alive in his moutli. The
bird, as he could not fly, was walking off
straight in the direction of the river Stour, nearly
two miles off, and leaving a couple of acres of
water behind him, into the edge of which he
had fallen.

This made an impression on me, but shortly
after, at the same place, the thing occurred again.
A w^inged mallard who had fallen, in a second
instance, instead of seeking the pool to dive in
which was close to him, also set off on foot, in
hope to reach the accustomed and well-remembered
river. This suggested to me that all wild ducks,
nesting, as they always do, far away from waters
of their haunt, would not. come with their young
to the new sites opened out to them, but go
to tho.se they had been accustomed to, at whatever
distance. My conjecture was right ; so, following
it up, an opportunity occurred by hand-rearing to
make tlie rising generation of fowl learn that the
safest place of all Avas the ^' tarn," or the ponds

224 FACT AGAIXttT FICTION.

within my manors or in .some preserved })ortion of
the rivers.

In 23assing, let me remark that the method of
the duck in takin^u' her l}rood, just out of the egg,
over a stretch of country of two miles or more, is
most sagacious and curious. She is a perfect mis-
tress of her geographical position, and has a
thorough knowledge of the country, generally
moving from the nest at night. She well knows in
what direction ditch, path, and cart-wheel tend, and
is sure to select the shortest road. Into the cart-
wheel track she gets, with her j^Tctty little dappled
brood clustered in a lively heap at her tail, and on
she waddles at a surprising pace, cleaving the air
before her as she would do the Avater, making a
vortex to suck the little fleet in the rear the more
closely to her, and trusting the side of the cart-rut
to keep them Avell together.

Few men, perhaps, have seen this; but I have
seen it in a wild duck escaped from her coop, as
also in a duck with lier young hatched wild ; and
it is astonishing the pace that they go, as well as
the straight line that they ado2)t as the most con-
venient to take them to the desired water.

One of the first things to do in preparing to

DiX'OVs Foi: \vn>D fowl. 225

establisli a sliootiiig decoy is, to obtain tlirco or
four wild mallards pinioned, and then to put them
in a fenced-in pond with some tame hroiun ducks —
tame, but of the wild colour, putting in two tame
ducks to each mallard. They will breed thus in
the first season that they are together ; but the
earlier in winter they are so confined the better.
Hatch their e^^xa under hens, or let the ducks hatch
them, and breed them up in cooj^s. At flight
time, in the evening, these half-bred ducks Avill fly
as well as wild ones; but theij have this virtue —
tlteir tame hlood invariahlij attaches them, however
scant the water, to tJte spot or liome where they were
reared, and though flying as strongly, and mingling
with the wild flights, nothing can seduce them to
stray from their first home, or from that attachment
so localized and strong.

There is a small white Dutch duck, named,
because it makes an everlasting noise, the '' call-
duck." This bird for the table is worth very
little — it is foisted on would-be sportsmen, who
are, in fact, mere owners of estates, as a ^^ decoy
bird," sure to ^' call the wild ones down." This is
an utter imposition, for to attract wild birds by call,

as well as l)y appearance, this little duck is of no
VOL. II. Q

220 FACT AGxVINST FICTION.

use ivhatever. The best dccoy-cluQks to begin with
are the half-bred ones before alluded to; they, or
ducks reared by hancl^ are mentioned in a clever
Avork (^ Notes on Fields and Cattle/ by the Eev.
W. H. Beever), Avhich every farmer ouglit to
have. If I recollect right, Mr. Beever alluded
to his ducks as being from eggs of the wild sort,
but reared in the farmyard by hand. Birds so
reared and bred will at times be localized, but
they are apt to be led away by Avild ones ; and to
7naJce store oftuhat is wanted, let the ducks at hrst
be half-bred.

They will go on and on breeding among them-
selves, and crossing with the wild birds ; but the
attachment to place, however remote the strain
may become, never leaves the ducJcj whose origin
was as I describe. On each succeeding ^^ear I
breed up hundreds of ducks by hand, and thougli
the wild ^^lead" to my decoy Is established, I
shall continue to do so with (dl first nests.
My reason for this is that the first nests in
February, March, and April, come out in such
cold weather, that in my mineral impregnated
springs, or, indeed, anywhere else, on deep
water, the young ducks, unassisted by man, can-

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL. 227

not live. I tlierefore take the first nests, and
deal with them artificially. If the hatches arc
small in nmnber, one duck, or one hen, accord-
ing to the size of the latter, will take two or
three broods, if of the same age or within a
day or tw^o of the age of her ow^n, and the
other ducks so deprived of their young, their
flight feathers in one wing extracted, are put
into a small pool enclosed with wire. If this were
not done, they Avould go to the coop, if within
their reach, and call away the young ones from
the bird appointed to bring them up. To prevent
this, they are put into what I term ^Hhe prison."
In no very long time they forget tlieir young,
and re-moult tlie extracted, not ciitj flight feathers.
The mallards have had free access to them, they
are impregnated, and when of themselves they fly
out of prison, they are prepared for a second nest.

I have been all my life, or the greater part of
the last years of it, trying to teach this to my
friends who have estates and manors, and width
of acres, moss, or moors, at the present time lying-
fallow from all that is either useful, remunerative,
or amusing. Somehow or other, ^^ they don't seem

to see it," and somehow or other they dont alivays

Q 2

228 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

understand it, or tliey leave it to, or tliey listen
to, tlieir keepers, wlio, being ignorant and averse
to any additional trouble, set tliem against it, or
raise ridiculous and unfounded difficulties, which
scare their employers from any such undertaking.

There is scarcely a so-called keeper that under-
stands the requirements of birds at their appointed
feeding-places ; and though they, the keepers,
find it requisite to have for tlieir own benefit at
least two meals a day — breakfast and dinner — they
deem that the birds under their very questionable
care can live and remain contented with one.

If you do not feed pheasants twice a day, morn-
ing and afternoon, the first food you give them
may just as well be sacrificed to pigs.

If they find, Avhen they are hungry, that at
breakfast they had eaten all the food, and that
there was not any put for them for dinner, of
course they must go further for their last food,
and wander to look for it, — too far, perhaps, to
think of coming Ijack for breakfast. With ducks
in the liome decoy, where they are never dis-
turbed, they, too, should always be fed twice a
day, morniiKj and evenimj. I have them fed
three times a day in one pooh In tlie other

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL. 229

pools which arc shot in, and where tlie wild
flights, on account of the greater breadth of
water, mostly haunt, they need only be fed at
night, after flight-time has well begun, and the
ducks are all away. On their return in the
morning, they find a welcome repast ; and by
tliis ]nanagement the keeper taking down tlie
food in no way disturbs the fowl. The home-
reared ducks seldom go far aw^ay at night, at
least, never so far as salt water; but the wild
flights always do^ as they feed on the muds of
the harbour. So the former require food twice
a day or more in their own unscared decoy, and
when the keeper goes to feed them it matters
not if he puts up any strangers, as they only go
to the larger pools and mingle with their fellows.

In feeding pheasants as well as ducks the
moment of feeding should be rigorously kept, and
then all birds so fed will be found collected at
the right time, and it is fatal to the object in
view ever to disappoint tJiem.

And now as to the disturbance caused by the
report of a gun: all birds, j^heasants in tlieir
covers, and home-bred ducks in their decoy joool,
can be made steady to fire when they are on

230 PACT AGAINST FICTION.

tlic spot where tliey are never molested. Thus
at my romicl pond or home decoy in smiimer,
even when many ducks are there, I can with my
gun pick off a house-rat in the evening, and send
my retriever over the wire to fetch it without
putting one bird to wing.* In fact, as I am the
only gunner who shoots frequently at rabbits out
at feed, my home-bred ducks know that luJiere
that gun is I cwij and that ivliere I am there is
always a pocketful of Indian corn. At times,
even in the woods, I shall scarce have re-charged
my gun, when there is the whistle of a wing in
the air, and a duck lights doAvn by my foot.
In the fields far from the decoys, — I never saw
him in the woods, — during summer, a splendid
old pin-tailed drake, caught in and sent me from
a decoy in the North, and never pinioned, tlie
moment he hears the gun he comes with a little
Bahama duck, with whom for the last three years he
had selected to pair, and they settle down together
at my foot, and will follow me about the field. All
this comes from method and knoAvledge of how

" The same decoy is wired in, not covered in, because at
times there are curious and costly birds there from foreign parts,
who must be pinioned and scientificall}' cared for.

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL. 231

to wgratiate yourself witli timid creatures. It is
impossible to teacli tlie method to anybody, because
everybody who had tried to learn it hitherto lias
been certain to leave out something which seems
trivial in itself to him, but which, in fact, may
occasion ally he the key to ultimate success.

It is no use to make decoy pools without well
selected sittings. It is no use to send me foreign
game birds, however carefully the box is made in
which they come across the sea, or liowever well
they may be fed and watered, — if a supply of fine
gravel or sand is omitted. Food costs money, but
the fine sand and gravel, which costs nothing, and
ought to be an inch deep in the bottom of the box,
and without which a bird for any time can't live,
is regarded by superficial observers as of no con-
sequence whatever. It costs nothing. It has not
to be paid for, but nevertheless it is the hey stone
of the ivhole venture.

Never go among your wild fowl when in peaceful
guise, unless you wear the same dress you have
always worn, and in which they first saw you,
or a new dress exactly like it ; for if you do, tliey
will riot recognize their friend, but be seized with
a panic and fly away in dismay.

232 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

Never approach any wild thing in startlinxj haste,
but let them see and hear your quietly spoken
word and advancing step, tliat they may have
time to recognize their friend, and not be seized
with panic.

I remember to have seen, in the Fields a cor-
respondent asking '' if any one could tell him wh}^
tlie cast of hawks he had bred up and been trying
to train, after an absence of a few days vrere afraid
of him." In his letter he described his return and
'^ sudden rush to see his darling birds."

I could have told him that, on his return, instead
of '^ rushing in " to see his favourites in his holiday
attire, he should have waited to divest himself
of his travelling or '^courting garments," as
labouring people sometimes call their best clothes,
and have put on the shooting jacket and attire,
such as it usually was, and, going in quietly,
the hawks would then have welcomed liis
return, instead of being scared by an unwonted
appearance ; Init these things are not known to
every one, and it is not every one tliat can be
taught.

To conclude my remarks on this head, what will
the reader say to a wild blackcock and myself

DECOYS FOK WILD FOWL. 233

having •scraped into Mich a state of acquaintancG,
familiarity, and friendship, that, liwiving where
I lived, he would come in sprimj to my door,
not only on my little lawn, but ahsolutely to the
door, and ^'curl" at the breakfast-room window, —
his wings down, his cheeks and ears red, his horns
up, his tail spread like a flm over his back till
it touched his head, and, stamjnng round and round,
throwing out the soft sort of tremulous ^^ coo "in
tone resembling that of a Avood-pigeon ? He was
very civil to all the hen pheasants, but he permitted
no cock pheasant to be on the lawn while he was
there. He fed on barley thrown from my hand,
but he liked oats best ; and I often invited my
neighbouring brother sportsmen to see this strange
friendship between me and an old wild blackcock
of the moors.

Alas ! that dear mysterious king of the wastes
at last died, very near ni}^ house, stricken by a
disease in this vicinity that so constantly carries off
both old and young of his kind. I have three
blackcocks still who know me ; they are always
bolder than the grey hens. One of them, an old,
rusty-plumaged bird, that I have known for years,
will let me pass within forty yards of him when

234 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

feeding at the pheasant-stacks, but as yet I can
incline liim to no greater fiimiliarity.*

In arranging decoys for tlie collection of wild
fowl for the gun, let me add, that it is necessary
to liave a smaller pool here and there in the midst
of the larger ones, wired in with rabbit wire-
netting, in which to keep teal by way of decoy
birds for their fellows. In such cases, there should
be a bank around the sides of the pool about four
feet high, so as to give shelter from any wind that
I3I0WS, as well as to catch the beams of the morning
particularly, as well as the afternoon sun, and to
afford the sun's warmth to the birds on the sittings
at the foot of the bank and on the edge of the
water.

The wire around these little ponds should not
he itprigJit, but one-half of it should stand on the
bank, and the other project horizontally over and
above the sitting. This method of wiring -in a
small decoy pool keej^s the pinioned birds safe
within their desired location, while, at the same
time, it affords a facility for any pinioned birds
that may have escaped or strayed to walk over the

■■" The black game in my vicinity, by the spring of 1874, became
extinct, and I have none left.

DEC0Y8 rOK WILD FOWL. 235

wire, and, by so doing, capture tlicmselvcs ; and,
in tlie same wa}^, it permits any birds that arc
pinioned by the gun, and for the time lost, to come
where they can be taken and killed, or fed luitil
they recover.

A porid, if thus wired-in with wire of a small
mesh and with due care, also acts as a trap for
vermin, as, though they can leap in very easily,
they cannot jump out, nor get out, unless they
burrow through the bank, which they never have
the patience to do in any one place long enough
to compass a sufficient hole by wdiich to escape
to the wilder lands.

In these small decoy ponds for teal, there
should always be made a feeding-place for those
delicate little fowl. Supj^osing there to be from
two to three couple of pinioned teal, a feeding-
house should be made for them of very fine wire,
the lower part of this wire^ amounting to a sort
of small iron rod, to bear the stress that in two
places would be continually laid upon it by the
passing in and out of the teal, and the attempts to
force their way in of the larger wild ducks outside.

This Avire feeding-house should have four sides,
one side being made by the upright Ixink, the

236 FACT AGAINST FICTION,

other side by the wire netting, and the two
ends of much closer and stifFer wire. The feeding-
l)lace for the teal should be on the sitting, and
in a wet place, for all water-fowl like to feed
over their feet in water. A yard-and-a-half, or
twice tliat length if desired, for the feeding-
house, would suffice, and the two ends might
be in breadth about a couple of feet, or a yard,
according to the space to sjDare, with an opening
just sufficient for teal to pass through, but which
would keep out a duck.

In course of time, the wild teal also will fnid
out the food and the way to get at it, and it
serves its especial purpose admirably.

"Wlien these feeding-houses for teal are made,
the barley and ]3oiled rice should be put into them
only after dark, so as not to disturb the fowl, and
but once in the twenty-four hours. The keejDcr
must be watcliful as to the presence of eitlier
the house or water rat, as botli these cunning
animals will l)e aware of the hour of feeding,
and, day or night, close in on the food at once.
Their presence can always be noticed by the
impressions of their feet in tlie nuid, and if
permitted to live and to resort to these 2:)ools,

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL. 237

tliey will not only starve tlic teal to death by
quickly consuming their food, but the house-
rat, not the luater-rat, will often vary his repast
by killing" the teal themselves.

I would, for the sake of demonstration, permit
any man, even in summer, when the house-rat
most frequents his watering - places, to search
the sides of my ponds, and to find, If he could^
the track of a house-rat. I have them exterminated
by trap and lightly-loaded gun, for there are some
practised old crafty liouse-rats who cannot be taken
in any kind of trap whatever. At the dusky hour
of a calm, hot summer's evening, however, if the
whereabouts of these old rats has been by their
track discovered, they cannot resist coming out
for a walk in that deep stillness ere the night
sets in, and then it is that the lightly-loaded
gun insures their death with very little noise.
If these cunning old house-rats find out the
coops where young ducks are being reared by
hand, there is a method that often succeeds in
their capture by trap, and it is this* Put in the
water near the coop a small square, made by
rabbit-netting, of the larcjest 'mesh ; the house-
rat can get througli this and so can the young

•238 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

ducks; tliG trap for tlie time unset, and the
food for the latter may be dropped Avitliin this
wired space, and both ducks and rats, at dif-
ferent times, be attracted by it. Anybody ^Y]io
understands the safe rearing' of ducks will hare
a board to fit the cooj), to shut in the brood
with the old bird as soon as it is dusk. Then,
when the young ducks are safely shut in, lift up
the little square enclosure of wire, and set heneath
the water, within the circumference of the wire,
the steel rat-trap or gin, and put the wire over
it in the usual place, dropping a little more food,
that will sink on and around the trap. The
water prevents tlie scent of the human hand
from animal detection, and use induces the rat
to seek boldly on the same spot the same food
he has so often revelled in. The trap needs no
peg nor other fastening, for it is too large to be
pulled through the Avire, and the rat will be found
drowned on the following morning when tlie yoiuuj
ducks are let out. Care must be taken to make
this little square pound for the trap wide enough
for its dimensions to keep the snare out of the
reach of old ducks, who might be stretching in
with the whole lengths of their bills and necks

DF.COYS FOK WILD FOWL. 239

ill an endeavour to get at tlie food tliey knew to
be there ; the size of tlie pound, therefore, ne-
cessary to exckidc tlie old ducks who are at hirge
from danger can, to a certainty, be very easily
ascertained ; of course, the wire pound must be
kept from being put out of place by external
pressure by a peg or two inserted on either side.
Water-rats can be taken in the same way, ])ut
the best trap for them is an old single-entrance
wire eel-trap, its end immersed in water, while
the entrance is kept by a slanting position within
reach of the victim it is intended to destroy.

The only damage the water-rat does is by
eating the corn put down for the fowl. The same
rat is detrimental to w^illows, or to any succulent
plants or herbs in the vicinity of the water; but,
other than this, to animal or bird life, this often
unjustly persecuted creature is perfectly innocuous.

During summer the old viciously predatory
house-rat seeks the water, as the biped rats from
the Commons House of Parliament, and the in-
habitable towns and cities of the world, flock to
places situated on the sea. There the biped people
game, intrigue and bathe, sw4m, fish, flirt and
frolic, precisely as the viciously inclined quadruped

240 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

rats do wlion tlicy resort to the pond or river.
The steady-going, constant residents of the one
l^lace, householders and water-rats, get turned out
of the quiet routine of their existence, and either
let at remunerative rents tlieir houses for a time,
or desert their domiciles, to escape the contami-
nation of gamblers, impostors, or cliaracters un-
desirable as acquaintances for the rising genera-
tion.

The water-rats, in much the same position, yield
up tlieir holes in the banks to the vicious foe,
who, if they did not do so, would kill and eat
them. In these holes the house-rats, for "the
season," breed and live, adopting precisely the
habits, in all hut appetite j of their predecessors;
and thus, because the superficial observer sees a
rat on the mill or duck pond swim after and catch
young ducks, he immediately charges the mis-
chievous fact against a poor creature who never
destroyed anything alive in its life.

When decoys have to be made u}) by dams to
keep back the water, and to throw it into 2)ools
or lakes, the water-rats, and the moles also, will
do a great deal of damage by 2)erforating the
banks beneath the surface of the higher water.

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL.

241

Water is ever on the watch, when penned back,
for any illicit escape that may offer, and once
let it find a hole, however small, there it will rmi
or trickle through, till, by degrees, if not im-
mediately stopped, it wears for itself a passage
of exhaustive dimensions.

For the above reason, I would recommend pools
to be dug out three or four feet below the level
of ground and Avater, and the earth so removed
to be placed on two sides of the water as a shield
against prevailing winds, and as comfortable backs
to catch the morning and afternoon sun, and reflect
the warmth so caught upon the nicely turfed
sittings. Or an island may be thrown up from
the material dug out. ^Vlien this plan is adopted,
it puts an end to the constantly to be repaired
dams, and does not cost so much as tlie latter.
All work so occasioned should be let out to the
labourer as '^ piece-work," binding the labourer or
labourers down to comjjlete the job in a given time.
If the latter is not done, when once they begin
the task, they will be in no sort of hurry to finish
it ; but looking on it as a job in hand to fall
back on when they have nothing else to do, the
work may be protracted for any amount of time,

VOL. II. R

2^2 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

and the ground around disturbed, to the ruin of
the rest of the decoy.

The worst vermin that will, if they are per-
mitted to do so, haunt and be destructive to the
decoy and to the fowl who breed in the vicinity,
are the carrion crow, the moor falcon, or hen
harrier, the magpie and the house-rat, the stoat
and the weasel. The latter, the weasel, in a
decoy is the least destructive of the lot.

A fox is also most destructive to wild fowl ;
but I do not look on the fox as a ^S^ermin," but
simply as a creature that repays the mounted
sportsman tenfold for any mischief lie has occa-
sioned to the man who walks.

I have observed in my decoy that though I
have destroyed every carrion crow in the vicinity,
and not seen one for five months, no sooner are
their eggs laid about the moors and the deco}',
than several carrion crows put in an appearance.

Some of these old thieves may probably be
those who, in the last breeding season, had left
a leg or foot in some of my traps, and who re-
turned to their old hunting-grounds well aware
of the purposely- put temptations as well as the
danger tliat awaited them. I liavc seen tliese

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL. 24

o

rusty old rascals (some of them wlien old assiuiic
a very rusty appearance), in winging tlieir search-
ing- flights about six or seven feet above the heath,
come upon one of my traps, — the bait a dead
rabbit or eggs, as the case might be, — I have seen
them then pause in tlieir flight, hover or dwell
over the spot where the trap was, and then cry out
as if in loud derision, winging their way on and
resuming their flight of search in other places.
Where there are old crows of this description
haunting the vicinity of a decoy, they can often
be taken thus. Ducks, when they first begin to
lay, will drop their eggs occasionally about, not
in nests, and often in shallow water. These
chance eggs in the eyes of a crow don't look like
purposely-placed baits; therefore a bait of this
sort can be Avith success adopted in very shallow
water — w^ater enough to cover the egg, and yet
let it be visible to a bird's quick eye. Around
this egg, and beneath the Avater, — for the Avater
that covers the one Avill be deep enough to conceal
the more flat proportions of the other, — the traps
should be set. CroAvs and moor-falcons Avill both
Avalk in Avater up to their hocks if after eggs, and

they are sure to step into one trap or the other.

R 2

244 FACT AGAINST FICTIOK.

I have in this way taken these birds when proof
against any other attraction. These traps are
dangerous to ducks as well, and small, shallow pools
of water, as much removed from the haunts of fowl
as possible, should be selected.

There are more sure ways of destroying the
carrion crow and magpies than those by trapping ;
but as it involves the use of strychnine, I ever
set my face against it. It can be used by a
careful hand with apparent safety, by poisoning
a slightly broken egg and placing it on a pollard
tree or stump of a tree, or on an island where
nothing else but wings are likely to reach it ;
but under Jio circumstances do / advocate its use.

There is also, I deeply regret to say, a
method of poisoning foxes, which will confine
the lamentable death by strychnine to the fox ;
for when the poison is put into the carcase of a
hoffse-rat. nothinir but a fox will eat it. Not
the vxiter-rat, but the house-vat; and, curiously
enough, a fox will ])refer a dead house-rat to a
rabbit ; and this latter fact or preference I have
ascertained in feeding litters of foxes when I
kept foxhounds.

Poison should never he used in any case*

DECOYS FOR WILD FOWL. 245

Surely tliere arc ways enougli of destroying
vermin without resorting to tlie use of drugs,
that if by chance they find their way to man,
woman, or cliikl, may be fatal to all alike.
The law against the sale of deadly poison is too
easily avoided, — in fact, tliere is no effective law
in respect to it; and of this, two instances have
very lately been brought to my notice. The
one was that several valuable dogs in Dorsetshire
had been poisoned by strychnine said to have
been bought by a tenant-farmer for rats. The
other was in the deaths by poison administered
by thieves, commonly called poachers, to the
valuable pigs of the owner of a large estate,
because some low beerhouses, where thieves did
congregate, and labouring men got drunk witli
the money they ought to have spent in main-
taining their wives and children, were abolished
l)y the lady of the mansion and manor. We
greatly need a revision of the law against the
almost unrestricted sale of poison, and were I
ever in either House again, it should be my
endeavour to effect it,

2-:l:6 FACT AGAINST FICTION,

CHAPTER X.

EELS AND LAMPEPtNES. — THE MYSTERY OF FISHES.

Generative History of the Eel — Appearance as they Ascend and
Descend the Pavers — Pond-Bred Eels — Traps for Eels — Baits —
Lampernes — How to Catch them — Shoals of Lampernes —
Caught by the Piats — Used as Manure — A Table Delicacy —
Bait for Pike — Lampernes full of Spawn when Ascending from
the Sea — They Breed at an Early Age — The Lamprey — Use to
which the Lamprey puts his Wide Mouth — The Old Angler at
Cranford.

Having read some time ago, in Belcjravia (see page
158, vol. vi.), a very well-written and interesting
accomit of the ^^ whitebait," from the pen of Mr.
J. G. Bertram, perhaps it will not be deemed amiss
to offer to the reader some practical observations
on that mysterious inhabitant of the waters, the
eel.

To begin Avitli the generative history of this,
at present, little understood creature, it certainly
is not thoroughly ascertained whence, where, or
how the generative process is acliievcd. Wliethcr

EELS AND LAMPERNES. 247

the eel is produced by ova^ or by any other known
process, certain we are that no roe has ever been
detected.

Writers on the history of the eel content them-
selves, but no one else, with the assertion that eels
seek the tidal waters and margin of the sea for
tlie purpose of procreation, but we are completely
puzzled to ascertain how the eels which inhabit
small ponds in the midland counties, without the
remotest access to ditch, brook, or river which
would conduct them to the supposed scene of their
operations, get there.

In my practical experience and investigation of
tlie habits of the eel, I have emptied, or ^Haved,"
small ponds of inland descrij)tion, and found the
usual complement of eels embedded in the mud.

That in certain rivers and streams debouching
into the ocean the eels annually seek the tidal water
of the harbour, there can be no doubt ; and this
they do with the first autumnal inland flood. My
practical experience of the river Avon, whicli
empties itself into Christchurch Harbour, has shown
me the extent of the autumnal emigration of these
fish, from my having swept from my eel stage,
during a flood, sixteen hundred-weight of eels in

248 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

the space of three or four hours, all on their down-
ward jiassagc to the sea, the mills above me and
the mill below me reaping a similar harvest of
this particular fish. Then, at a certain time of
year, during the summer, the return along the
edges of the river of countless millions of the little
elvers, supposed to be tlie offspring of the eels,
sufficiently accounts for the descent and purpose of
their progenitors. These little eels are as delicious,
or nearly so, as whitebait, when dressed in the
same fashion.

This enormous amount of descending eels being
thoroughly ascertained, it is natural to look for a
return of the same fish when the duties of procre-
ation are over ; but unless they return in some
other guise or condition than that in which they
^' run,'- or in which they went down, those millions of
fish are lost to further observation. This brings us
to the next question — of the eel and snig. The
eels seek the sea, as I have previously said, with
the first flood of autumn. We Avill assign that
flood, tlien, to the month of September, and they
continue to descend during October, and even into
November, of course diminishing in quantity flood
by flood.

EELS AND LAMPEliNES. 249

111 the first approach of Avarm weatlicr in tlio
early siaring, thero then ascends, or seems to
ascend, iho river Avon and the Stour, a vast num-
ber of eels called snigs. The traps, pots, or wires
placed in the river for the capture of these snigs,
which are then in the most delicious condition,
are set with their mouths, or entrances, down
the stream, as these fish invariably ascend, and
continue to do so throughout the summer, up to
the first flood in autumn, when the great descent
of eels, changed in condition, and not good to
eat, ])efore alluded to, commences.

The condition of the ascending and descending
eels is very remarkable. Those that are descend-
ing are much more slimy to the touch, and hard,
and so rich when dressed for table, that it is
almost impossible to eat them ; the ascending
snigs, or eels, on the contrary, are most excellent,
and so mild and sweet in flavour that they make
the best white soup. The hue of the descending
and ascending fish is also different, as the belly
of the descending fish is of the most white and
silvery character, while that of the ascending
snig is tinted with shades of the brightest gold.
Locally speaking, the snigs which are caught are

250 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

of a much smaller description than the generality
of descending eels; but this, according to my
experience, apparently arises from the fact that
nothing but the smaller kind of eel-pots are
set to catch the fish, which precludes the possi-
bility of catcliing the larger fish. That they are
to be caught, I have proved by capturing, among
others, one snig that weighed four pounds and a
quarter.

During the summer I have caught large snigs
and large eels on night-lines ; and then the eel,
though it had not donned the golden hue, had
entirely lost the richness and ill flavour of the
descending fish; but whether or not he would
have attained the colour of the snig by a pro-
longed summer residence in the river, I cannot
precisely say.

After the descent of the eels in autumn, I have
followed them up with a spear, to ascertain, if I
could, as immediately as possible on their descent,
which class of fisli remained in the river mud,
whether snig or eel. Those I found were chiefly
eels in their descending condition, mixed lierc
and there with the snig. The question then oc-
curred to me whether or not the snigs so found

EELS AND LAMPERNES. 251

were not iisli not yet arrived at the '^running',"
or general condition of the others. I am dealing
with facts as they occurred under my own ob-
servation, leaving the question open as to whether
it is condition alone which makes the diiferonco
between the eel and the snig.

It is true that, in many instances, the head of
the snig has a more pointed nose and a smaller
jaw than the accredited eel ; but if we are to
pronounce as a distinct species on a physiognomy
so trifling, we of the Vale of Berkeley, and our
noble neighbours on the Cotswolcl Hills, our re-
spective noses being widely different, aquiline
and snub, may be quoted as distinct species of the
genus man I Anatomists and naturalists often
assume to distinguish new species by dissection
and colour; thus, an additional bone or varying
vertebrae in beast or fish, or in the plumage of
a bird, is seized upon by anxious discoverers of
mares'-nests to denote a new species, as in the
dun and fawn coloured whole snipe, whose different
hue, in my opinion, arises from accident. That the
change of plumage does not of necessity define
species, is proved by the ruff and ree, of whom
scarce two species are clothed alike. The fact,

352 FACT ACxAINST FICTION,

tlien, as regards the eel, and its enormous autumnal
migration to the sea, unless they re-ascend the
rivers in the condition of a snig, cannot be ac-
counted for; they are lost entirely to our know-
ledge. In 1871 I knew of a fresh-water eel being
taken in a sprat-net four miles out at sea.

It is the custom, in some places, to call any
little eel a snig, and lience arises the term
^'sniggling for eels"; but, in my opinion, the
snig, or the eel in snig condition, is found in
rivers only, and does not exist in inland brooks,
stagnant waters, or in isolated ponds fed by springs.

There are innumerable small ponds within my
knowdedge, and in those ponds there are eels that
never leave them ; therefore it is too sweeping an
assertion to say that all eels proceed to the sea
for breeding purposes. To my certain knowledge,
there are pond-bred eels, as well as eels l^red in
the tidal w^aters of the ocean harbours, and by
way of meeting the partly true assertion that eels
will travel througli the dewy grass, I affirm tliat
no one ever detected the elver in a similar question-
able position ; yet in an isolated pond I liave
found the young of eels, and an elver in the
water in St. James's Park.

' EELS AND LAMrERNES. 253

There are four different traps wliicli may Le
set for eels, — the wicker snig-pot, the wicker
" hiillie/' the thief, or hoop net, and the wire
eel-trap. All of these are effective if properly
set and baited. All fishermen, however, would do
Avell to remember this fact, that no fresh-water
fish, not even the abused eels, supposed to fill
the ^^joockets" of '^drowned sweeps" in Hyde
Park, will enter a trap netted with twine, if the
string is allowed, by continuance in the water,
to get sour, nor will they touch a stale bait. This
objection of the eel to the sour twine does not
apply so much to the iron wire ; it exists in the
greatest degree as regards string. Traps made of
twine, therefore, should be taken out of the water
every morning, and washed, and then left to dry
upon the bank before they are again submerged ;
but the wire need only be rinsed out, and at once
returned to the water.

And now, as to the appetite and nature of the
erroneously blamed eel* We liave heard of de^
mented Avidows, whose piscatory tastes have been
somewhat epicurean, on the dauiji remains of the
dear departed being recovered from its humid
resting-place, witli pockets, as reported^ replete

264: FACT AGAINST FICTIOIS^

^yitli eels, to order the body to be re-set in the
mud for further capture ; and, as I mentioned
before, we have heard of the body of a sweep, in
the Ser2)entine, Avho drowned himself for love of
beer, not woman, having been fished up, alive with
slimy parasites ! All such reports^ whether of the
^'widow's mite" or of the sooty suicide, are
utterly ridiculous and untrue ; there is not a
cleaner feeder beneath the waters, salt or fresh,
than the conger, the snig, or fresh-water eel.

I remember, as a child, seeing my father take
up what he called his ^' eel-wheels," made of
wicker, in the tidal brook around the walls of
Berkeley Castle, and, so to speak, he never caught
anything. In after-life, my experience as a man
explained this failure; the bait put into those
wheels was the entrails of a chicken. A more
fetid, nasty-smelling bait, when it became stale
and soddened, cannot be conceived. The only
bait that Avill entice a conger eel or snig is fresh
fish, or in regard to the fresh- water eels or snigs,
similarly, fresh worms. The charge against the
method of feeding of the eel as being unclean in
simply false and absurd.

Having discoursed respecting the maimers and

EELS AND LAMPERNES. 255

customs of tliG eel, I now proceed to deal with a
fisli almost as mysterious in its habits, but not so
generally known — I mean the lampcrne. This
fish, as far as my experience goes, is found in any
quantities only in the mouths of rivers where tiie
freshets seek the sea. In the Avon, near Christ-
church, in spring, they ascend in continual shoals
of countless multitudes. So thick and phalanxed
is their line of aqueous march up the river, that
you may stand on the bank with a common
minnow-net suspended from a pole when it is dark,
and lift them from the river as fast as you can put
the net in and pull it out again. In a similar
way you may set eel-nets, wire traps, if made
close enough to retain the lesser lamperne, without
bait, the mouths of the traps being set down
stream, as if for snigs, and close to the bank in
the line of the ascending shoals.

In the upper weir on the Avon, when I lived
at Winkton, these curious fish came most within
my command. They came to ascend the weir so
massed together, that from the weight of the
pressure from without, the fisli next to the bank
were driven, forced into, and wedged up in the
rats' holes that were beneath the surface of the

256 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

water. So well was tliis annual fact known to
the vermin in tlie neiglibourliood, that the house-
rats from every homestead^ Larn, and cottage
gathered together by night at this weir for the
purpose of a piscatory harvest.

In the mornings beneath every available spot
on which there was any cover, such as a few
boards, an old hurdle, or a hollow stone, more
than a bushel of these fish might be found secreted,
all of them caught by the rats during one night,
some being dead, some still alive, but all of them
marked more or less by the teeth of the spoiler.

After I had taken possession of the Winkton
fishery, and came to live at Winkton House, on
my visiting the place one day, I found my punt,
which was moored to the gravel-walk in the
garden, with a great many lampernes still alive
in an inch or two of water that tlie punt con-
tained. This made me demand of the man in
charge wIkj it was that had dared to fish in my
absence with my boat. He replied, that no one
had done so; to which I ansAvered, '^Tlien how
comes it to be full of live fish ? " To this he
rejoined, ^^ that the fish liad been left there by
the house-rats.'^ In order to utilize the spoils

EELS AND LAMPERNES. 257

thus obtained, I manured the roots of the vines
at the grapery, and many of the wall fruit trees ;
to the vines first and last I laid the lampernes
nearly half a foot deep as fish manure.

Although in the Severn we deem the lampernc
one of its greatest delicacies, as well as the
shad, which we think second only to the beautiful
salmon of the same river, in the vicinity of Christ-
church, and on the banks of the Avon, the lam-
pernes, locally known by the name of '' nine-eyed
eels," when accidentally caught, meet with no
sale, and are thrown away. Of course, with my
Severn proclivities, lampernes were properly stewed
and served to table.

As the lamperne season begins before the pike
are out of season^ I used them as bait for my
trolling rod, and found them, while they lasted, the
most killing bait of all.

While mentioning bait for pike fishing, next to
the lamperne comes the eel or snig; and in addition
to its tempting nature, one eel bait for pike will
often last an entire day. The shape of these fish
(the lamperne and eel) enables you to place them
on tlie hooks so. as to spin to perfection; and if
the eels should be longer than you desire, you

VOL. II. s

258 I^ACT AGAINST FICTION.

can cut off a portion of the tail till you reduce
your bait to the desired length. Supposing the
pike fisherman goes on a visit to strange waters,
or to friends who have not the means of pro-
curing good bait, he should take with him three
or four small eels, salted, in a box, which will keep
perfectly sweet, and enable him to fish in any
water which may be put at his command.

But to return to the lamperne. All these fish, in
the instance alluded to, were ascending, from the
direction of the sea, to breed, in the same enormous
multitude that the eels descended in for the same
purpose ; only, in the instance of the lamperne, we
have direct evidence of their especial purpose, for,
unlike the eels, the fish are full of ova, or spawn.
Thinking that, perhaps, in London I should be able
to find a sale for lampernes, I caught, and kept
alive, an immense quantity of them, putting tliem
into a pound with a stream running through it,
which I kept for eels at the lower weir. I could,
however, obtain no demand for these fish in
London, and they were useless to me, excc2)t for
my own table, or for burial at the roots of trees.

One other peculiarity which I observed with
regard to these lampernes was, that though con-

EELS AKD LAMPEKNES. 259

fined in a clean stone pound, with from two to
tln-ee feet deptli of water, and a stream from tlicir
native river running through it, they coukl not, or
would not, relieve themselves of their spawn, and,
after a few weeks, they were sure to die.

It would appear, from observations made by me
in the small brooks of the New Forest, and other
little streams which I have visited, that the 1am-
l^ernes ascend all the lesser water-ways which lie
at their command, and that they breed at a very
early age ; for I have seen them making places
for the reception of their ova, and moving and
carrying small pebbles for that purpose ; and the
parent fish, while so engaged, have been but from
three to four inches long. I have also, in the neigh-
bourhood of Avon Tyrell, when, in comjDany
with Mr. Frederick Fane, in search of trout for
store, discovered a small sand-bank, mixed with
gravel and mud, perfectly full of little lampernes,
from an inch to two inches long, though neither
gamekeeper nor labourer in the vicinity ever saw,
to their knowledge, a lamperne breeding in that
little brook.

As to the larger fish of this species, the lamprey,

— of a surfeit of which, it is said, one of our royal

s 2

2 GO FACT AGAIXST FICTION.

Hemys died; but whether the surfeit arose from
the cook or the fish has always been a matter of
some doubt in my mind, — with this larger kind of
river-frequenting fish I am less acquainted. At all
events, by ocular observation, and, for the time,
most clear and close inspection, I have arrived at
a certain and distinct knowledge of the use to
which the lampreys turn their enormously wide
and sack-like mouths.

One day in summer, I was fishing for perch
in the river Stour, in Hampshire, when my servant,
who was idling along the bank above me, and
looking in the deep, clear water for a shoal of
perch, called out that he could see ^Hwo large eels
feeding in the bottom of the river." Upon this
rather strange report, it being the middle of a hot
day, and the sun shining very brightly, I hastened
to the spot to ascertain what it was that the man
really saw. The river, at that particular turn of
its course, swept with a very brisk current over
a clear bottom of clay, without any weeds. On
arriving at my servant's side, I could very clearly
descry two large lampreys, very busily employed,
though their occuj^ation had nothing whatever to
do with food. So intent were they on the duty

EELS AND LAMPERNES. 261

they were performing, that they took not the slightest
notice of us. Clear and transparent as the water
was, in depth, perhaps, about five feet, not a motion
nor an act of the fish escaped my deeply-interested
study. Their occupation was as follows : — They
were boring a hole in the clay, as I supposed,
to dejDOsit their ova, but that is simply conjec-
ture on my part. First one fish and then the
other seized hold of the clay with its round,
extended, and sack-like mouth, and then twisted
round and round for a considerable time, as fast as
a carpenter could use a gimlet ^^ bit-and-brace."

When the then considerably extended mouth
and throat had bored . from the bottom of the
river a large, round pellet of clay, the fish turned
about, and, descending the river for some three
or four feet, he deposited his burden, and was
immediately succeeded at the hole he had left
above by the second fish, who in its turn descended
to deposit the clay, while the former fish again
returned and continued the ojieration. Having
watched this '^ division of labour" for a considerable
time, I resolved to attempt the capture of the fish.
Taking off the single perch hook, I added to
my line a brace of snap-hooks for pike, putting

262 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

a small rifle bullet about four feet above the
hooks, so as to sink the line in the swift current,
and to act as a mark to enable me, before it
could be carried away, to see the exact position
at the bottom that the hooks would take.

My object Avas to get the fish on my side of
the snap-hooks, so that, by a sharp snatch of the
wrist, I should strike the hooks against them.
I cast my line in two or three times before I
could correctly ascertain how far the force of
the current would sway down the line. During
this operation the lampreys took not the least
notice of me, nor did the first two attempts I
made to strike them, both of which failed, disturb
them in their occupation. On the third attempt,
while the fish was screwing out the clay, I struck
it in the side, and landed a splendid lamprey,
— lifting it at once, and as carefully as I could,
from the bottom of the river, lest I should disturb
its companion, who Avas, at the moment, depositing
the clay it had taken at the usual spot where
both fish had placed tlieir former loads.

The lamprey tlms bereft of its companion seemed
not in any way to notice the fact, nor even to
miss its fellow-labourer, but returned to bore out

EELS AND LAMPERNES. 2G3

the clay, when, at the first attempt, I also struck
that fish, and landed it upon the bank by its
comrade. Deeming that Lord Malmesbury, on
whose fishery this capture took place, would be
more abstemious in his diet than England's glutton
king, or had a safer cook, I sent the two fine
lampreys at once to him, as a trophy from his river,
and one very seldom obtained. The united weight
of these two fish was over three pounds.

To vary this somewhat trite discourse upon
fishes, in passing, I will narrate my first act in
conservation of manorial rights and rivers. There
is at Cranford, in Middlesex, a widened pool in
the course of the Crane, near the bridge that
spans the little stream, and carries over it the
great high road. Though very young, and not
a strong boy of my age, I had, when about
twelve years old, taken upon myself to act as
a conservator of the manor, and however I might
have failed in muscular power, my resolution
was to prevent all aggression and infraction of
my mother's jointure rights. Strolling down one
sunny Sunday afternoon in summer, just as I
had surmounted what was then called '' Little
Common Bridge," and had come into full view

26-1 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

of the bofore-montioncd pool, then called by the
somewhat questionable name of ^''' Muddy Reach,"
to mv intense diso'ust I saw the tall fio-ure of a
man standing by the side of the road, and fishing
in that, to me, sacred water. In my mind's eye
I see him now, so keen is my remembrance of
first impressions. lie was an old man, and
of rather a spare habit of body; his nose was
long, and his face of mild aspect, — none of the
ferocity about it which tliat featm-e, the nose,
seems to assume when snubbed in its lofty
proportions, while his eyes beamed mildly through
his spectacles, and spoke of a sweet and affable
S2)irit. Over these featiu-es, and above what
appeared to be the edges of a flaxen Avig, there
l^resided rather a broad-brimmed hat, suggestive
of the simplicity claimed by Quakers, but some-
what repudiated by them when ascending to the
Britjliter scenes of the House of Commons.

Striding up to the side of this mild and
gentle-looking fisherman, I rather startled him
from the contemplation of the nibble beneath
his float by peremptorily demanding ^'what right
he had to lisli there." He turned his eyes
slowly upon me, his questioner, pushing u]) his

EELS AND LAMPERNES. 265

S])ectaclcs to the verge of his flaxen wig — a thhig
wliich, ill after -life, I have frequently seen men
do when intending to take a more distinct
measure of their antagonist, although they liad
previously asserted that they wore glasses to better
their vision.

We confronted each other thus for a moment,
like Puck and Bottom, though there was no
Titania to add a lustre to the scene. On my
again demanding '^ by wdiat right he fislied
there,'' coupled with the command '^ to desist,"
he replied in a mild tone of voice by asking the
question, ^^ What harm am I doing by angling
in this water ? " To this I angrily replied, that
^^no one was allowed to fish there; and that I
should insist uj^on his immediate departure." A
bob or two at his float then withdrew his gaze
from me, and fixed his attention on the water ;
when, on the activity of his' fishing-gear ceasing,
he again regarded me, and, in a mild, firm, but
gentle voice, said, ^^My boy, I am doing no
harm here, and I shall not go " ; and then, re-
adjusting his s|)ectacles, and gazing at his float,
he seemed to subside into that mild, sweet, and
peaceable spirit which Izaak Walton claims to

26G FACT AGAINST FICTION.

liavG felt when impaling' on his barbed liook a
livln^^, writliing, and .sciuciddng frog* !

1 Ills a(]dr(\ss, In wliat, wlicn tlio ^^ young licart
was liot and restless," seemed to nie to be delivorcd
in a cabn, (jouteniptuous manner, made me at once
consider tlie chances of personal collision. In
strength he could master me, no doubt, unless
by some cunning and unexpected blow I could
reduce liis power to a more even footing witli
mine, or make liim, by breaking his spectacles,
pay a penalty for the infraction of the water
right. Scanning his person narrowly, from the
protuberance of liis fob beneath his waistcoat,
and tlie dangling of a cliain and several large
seals, I felt convinced tliere was a large watch
tliere with its glass face outermost; so to assure
myself of being able to obtain damages, I con-
templated taking u}) a stone and assailing tlic
exact spot where I thought the watch must be ;
but, on second tliouglits, I deemed tliat the butt
of his rod being in dangerous proximity to my
shoulders. It would ])e better to abandon the
idea of '^personal" attack, and cast about for a
more advantageous site for active aggression.

Retracing my steps over Little Connnon Bridge,

EELS AND LAMPERNEH. 267

I attained an island wliicli, by the bougli of one
of the oak trees upon it^ by climbing, again
afforded me a descent to a lesser island, on
the other side of which, from the mainland, he
was fishing. I have since seen many a gentle
face suddenly hurt or painfully astonished by the
rude incidents of life, but I never saw the repose
of an elderly figure so completely broken up as it
was on this occasion, when the first heavy stone
flung by me from my previously charged j^ocket
knocked over his float and dashed the water into
his face. Without any apparent loss of temper,
this old man called out to me to desist. The
only reply which this evoked from me was stone
after stone into the water in the vicinity of his
float, driving all fish away, and rendering piscatory
or contemplative success impossible. ^^ Are you
going to continue this annoyance, my little man?"
he mildly inquired. ^^ Yes," I replied, '^you old
interloper, if you continue your tresjDass upon our
water ; " and then followed stone after stone, to
prove my obdurate resolution.

On this, after regarding me attentively, and
making a sort of plaintive chuckle as if of pity,
the old gentleman drew his line from the water.

268 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

and proceeded to take to pieces and put up his
neat little rod. At first I watched him doing this,
proud of my prowess and of the battle I had won,
and thinking of the pleasure it would give me to
tell of the victory to my hrothers. Someho^y or
other, however, there was an impressive grace
and quietude about the old man's hands, as ho
arranged his neat and nicely kept fishing-tackle,
which won upon my hot heart, and induced me
to think that I was a tyrant, and tliat in this
instance my acts were harsh and unkind ; and
when, Avithout another word, he turned to pro-
ceed in the direction of the old Cranford Bridge
Inn, perhaps for one evening to relieve himself
from his laborious work in London, so calm, so
quiet, and so ill-used, but forgiving, did his re-
treating form appear, that I was seized with a
choking sensation, as if I should burst into
tears.

The oak bough from which I had drojDj^ed,
was too high for me to attain again, so I spattered
through the water over a gravelly shoal, and was
soon in full chase of the receding figure. Ap-
parently he had forgotten all about me, and
perhaps forgiven me, for he rather started as my

KELS AND LAMrERNES. 2G9

hasty steps approached his side, hut, turning
round, he stood and intently regarded me.

^^ Sir," I exchximed, and I was ready to cry,
'Svill you forgive me for wliat has passed, and
heHeve that I shall now be very ha23py to see
you fish in my mother's river ?"

After a short pause, in which he still regarded
me, — ^' Yes," he said, ^' I do believe you, my young
friend, and I will fish again, for your amusement,
I am sure, as well as mine."

The rod being again put together, I showed
him the best perch holes and gudgeon shallows,
all of which were well known to me, and saw
him, at half-past eight that evening, proceed to his
inn with a very good dish of fish for supper. I
did not tell this story to my brothers^ for I
thought that perhaps some of them would deride
my conduct on tliis occasion, and laugh at me.

Long years have passed over my eventful life
since then, but I scarce know any one of my
boyish actions which, on reflection, gives me so
much pleasure as this: perhaps it promoted some
of the better phases of action, and suggested to
a generous heart, which ought ever to be in the
breast of a soldier and gentleman, that on every

270 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

event in this world, whether in love or war, when
man is successful, faith to the death, if the fair
fame of w^oman requires it, and generosity and
almost love for a fallen foe, should be the at-
tributes of that man who dares to refer the dog
to a lower order of creation than himself.

CHANGE OF SEASONS AND OF THE TIMES. 27l

CHAPTER XI.

CHANGE OF SEASONS AND OF THE TIMES.

Strikes — AVest Indian Blacks — Protection of Wild Birds — Change
in the Habits of Birds — Decreasing Numbers of many Species
— Advantage of the Gun Tax — Change in the Seasons — Nests
of Eggs Destroyed by Spring Frosts — Confiding Friendliness of
Small Birds — Decreasing Numbers of Pheasants and Partridges
— Political Change — Thunder Storms more often Fatal in their
Effects — How to Meet the Change as regards Game — Geological
Evidence of Change.

It must be, or it ouglit to be, evident to us all
that tlie times — I mean the acje^ not its leader-
are changing fast in various directions, and that
this is not a time Avhen any person or any subject
whatever can be allowed to stand still.

The Communists, the political prattlers, the
mischievous men inconsistently termed liberal, fol'
they are liberal only with other men's possessions
— these and their like have rendered the working
population dissatisfied with their wages and their

272 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

employers, and set tliem against those under wliom
their forefathers for centuries had lived contentedly
and remuneratively, and, in many cases, dying
rich for their calling' in life.

All the activity, all the feverish demand for
change, has been on one side, and it seems as
if the other side stood still, in an apathetic
attitude, leaving any fool or dangerous dema-
gogue to grasp the rudder of the national
craft, to roar and lie his full without contra-
diction, and to give the ship of Great Britain,
in the trade winds, as little way as possible.
Among what once Avas called 'Hhe industrious
population," there are now nothing but '^strikes."
In a strike every idle and ill-disposed labourer is
sure to join, because mischievous iniions in other
quarters advance money; and the idle drunkard,
of course, would sooner be kept on bread and
water, with a drop of gin, when he had the
power to pilfer, and a possibility to steal and sleep ^
than work and eat and drink good meat and beer.

The Avorst, the weakest, and the most mis-
chievous tiling that master-men could do, was,
in the first instance, to give in to a strike, and
a robber-like demand for liigher wages, to men

CHANGE or SEASONS AND OF THE TIMES. 273

extortionate and — wlio sought tliem by villainous
and really unconstitutional means.

I use the term 'Villainous/' for that man is a
villain, as vile as the robber on the highway,
who, with a power in his hands which the villain
uses as the highwayman uses his pistol, forces the
farmer or the artificer to pay him money through
the exigencies of crop, manufacture, and season,
and without which compliance the farmer and
manufacturer, of whatever description, must be
ruined, or, so to speak, resign his life.

The labouring classes here in England, sorry
am I to say it, have been and . are following,
in a dishonest course, the exam23le which, on my
West India property, some years ago, was set
them by the blacks.

The emancipated slaves came to the local
attorney, and said, — '' Your sugar-canes are ripe
for cutting; if they are not cut on the instant
they are ripe, you will lose the crop ; and we
will not cut them unless you give us a bonus (a
very large one) in addition to the wages we have
been and are receiving."

Fearing to lose the crop, the attorney complied,
but, unhappily, complied, as many farmers and

VOL. II. T

274 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

artificers in England have clone, without making
any stijouhitions for the future. These blacks,
then, who were certainly ^' brothers " in spirit to
Messrs. Ogger, Poclger, Badlaw, Dilk, and Dodger,
and similar misleaders of deluded labourers, after
they had cut the crop, very well knew that the
croj) must perish if not immediately made into
sugar; so they went to the attorney again, with
an increased and impossible demand for a further
bribe, so large in amount, that the attorney
feared to comply without first obtaining the sanc-
tion of his employer, who Avas robbed just as
much as if he had been stopped on the highway
and his purse taken from him, not by a single
footpad, but by a force of footpads which rendered
resistance unavailing.

Those who yield to strikes in the first instance
by their own cowardice, entail upon others a
terrible misfortune.

Though the work I am now writing is not
a political work, I cannot help making this
allusion to the times political before I go
on to notice the change in the seasons^
and in the habits and interests of beasts and
birds.

CHANGE OF SEASONS AND OF THE TIMES. 275

Binding my narration, as far as I can, to or-
nithological notes, who ever suspected (I am sure
I did not) that a graceful and ijvotective measure
for wild and beautiful birds should have cnui-
nated from the Gladstone Government, or, at all
events, from its mistaken supporters? yet I find
myself hand and heart with the protective Wild
Birds' Bill, brought in, to my surprise, by Mr.
Auberon Herbert, and afterwards dealt with by
Lord Malmesbury.

The next thing in the change going on that
I might expect to find, would be a Bill brought
in by my former antagonist, Mr. John Bright,
for the better protection of rabbits against the
political plotting of some tenant farmers, and this
he might honestly do on the score of an increase
of food for the people ; but in that instance there
would not be quite so muclij^eason for astonishment,
as it is now known what a vast amount of the
poorer population in the United Kingdom subsist
on rabbits — the dealers in them, under-selling the
butcher, and tlierefore raising the tenant farmer's
wrath.*

* In this allusion to tlie "Tenant Farmer," I merely mean to
attach to some few of them, but by no means to the majority, a

t2

276 J^ACT AGAINST FICTION.

Well, I begin to regard myself as a mile -stone
left on the side of tlie political highway. I
commenced life as a Whig, or, as we were then
called, a '' Liberal," but the drivers of coaches
to consecutive Governments either forgot to give
me a lift, or I fell asleep among the primroses
by the road side, where I seem to have taken
root, until the coach of Liberality, by employing
coachmen of too levelling a laxity, has been
driven into a sort of slough, whence none of
the passengers seem able to escape in any direc-
tion, and all seem bent on pulling eacli other to
the bottom of the bog, in the hope of standing
higher on each other's heads. -*

At one moment Members of tlie House of
Commons, inclined to sedentary or predatory
habits, — politically they often go together, —
assail protection when it is extended to the
beautiful pheasant, partridge, grouse, the deer,
the hare, and rabbit ; at another time they in*
stitute new laws for the protection of gulls and
owls, and other obscenities. Therefore, in passing
on to the change of climate and the alteration

blame arising from their after-dinner speeches, though in tkei?' wine
there was 710 truth.

CHANGE OF SEASONS JmD OF THE TIMES. 277

of tlio liabits of creatures existing in it, it is
well to liave given Darwin's jDolitical ^' Apes''
a short notice, if but to sliow that the world is
still in a state of transition, as proved from the
fossil age down to the present political hour
and the revelations of the London clay.

For very many years I have remarked that a
change has been taking i^lace in the habits of birds.

There was a time when that merrily chirping
little bird, a summer visitant, the house-martin,
used to awaken, of a summer morning, the soundly-
sleeping child with its lively twitterings from its
clay-built nest above the bed-room Avindow. In
that spot whence those sounds proceeded, no bird
now welcomes the dawn of the summer day, or
speaks of health and innocence to the slumbering
child, for with father, mother, brother, and sister
in many instances, the bird seems to have fled
the ancient roof, a sad reminiscence only lin-
gering still. Observant of birds as I have been
all my life, I have no hesitation in saying that,
where the house-martin numbered thousands, there
exist now but very few, and those few decrease as
the seasons pass.

It is not so yet with the sand-martin, swallow, and

278 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

swift, — at least, not yet perceptibly so ; but I fear
the diminution now extends to fieldfare, redwing,
and even to the lark. That partridges, grouse,
and blackgame are decreasing, I have no sort
of doubt, and pheasants are kept up by artificial
breeding. The common pewit, too, is falling off,
and no wonder, as every idle man's hand is
raised against its life and eggs but for the
j)reservation of game on some manorial lands.

When I first came to my present residence, on
the neglected heaths around it there was scarcely a
pewit, and certainly on my own lands not an egg
procurable for my table. Now, from the strict
preservation of the few pewits there were, I have
many pewits, and from their first nests a very good
supply of eggs, the rule being not to interfere
with the second nest, but to let them hatch and
rear their young. The taking of plovers' eggs
should be restricted, so that the gourmand's supply
might nevertheless satiate the appetite, while, after
the feast, the second nests should fare better. I
would bar the taking of plovers' eggs after a certain
day.

Since the gun-tax, every class of birds has felt
the wisdom of it, and the harmony of the woods

CHANGE OF SEASONS AND OF THE TIMES. 279

and hedges has been increased. Within tlie last
six years, from the preservation of game, and
destruction of what were really vermin around me,
and the consequent prevention of trespass for birds' -
nesting among the idle classes, every sort of inno-
cent, l)eautiful, and harmonious bird has increased ;
or, in fact, as on my lawn, they have aj)peared where
they never were before. Regarding the country
from the widest point of view, there will be found
to have been fewer accidents from fire-arms since
the gun-tax has shelved the old fowling-pieces
in the cottages, with their not trustworthy cocks
and triggers, than there were before ; and now
a very good tax might be imposed, as in France,
on the possession of gunpowder. Here let me
again impress on my readers that the cartridges
for the breech-loaders, when boys or beaters bear
the open cartridge-bag in attendance on the gun,
should bo under lock and key, like the bag made
for me by Stephen Grant, in St. James's Street ;
for to my certain knowledge a system of theft on
a large scale, by boys and men, has been estab-
lished, simply for the powder and shot in tlie
cartridges, — the boys stealing the cartridges for
the sake of periodical explosions, or to give to the

280 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

illicit destroyers of game, the men taking them
to serve their own poaching purposes, as need
might be.

The seasons have changed, and with the seasons,
of course, will change the ornithological world.
What has become of the once genial and ^^ merry
month of May"? when London 'prentices and the
London labouring population used to sally forth, as
it was then expressed, '^ a-maying," gathering the
white blossoms of the whitethorn ; in lieu of
which, oftentimes, did they seek them now, they
would shake down on their heads the whiter snows
of lagging winter.

Eooks may have been seen in what was the very
earliest of the spring, bluffed out on the top boughs
of rookeries, as if they had put great- coats on,
gazing on their snow-iilled nests, and wondering
over their chilled eggs, as if in anger that one
sunny day had induced them to deposit hopeful
sources for maternal care. Wild ducks' nests, old
birds and all, to my certain knowledge, have been
buried in snoAV ; but on one occasion, some years
ago, the fall of deep snow happening in the night,
when some of tlie ducks had begun to sit, the
eggs, from being j)i'otected by the double cover.

CHANQE OF SEASONS AND OF THE TIMES. 281

Ing of snow and duck, were not hurt, and the
duck found licr way back to the nest by the
track in the snow she had made in leaving it.
Other nests of eggs also, when the duck did not
sit, Avere in that year not harmed because the
covering the duck herself had put on her eggs,
as Avell as the snow, served for a sufficient pro-
tection ; and besides this, the fall of snow was not
accompanied or followed by much frost.

In other instances, the change of season, has worn
a much more difficult aspect. The frost has come
with wet, but without much snow, and with
such unusual severity for the time of year, that
the cold, of course acting on every humid thing,
absolutely froze the vivifying principle in the
eggs of all kindsj but seized particularly on
those laid in damj) places, whether the old duck,
in the case of ducks, was on the eggs or not
— even the duck's dowiiy breast could not
save the eggs; but the wet she carried on her
breast from the pools or rivers, so necessary in
genial weather to the perfection of hatching, added
to the power of the frost. In the same way, I
have known the earliest nest of the pewits de-
stroyed. A frozen egg will not boil hard; so, for

282 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

many reasons, the beautiful, the living world of
innocent and graceful things, demands greater care
not only from the legislature, but more abstinence
in man from his predatory habits, — protection at
the hands of man, instead of increased destruction.

Late frosts, embittered by high cold winds, with
sleet, hail, and rain, not only destroy the eggs
when laid, but they absolutely stop the course of
successful incubation in the old birds, and they
cease for a time to produce eggs, or, at all events,
to lay them in the nests.

As a proof of this, in cold springs the wild
ducks in my vicinity averaged no more than
from five to seven or eight eggs in a nest,
and at times not more than three. Not a young
wild duck hatched in March by its immediate
parents could endure the cold and live ; and
those that were under foster - mothers, to be
reared by hand at the coojds, with the coops and
mothers to shelter them, the back of the coops to
the wind, and constantly fed with the most nourish-
ing food, not even these young ducks could with-
stand the frost, wind, and wet. My keeper
and his men had to carry the coops to barns,
stables, and sheds, and even then some of the

CHANGE OF SEASONS AND OF THE TIMES. 283

yoimg" ducks, between the delay of carrying
coop by coop, were killed by the inclemency of
the weather.

The same cold weather also drove, within my
immediate supervision, three song-thrushes from
their nests, after each had laid only three eggs,
or two short of their average complement. There
was also another contingency, and that was, the
scarcity of worms, grub, or insect food, and this
most likely also arose from cold ; and nothing
could illustrate this scarcity more than the fact
that those birds who had been fed on the window-
ledge by me, but had left me with the earliest
song of sjoring, came back to me, in that beautiful
reliance which it is my great pleasure to establish
between myself and every bird ; and remembering
where their friend through the winter lived, they
tapped with their beaks against the window, and
scarcely fled when I opened it to give them the
wished-for food. Among them they numbered the
blackbird and song-thrush, the chaffinch and yellow-
hammer, the blue titmouse, the hedge-sparrow, and,
of course, the robins. The house-sparrow came,
whether I liked it or not, and snatched pieces of
food, but fled away when he heard me rate him.

284 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

as I do not regard that bird as an object for
charity. The sparrows know this, and when, from
my breakfast-table, I objurgate their presence on
the window-sill, they fly off, but always with
their mouth full, while not one of the other guests
are the least daunted by the gruffness of the tone
of voice. The thrushes and the blackbirds, during
that cold spring, for a time left off singing; but
as soon as a more genial warmth came, and they
left the window, they sang more than ever, and
had nests full of young, their restful or brilliant
harmony received by me as thanks for my kind-
ness, or as payment for the fruit they intended
to take from my garden in the time to come.
• In regard to pheasants and partridges, there is
much to be inquired into. In years gone by, a
bad pheasant season was rare, and a very bad
partridge season a thing that did not often vex
us; but now, with the change in the seasons, and
the introduction of artificial manures, breech-
loaders, &c., bad seasons for game are consecu-
tive, while, at the same time, the numbers of game
certificated men increase, — I will not call them all
sportsmen, — and the method of the discharge of
the gun, as well as the charging of it, [is fifty

CHANGE OF SEASONS AND OF THE TIMES. 285

times more rapid than it used to Be. Breech-
loaders do not kill so far as muzzle-loaders, but
from the increased and increasing number of
gunners, the fact of two guns or more being per-
mitted to each person, and scarce anything that
arises escaping a shot at it, there is more game
in quantity killed and more cripjDled than there
was in former times, and consequently less game left
for the following year.

When you couple with this another fact, which,
like a great many other things, originated in
ignorance and folly, — I allude to the wholesale
destruction of hen pheasants as well as cocks, — the
decrease of game cannot be wondered at. I have
often asked the giver of the shooting day what
game he will have left to breed on his lands the next
season, if he and his friends shoot every hen that rises.

The reply to this invariably has been, — '^Oh,
they don't breed much in a wild state, I dejoend
on my aviaries and hand-reared birds." And,
with a blush, he might have added, '^I hu/j my
neighbours' eggs."

Very well, then, artificial manure, change in
the seasons, and neglect of the gamekeepers in
the time when birds are laying (where any hens

286 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

are left to lay) to protect the eggs from being
stolen to sell to other aviaries, that may militate
against the wild breed, and so may the mihealthful
natm'c of some soils; but as men canH lay their
own eggs, and the hen pheasant is the only bird
that can furnish the required hrood, how foolish it is
to destroy the source whence tlie best eggs come !
You can have only a certain or limited number
of birds in an aviary, whereas a man with a
large manor can have as many as his acres and
wilds will heathfully carry; and if the soil is
not favourable for pheasants, he can take better
eggs from his own wilds than any he can buy,
and breed them up in addition to those in the
aviaries, leaving the old birds" to help his stock
if they can with a second nest. I have des-
canted on this matter before, but it cannot be
too much impressed on the sj)orting reader.
Wlien, as a boy, I began shooting, a bad par-
tridge season was scarcely or never known. Now
bad seasons follow each other. I have seen, in
August, pairs of old birds packed together, and
known of coveys the number of whose young daily
diminished. If in August you sluing a covey,
and in flying over the standing corn you see

CHANGE OF SEASONS AND OF THE TIMES. 287

some young birds drop mucli sooner tlian others
from inability to continue a consecutive flight,
that is a sure sign that disease is doing its
office, and tliat disease and death will decimate,
if not utterly destroy, the entire nide. Ere
these gradual changes in the seasons commenced,
we used to think that partridges, being later
in nesting than the pheasants, escaped all damage
from frost. But in this change of season they
have no longer that advantage ; while grouse,
in the higher and more northern latitudes, are
even still more exposed to changeful vicissitude.

It is in my remembrance, that if any man found
a woodcock's nest in England, it was chronicled as
a curious fact by the public press. Of late years
woodcocks breed very largely in England. In
the New Forest I knew of nine woodcocks on
their nests at the same period, and I have, in
that ill-used forest, seen their young of all ages.
Snipes, that used always to breed in England,
in spite of DarwiiVs erroneous assertion that ^^they
never did, and do not do so now,'-' breed here
more than ever, and in great nmltitudes. I have,
if my memory serves me rightly, some nine or
ten years ago, made a bag of full-grown snipes

288 FACT AGAINST FICTIOK.

of twenty couples, with some old ones intermixed,
in one day in AiigiiKst, wlien I rented Winkton
and its fishery of the late Mr. Weld, of Lulworth
Castle ; and now they frequently sell snipes' eggs
among the plovers' eggs to the London dealers
and chance customers, and it is almost impossible
to detect the one egg from the other. The colour
of the shell is exactly the same ; the shape is
much the same ; and when boiled, the white in
the egg of each is similarly clear. If possible,
the snipe's egg is the better of the two, only
not quite so large, and at times inclined to be
more pointed at the lesser end.

If birds hitherto deemed to be more hahituated
to colder climes than ours come to this country
thus to breed, that certainly is a sign of change
in the times. If wild geese, wild swans, and
other rarer water-fowl, do not come to us as much
as they used to do, that does not in any way
tend to shake my position, because where man
increases, and drainage of particular sites pre-
dominates, there are some birds who would not
be attracted by a habitation foreign to their
nature ; and, besides this, all wild and beautiful
things invariably decrease as the human race

C11A^GE OF SEASONS AND OF THE TIMES. 289

comes on, or as crime increases with learning among
the lower orders of the present clay, or schism
and dissent from orthodox doctrine increase pre-
cisely with the increase of the churches erected for
the so-called established religion.

If false doctrine, heresy, and schism cannot ^^
be gagged or prevented, — if we are to support
self-styled Liberal Governments, who lust for dis-
ruption and office, and care not for the Consti-
tution, who court the murderer, as in Ireland,
and set tlie Fenian and traitor free, with punish-
ment cravenly commuted, — why, then, if such a .
course of communism were permitted to continue,
there would be ^' a political aspect in the times"
both marked in its changes and in its ruinous
results too terrible for calm contemjjlation. ^^ .

In all the action of the visible world, from the
lightning above to the increase of crimes below,
there is a change going on. Every thunder-storm
has become more or less fatal to living things, and
trees are oftener struck by tlie electric fluid than
they used to be. So rare were the accidents at
one time, that they were alluded to as facts for
wonder ; now, we only wonder if a tlnmder-
storm lias burst without a consequent loss of life.

VOL. II. U

290 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

I have lately liacl a fir-tree smitten by the
lightning, and, curious enough, after running
from tlie top of the tree to the bottom, and
severing the bark, the lightning glanced off, but,
not entering the ground at the foot of the tree,
passed down the carriage-drive close to a boy,
and exj^loded with a noise like a gun on the
ground very near the house. The electricity in
the same storm struck so near to a coop containing
a barn-door hen and a brood of young pheasants,
that, without absolutely touching either, it killed
some of the young birds and prostrated others,
though several of the latter recovered.

Change, except in Parliament, where all has
seemed convulsive, comes on gradually, — so
much so as to be almost imperceptible to the
human eye and brain, because the mind of man
gets used to succeeding novelties, and aA^oids
surprise through the means of an almost imper-
ceptible gradation.

To return to the ornithological tlieme, and
to the interests of the birds of game as well
as to that of the proprietor of the manor,
the following facts ouglit to be taken into con-
sideration. Witli this change from succeeding

CHANGE OF SEASONS AXD OF THE TIMES. 291

good seasons to succeccliiig bad ones, more hen
birds should be S23ared.

The mischief of mowing machines, too, sliould
be thought of, the increased number of gunners,
and tlie rapidity of fire, all should be taken into
consideration, and a greater stock of feathered
game increasingly protected. The most mistaken
custom of permitting keepers to save themselves
trouble in protecting the eggs in the wild nests,
by having all the birds the gun spares in an
aviary, should be done away with. The eggs
of the wild birds may be collected, and the
birds left for a second nest, and thus the stock
might be kept up without the deplorable custom
of purchasing some of your own eggs and many
of your neighbours'.

It is strange, but men of the present day seem
to think that there can bo good eggs independent
of the male birds, and that they cannot kill too
many cocks. Through this strange error, a friend
of mine had on his manor about five hundred
bad eggs, which, of course, though put under
hens, came to nothing ; and, in a second instance,
a similar thing happened on a manor with which
I am well acquainted.

u 2

5 9 2 FACt AGAINST FiCTION.

Foolish gamekeepers hate a hxrge stock of male
birds, simply because theij think their crowing when
they go to roost attracts the poaching thief. They
also hate to have many cocks in smnmer, because
the crowing of the male bird indicates the where-
abouts of the female's nest. All cock pheasants crow
in summer, master birds and younger birds, and
the more there are, the more deluded as to the spot
of a plieasant's nest the intending thief will be.
Some 2)eople, masters and keepers, dislike white
or pied pheasants, because they think tliat ''they
attract thieves." If I thought they did, I would tie
a lantern to the bird's tail, if I could catch him, to
add to the attraction, for then the capture of a
2)oaching thief would be more easily effected than
it is now.

I recommend a larger stock of both hen and cock
pheasants to be kejDt on the lands than is absolutely
needed for breeding purposes, because then if it is
a bad season, as it so often is now, you have some-
thing in hand to shoot at. As to partridges, I have
heard lords of manors say, '' It is no use hand-rear-
ing partridges, for they pack, and in the shooting
season you can't get near them." So much the
better then ; you can shoot liarder on the wild-bred

CHANGE OF SEASONS AND OF THE TIMES. 293

birds, knowing* that for eggs you can fall back on
those round the house, for wild though those hand-
reared birds may be in the shooting season, they
will return, as spring approaches, to the spot where
they were reared, and be certain to give you a good
stock at home.

It is possible to kill too many partridges on a
given site, just as it is possible to kill too many of
any other kind of birds ; therefore, to all my brother
sportsmen I recommend judicious moderation and
circumstantial guidance. We are attached to the
scene of the home where we were born, w^e love our
old play-grounds, and there is in every man's breast,
more or less, an attachment to the site of his birth,
which years of joy or misery elsewhere cannot
obliterate. The heart of a bird beats in a similar
direction, and, though gifted with wings, the bird
never entirely forsakes the field or wood that first
met its eyes when peeping, from the brooding
breast of its mother, at the first glories of the rising
sun. It would be well, as the change in ^^ the times"
continues, and as change has for once had the better
of position now, to seek that mysterious throne of
truth, the cavcrned breast of ages gone, whence facts
indisputable are handed down to man if he will

294 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

only seek for tlicm, in a handwriting on a wall of
imperishable rock, that does not and cannot vanish.
Bcncatli the walls of the modern Babylon, below
the fomidations of palace and prison, in the truthful
clay beneath London, lie secrets that tell us that
the climate of our little isle and of the continent
was then far colder than it is even yet become;
that races of reptiles, huge animals, and birds have
passed away, and made room for those with which
we now are conversant.

If we go further into the congealed trutlis locked
up in the cabinets of creation, we find irrefragable
proof that climates have changed altogether; that
those animals which were once the inhabitants of
hot and sultry climes lie now beneath a colder
hemisphere ; and that the elephant, which, within
the memory of man, is only to be found beneath a
torrid zone, had been clothed, in times long gone
by, with a rough, shaggy coat, to protect him from
a polar winter.

THE LOVES OF THE INSECTS. 295

CHAPTER XII.

THE LOVES OF THE INSECTS.

Harmonious Amusement — Wonderful Intelligence shown by a
Beetle — Interrupted by a Butterfly — Fleas — Loves of the
Dragon-Fly — A AValk Round the Water — Water Newts — A
Hard Struggle for Victory — Insect Food found in the Crop of
a Pheasant — Angry Ants — Ant Tramps — Human Tramps.

At the commencement of this chapter, let it be
understood, not only by the scientific and general
reader, but by all his sul)ordinates in letters, with
or without purchase of my Avork, that I do not
profess to be an entomologist. It is in my family
to be so, for my brother, the present Earl of
Berkeley, when a boy, left off birds'-nesting, and
sought the humbler nest of the wild bumble
bee, his (my brother's) proclivities being operatic,
for he cared nothing for the habits of insects,
their honey, nor how much he thwarted them,
but his delight was in their angry ^^mm." Often
and often have I seen him seated, meditatively.

296 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

on the gTound, a small straight twig from a nut
bush or some other tree in his hand, twirling
it round, as if, according to a fabulous power of a
^'rod divining" the site of water, but in reality in the
enjoyment of a stifled chorus of angry bees beneath
him, on the orifice of whose homestead he had
securely and safely seated himself, having first
stirred up their angry notice by an insertion of
the enlivening twig. The bees couldn't come
out, and, for a time, he dared not get up, or,
as Burns says, —

" The bees would have flown out wi' angry fyke.
When men so seated closed their byke."

Had my brother risen from his melodious posi-
tion before the wearied bees had come to the
not honeyed conclusion that the world had turned
upside down, and that they must try an exit
from the other side of their home, he, in all
probability, would have paid dearly for his
harmonious pastime.

Darwin on ^ Crustaceans ' (pp. 33-4 and 335,
vol. i.), asserts, ^Hhat the mental powers of these
^ creatures ' are probably higher tlian might have
been expected." But I do not see why we should,
under existing circumstances, attribute less intelli-

THE LOVES OF THE INSECl'S. 297

gence or mental action to the crab than we know
to he exhibited by various insects — the bee, the
ant, the hornet, wasp, and spider. Mr. Gardner's
observation on the ^^ shore crab" and the shells,
shows in the crab a reasoning ijower based on a
necessity for precautionary measures in regard to
moving other shells to a distance because one
had ftillen into the hole that the crab was making.
Leaving out the wondrous instincts and almost
reasoning powers exhibited by the insects I have
named, I will match their actions and those of
all the crustaceans put together by what I myself
witnessed on the heath near Bournemouth while
watching a beetle.

I am not entomologist enough to name the
beetle, but he was nearly as long as a moderately-
sized was}), but thinner, and his sides were red,
his shoulders of a brownish black, and the portion
of his figure below his waist was of a brownish
grey. Lying down on the heath above Bourne-
mouth, and resting on folded arms, my face to
the heather, I saw this beetle carrying that which,
from their relative sizes, seemed to me to be a
heavy burden, with great sjoeed and curious
care ; so I watched his proceedings with interest,

298 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

under an impression that lie was about carrying
a large, cloublecl-ii]), dead spider, wliicli I made it
out to be, to liis home. There was much that
was clever in the way he held the spider, for ho
never let it impede his way by coming in contact
with the ground, and, by deviations, he prevented
it striking against the stalks of heather and heath
grass that closely neighboured him on either side.
In his progress, he obviously paused slightly at
the foot of an occasional stalk of heather, which
at first I set down to his considerino; how to
avoid contact ; but it was no such thing ; the rea-
soiling insect had a purpose beyond mere instinct,
which at first I did not dream of. On he went
till he arrived at another heath-stalk, then he
paused a little longer, and, having dej^osited his
burden at the foot of it, he proceeded to climb
deftly, what to him must have been a consider-
able tree. Arrived at the summit, he examined
the small forks and fibrous formation of his lofty
position with considerable care, and then descended
to where he had left his spider, which he again
took up and carried off as before. In a little
while the same thing was enacted again, and,
setting his burden down, he ascended another

THE LOVES OF THE INSECTS. 299

stalk of iieatlier, returning, after some research,
to resume liis burden, and to resume his earthly
progress. I Avas more than once obliged to shift
ni)^ position to keej) him in view. For the third
time he did the same as to leaving his dead
game, ascending the heather-stalk, to him a tree,
and looking at its formation ; but when he came
down again it was, on this occasion, not to re-
sume his game and to carry it further on, l3ut
he picked it up and climbed with it into the
io\) of the heather, which at last he evidently
had found suitable to the object he had in his
veasonmg mind. Then, in a fork of the heather,
which he had previously and of aforethought ascer-
tained to be shaped in the desired way, he safely
deposited, or, as we should say, hung up his dead
game out of harm's way, when, leaving it there,
and coming again to the ground, he commenced
ranging his forest at much greater sjDced, and
mucli in the way that my Irish setters quarter the
ground when ranging the stubbles for partridges,
or the moors for snipe.

Alas ! I could have continued this entomological
research into succeeding hours, for the beetle had
fascinated me, and I wanted, with the longing of

300 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

a huntsman, to see him find and kill the fresli
game he was evidently beating for ; alas ! —

'' There are bucks and raes,
On Billliope braes,
There 's a herd in Shortwood shaw ;
But a lilyvvhite doe in the garden gaes,
An' she 's fairly worth them a'.''

A butterfly J we will call it so, then came over
the brow of the moor, so modestly gay, so
winsome of flight, so gracefully afoot, and so
attractive to my chivalrous proclivities, that the
beetle and his sporting attributes were eclij^sed,
and, applying to myself the words of the song,
" Poor insect, what a little day is thine,"

I set about dedicating to the butterfly that high-
souled lofty homage which beauty ought ever to
command.

Well, then, to descend from heaven to earth,
or, at all events, from the regions of air to the
more lovely things that, each a lesson in itself
to boastful man, wend their way through life's
intricacies.

Wherever we look we see, or we ought to see,
that after all instinct is really more or less reason,
and an object can dwell in tlie brain even of tlie
flea and the New Forest fly, beyond the love of

THE LOVES OF THE INSECTS. T^Ol

blood. It is not mere instinct that leads a flea
to ascertain the only spot in the frame of the
dog whereon he can enjoy complete freedom from
distm^bancOj and obtain rest, and not hopeless but
hopless sleep.

There is a philosopher very aptly named for
the theme on which he cleverly descants, ^ Hunt
on the Skin ' ; and any observant person may see
the dog closely nibbling with his teeth to catch
his tormentors, or scratching vigorously at them
with his hind toe-nails, pursuing Ids '^ hunt on
the skin" in all parts of his person save the
rearmost portion of his loin, where it closely abuts
on the root of the stern or tail. ^ To that spot
he cannot attain^ and at that spot^ not deviating
an inch beyond this Alsatia, do the dog's fleas
resort; they go there for rest, — it is only for
refreshment that they wend to otlier districts.

This same anatomical reason is possessed by the
New Forest fly ; he is different from all otlier
forest flies. His powers are so great, that he
can unseat a regiment of dragoons if they cross
his wilds, and an army dare not picket by night
in his vicinity, or all the horses Would break loose.
He feasts on blood, but Nature, for some occult

302 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

reason of mlscliicf, lias armed his legs with a poAver
to ticklcj or perhaps to wound, so that his assaults
are unbearable to animals not bred in his vicinity.
No blow from a tail can crush him, not even a
cow's head, when she flings it back upon her
shoulder; and the only certain way of putting
him to death is to pull him in two.

All day long he pesters and feeds on and all
over the cattle ; but as night approaches, the
forest flies gather together in a black mass
in the comfortable sweet hollow that lies be-
tween the root of the tail, the hip, and back-
bone of kine. The cow cannot reach them there,
nor does she desire to do so, for they all seek
the spot to go to bed together, and to cease
from their daily toil, to alee]) and get up early
for further mischief.

We will now refer to that little noticed, and
seldom descanted on theme, the loves of the dragon-
fly. In this there is much that is curious, and, as
far as I can ascertain, a vast deal that is not
accounted for, both in their loves, incubation, and
action in depositing their eggs.

If the Rev. J. G. Wood, M.A., F.L.S., &c.,
who, according to Messrs. Routledge & Co.,

LOVES OF THE INSECTS. 303

translatcclj revised, and edited the well-known
French author, Alphonse Karr's ' Tour round my
Garden,' has not taken great liberties with the
matter he had in hand, I feel disposed to rebel
furiously against the French action as imputed
to men in regard to '^ making love."

But let us quote the exact words, as revised, and,
perhaps, altered by the reverend gentleman, Mr.
Wood ; and for myself let me, at least, hoj^e that
if he (Mr. Wood) is married, he neither forced
himself by '^annoyance" into holy matrimony,
nor '^ rushed" towards his bride and ^'carried her
off by the throat."

These are his words: — ^^ Their manner (the
dragon-flies) of making love is singular for insects,
although hi/ no means uncormnon luith men ! It is
by perseverance and the annoyance they cause by an
almost hostile assiduit}^, that the males succeed in
seducing the beauty that has won their hearts,
generally from the middle of September till the
middle of October." Alphonse Karr, or his
translator, then goes on to say, — ^^ The female
glitters coquettishly in the sun ; a blue male per-
ceives her ; he rushes towards her, seizes her by
the throat, and carries her off through the air, and

304 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

will not let her go till slie lias consented to ^e^ya^cl
his flame.''

Now, let the clergy speak for themselves, and not
attribute to us, the laymen, even an approach to
any such violent method of making love. Among
us, the laymen, it is very uncommon to win, or to
seek to win, by ^^ annoyance," or seizing girls
with whom we are in love by the ^' throats," what-
ever tlie clergy may do. On the part of those
beautiful insects, the dragon-flies, who take their
mates, not in the autumn, '^ Sej^tember and October,"
but more often in the hottest and calmest days
of midsummer, double instances of courtship onaij
be seen, very contradictory to the position of the
translator or author. I positively repudiate the
notion of any rude '^ seizure," such as the reve-
rend divine suggests. The poor dear things have
no hands ; they can't go forth in the summer-day
arm-in-arm like I thought that clergymen did ; but
in all amiable felicity and gentleness, having no
hands, the male fixes his tail in the back of the
head of the female, as the handiest part for
transportation, and then, making use of their
light wings in unity, not the least objection on
either side, and by loving and common consent.

LOVES OF THE INSECTS." od^)

tliey may ho seen hovering over tlie lucid pools, or
rej^osing on tlic leaf of the water-lily, or on the
forget-me-nots on the Lank of the stream or pool.

When the female lays her eggs, — and this fact
is an extraordinary one, as eggs generally are a
scquiter to bliss, — the two dragon-flies thus happily
conjoined may be seen hovering over a spot above
the still water, using their powers of flight in
unison, the male kindly consenting to a continuance
of dips at the water to enable the tail of the female
to touch and drop her eggs upon the surface, when,
by the laws of gravity, they sink to the bottom.
There is no rudeness, no persecution, in this, — no
abrupt seizure or forcible detention. In truths such
a method of love-making as that described would,
according to any experience of mine, be ''espe-
cially tmcomnion among men." So for the laity,
as well as for the poor dear insects, I repudiate in
gentle, 1)ut firm terms, the allegations of the reverend
Mr» Wood, and his friend, Al2:)honse Karr.

Now, kind reader, — as it is the fashion to call
every " reader," though some of them sit down to
the work they are perusing with bitter wishes and
a gibing pen, — come with me, not for " a Avalk round
my garden," but for a walk with me ''round the

VOL. II. X

30G FACT AGAIIXST I^ICTION.

water," and let us look at the curious habits of the
clragon-flies. There tliey are, some of them conjoined
in pairs, as before described, di})ping' up and down
over a given spot for the tail of the female at
intervals to toucli the water. Look at that appa-
rently heavy dragon-fly, who wings by with rather
laborious action ; there is not one fly, but two, only
the female needs repose ; and for this purpose, while
the loving male still holds to the back of her head,
she doubles herself beneath him, and, passing between
his legs, aflixes her tall to his chest or throat, thougli
not in savage guise, thus comfortably assisting him
to hold her weight without additional assistance from
her passive wings, they proceed to rest in each other's
embraces on some broad leaf above the Avater.

Among the dragon-flies their colours differ
greatly. They are blue, red, and variegated^
but occasionally may be observed, in single in-
stances only, according to my experience, a huge
and brilliantly-beautiful specimen of this genus j
ncjt only about the water, Ijut at great distances
from it, wlio seems always to be in search of
something, or to have an inordinate aj^petite for
the sport of devouring small flies. He, she, or
it, whichever it is, is so large, that the wings

LOVES OF THE INSECTS. 307

make an almost jiDgling* noise ; and one day one
of these gigantic dragon-flies came into my
drawing-room, through the open window, and
hovered over our heads. We named liim the soul
of a discarded lover, for there was no other lover
there but me.

What with farming, fishing, shooting, and
hunting, thank Heaven ! I have much sylvan
and rural felicitv, — still I have but little time
to look closely into the more minute details of
creation, and to study insect and reptile life as
closely as I could otherwise find it amusing to
do ; yet with eyes always open, as I have said
before, I read a lesson everywhere — and a lesson,
too, that a long life does not get to the end of
while life lasts. Now for the little Avater-newt,
and the poor pool of his selected habitation.

I was in the woods one day, spade in hand,
digging out a swamp to bare or expose the water
that percolated beneath the moss, for the en-
couragement of fowl. In one s})ot, about two
delves of the spade had opened out a little shallow
pool, and at this point of my labour I sat down
to my sandwich and flask of sherry. On return-
ing to the spot thus alluded to, the water had

x2

oOS FACT AGAINST FICTIOX.

filled in ])erfectlj clear, to tlie depth of about
six inclics, and tlic following aquatic scene in
insect and reptile life presented itself. The spade
had divided a largish wornij and two large water-
newts had swallowed either end of one portion of it
as far as they could get it down their throats, and
were angrily pulling the one against the other, in
the hope of a substantial meal, and the possession of
a treasure. Neither could gain any advantage, for
the two ends of the coveted morsel were jammed
into their jaws, and, besides this, each held fast in
order not to lose the prize. Assembled around them
were six or seven lesser water-newts, and a flock
of nasty-looking black water-beetles, all deeply
interested in the struggle, and all, no doubt,
though afraid to interfere, ready to seize on any
crumbs that might fall from the great newt's
table. This struo^f^-le amused me for a con-
siderable time, and, though I transferred my
attention and labour to other places, when I left
off work the two combatants had still hold of
cither end of the worm, while the expectant or
observant snuiller fry had considerably dispersed,
as if they thought the battle, unlike the worm,
would never have any end.

LOVES OF THE INSECTS. 309

In the ^ Tour round my Garden,' the editor,
or author, describes an insect on the ^^leaf of a
2:>each-trec of the size of a grain of millet-seed,"
page 208, from which source he deduces a would-
1)0 illustration of ^'what the Romans required of
woman, to spin her wool and keep her house";
but such references in purple, to my mind, are
beside the mark, and I will not be led to follow
the reverend reviser into the outward and visible
signs of scholastic study, — mine is an unvarnished
tale, and I only speak of what / hiow. On one
occasion I had shot, quite on the outside of tlie
manor, a fine cock pheasant, in splendid condition,
and the bird was known to have haunted that
spot for some time. I had not fed artificially in
the places of his resort, alid it was too late in
the winter for there to be any superfluous grain
left about the arable lands ; there were no acorns
in the vicinity, nor beech-masts, yet still tlie
bird was fat. There did not seem to be much
of anything in his crop, and what tliere was
seemed soft to the touch — not like grass nor
turnips, but clammy, and of a close substance.
On inspecting the crop, it contained tlio small,
very small, blister-looking spot that may be found

310 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

cliirino^ tlio winter on the lower side of the fallen
oak-leafj and which little kind of blister, about
tlie size of a threepenny piece, or not so large,
generally contains a minute white maggot. This
spot, with its inhabitant, the pheasant pecks from
the leaf, and on this the pheasants maintain
themselves in good condition.

I have not time to investigate the interesting
insect to which this tiny maggot l3elongs. It only
came within my observance within the last year or
two, but no doubt the author of ' A Tour round
my Garden ' will deduce from it some intimate con-
nexion with tlie inhabitants of mighty and departed
nations, and leave us to digest the dilemma of
wliat the one can by any possibility have to do
with the other.

Darwin, thouo^h with an imagination wild and
daring in its flights, i.-^ the only author I have
ever read who knows anything of the loves of
the draffon-flv ; but, as tlie history of its affections,
of its methods and its manners, may be studied
by the water-side anywhere on any warm and
windless summer-day, or by tlio side of w\\ pools
upon the moor, if a student — or, better, a stu-
dcntess — likes to walk with me to investigate

LOVES OF THE INSECTS. 311

the mysteries of nature, tliey can look on that
picture (the ^ Tour round my Garden ') and on
this, and then form their own conclusions.

Anybody wisliing to amuse an idle quarter of
an hour may make himself some entomologic fun
hy going to one of the large wood-ants' nests,
and, with a stick, putting aside the top of it,
and stirring up the crater of the living little
Vesuvius. Then, the crater of the nest thus
hollowed out and exposed, without touching tlie
nest, he can lean over it, and put his arm and
bare hand, without getting near enough to the
sides for the ants to touch him, and then let him
feel their assaults and watch their actions. Every
ant will man, as it were, the sides of his infracted
fort, and every ant will he on his hinder legs
or haunches, and the aggressive hand of man
will feel just as if it Avas being slightly iced,
or put into an ice - pail without contact with
the frozen contents. The position assumed by the
outraged ants is thus accounted for, — they sit up
to spit at the intruder.

After the hand is withdrawn, it will have a
decided smell upon it, as of having been in contact
with vinegar. It is very curious to watch these

312 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

ants wlion climbing tlio trees or crawling along
boughs in search of food. A solitary ant, when
wending Ju's waij iij), if he comes to a spot where
two or three l)rahches diverge, will pause, and
seem to hold communion with himself This pause
is necessary to him ; for in its short duration ho
makes out which course had been pursued by some
other ant beating the beat before him, and he
takes care not to go over the same track, — just as
a man would do, if there was an earlier shooter
on the ground before him. I made this out b}^
watching several ants in their ascent of trees,
and always discovered that one would not follow
another if he could help it. These ants reminded
me of tramps and gipsies, 'as well as of sports-
men; ''poor insects," indeed! '' what a little day"
it is that is assigned to all of us I Tramps,
when more rife than they are now, — except on
a tramp preserve of a parson near me, who,
though a nmgistrate, assigns them land to halt
and live on, in spite of law and the orders of
the police to move them on, — never would follow
the beiTirinu' or thievin<2r line of each other. So,
there being '^ honour among thieves," the preceding
tramp or family of tramps, when country roads

LOVES OF THE INSECTS. olo

or lanes divergoci at particular points, always left
a mark hj the road-siclc to sliow which way the
preceding tramp or tramps had gone. The marks
w^ero very trifling, and scarcely noticeable, except
to a practised eye. The first I fomid I mistook
for a poacher's mark opposite a '^ muse'' in the
hedge, to denote the position of his snare ; now
I am more alive to the arts of the tramping world,
and am down on a good many of their dodges, as
the divine before alluded to keejos me in practice.
The marks these tramps put on entrance-gates or
gate-posts arc slight enough to look at, but still
ample to warn beggars of the different receptions
they are likely to meet with if they touch on
the forbidden ground.

314 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

CHAPTER XIII.

ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS.

Demolition and its Consequences — Agitation — Cobden's Prognos-
tications, and what they have come to — Peace and War — ■
Increasing Supply of the ]\Iaterials of War — Crime on the
Increase — Justices of the Peace and Rural Criminals — Uncer-
tainty of Conviction,

It is very curious^ in this world of change, self-
seeking, and sedition, to watch, from the retirement
of private life, the throes of the disaffected in their
endeavours to pull down the temple, which when,
if ever, it falls, is sure to crush them in its ruin,
— to crush the demaoroo^ue and self-asserted Man of
tlie People out of all shape and feature, while at
the same time tliere will arise from the debris of
destruction the honest and capable politician.
Like the growth of some sylvan shruh beneatli
an avalanche from tlie hill-side, the really useful
patriot will rise again and ascend above the shape-
less mass, his stepping-stone the skeleton of decay.

ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, 315

Agitation for no o'ood end seems, in Imndreds

"o

of cases, to be the Ijlatant food on wliicli some
men live. They can't be quiet nor let others
be contented, but advocate strikes, leagues, and
unions for mischief, of course craving imder false
pretences for subscriptions, that they may keep
the caldron of cavil boiling, in order that its steam
may attract the unwary, and prompt to robbery,
hope for food and an impossible comfort which
never comes. According to the late Mr. Cobden, —
who, I sincerely believe, was a conscientious pleader
for impossibilities, — when the law of free trade passed,
Russia, Prussia, Austria, and France, were to be
'' crumpled up like a sheet of waste paper," if any
of those nations dared to disturb the general peace.
Swords Avere to be turned, by the action of free
trade, into hoes and harrows — bows and arrows
would have been far more likely, if we had been in
iirnorance of the bettor munitions of war; war-
liorses, no longer wanted for the big guns, were to
be harnessed to the plough, cannon turned into
culverins for sewers, and soldiers into milkmen and
mowers for tlie rural harvest of those expected
peaceful times.

If Cobden could look from his grave and see

316 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

tlie result of liis prognostications, his ^'unadorned
eloquence," what would he behold, now? Free
trade refused in America and France, and objected
to more or less all over the world, more murderous
artillery invented than ever, better-drilled soldiers
of standing armies, some of them, too, of all arms,
and those mighty nations which, by the ascend-
ancy of industry among tradesmen, farmers and
lienwives, were to have been crumpled up if they
presumed to frown at each other, in a very few
years engaging in fight, with results more san-
guinary, more terrible, and fraught with graver
consequences, than had ever been thought of in
Mr. Cobden's time. The study of each nation,
in spite of free trade, now is to produce the best
system of soldierly drill, and to invent the most
powerful cannon for the destruction of man. At
sea, in the fortress, in the field, nations now vie
Avith each other in the invention of deadly mischief
to the foe.

Practice has proved that tlie Ijcst - drilled
army, the largest and most lieavy artillery, and
the readiest sword to fly from the scabbard, have a
million-fold more power to keep the peace, tlian
all the corn-oTowinf2r maudlin cono-rcsses i:>'athered

ox VAKTOrS STTB.TFXTS'. *)17

togetlier by any eloquence, adorned or unadorned^
that ever was listened to in tlie House of Commons
or elsewliere. Directly on this peace-asserting free
trade J we have had certainly three of the most
bloody wars that ever raged between the nations
of the earth. In that mis-called centre of a boasted
freedom, America, men in civil war murdered each
other with a ferocity scarcely equalled ; England,
France, and Sweden had before assaulted Russia.
Prussia then marched over Austria, and afterwards
crushed the floAver of the chivalry of France, the
cry of '^ a Berlin" circumstantially adhered to by
French prisoners going to Berlin on coercion,
instead of conquest. To them a sad reverse to
their desires.

This ^-crumpling up of nations" with the
mills of free trade, then, was an ^^ unadorned"
mistake; a ''mill" of more combative grind took
the place of grain, and garnished Imperial halls
witli trophies of anything l3ut universal peace.

It is an egregious fallacy to suppose that men,
that nations, can be kept from fighting. Com-
bativeness is as much the gift of Em^jerors, as
mischief is the ruling passion of demagogues, or
theft the motive of the tliief. Nothing that human

'il8 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

ingenuity can devise, either by education^ exten-
sion of cottage comfortSj religious example, or
clmrcli discipline, will make a population any
better than it is their gift to be. I have watched
what is termed the progress of learning and reli-
gious education, as it is fondly called, step by step,
year by year, for half a century, and at the end of
tliat half century for the life of me I cannot see
that the population is one bit improved, that crime
has become less frequent or less villainously vile, or
that murder has shrunk from its sanguinary pur-
pose. Let us look the facts in the face, and not
shrink from an unpalatable truth.

Wife-murder, child-murder, assaults on women
and children, have increased, and not increased in
merely the same ratio as the growth of the popula-
tion, but hand-in-hand, numerically speaking, crime
and education have advanced side by side; of tlie
two, crime has outstripped the schoolmaster. If
my readers doubt this, let them search the statistics
of the Police.

The real fact is, that the la^vs of the country do
not now speedily and sufficiently punish evil-doers,
— tlie murderer, the thief, and the A'ilest offenders.
They execute the foul murderer as if they, the

ON VARIOU-S SUBJECTS. 310

officers of justice, were asliamed of their appointed
duty, and the press of the day speak of the nio.'st
unmitigated rascals who were about to he hung
with deep interest and commiseration, and inform
their readers what an appetite the biped brute had
on the eve of death, how calmly he slept, and how
cordially he shook hands with the sheriffs and the
chaplain, after eating a very hearty breakfast.

Why let such a biped brute have luxuries that
many other biped brutes would commit murder
for, if they were sure of getting them ? Why, if
you want to decrease the parochial expenditure,
do you permit thieves and vagabonds, who will
not do any honest labour, to enter and throng
the unions, and do as they did at the Brentford
Poor- Law Union, swill wine, spirits, porter, and
beer to such an amount that it made it difficult
for any looker-on to deem otherwise than that
the imion officers, nurses, and paupers all got in*
toxicated together ?

Our prisons and our Poor Law Unions are mad(*.
so much more comfortable to their inhabitants
than tlie arches under the railway and similal'
dark dens can be, that the villains and villainesses
commit small crimes on purpose to escape honest

'>20 FACT AGAIXST FICTIO^^

labour, to p;ct liousecl for tlic winter by committal,
and to drink as they did at Brentford. I speak
as a Justice of Peace of very long standing, and
also as a Foreman of Grand Juries, and I know
that for a man of the working classes to call on
God to witness, by his oath, the truth of what he
says, is no more binding to his, the swearer's,
conscience than if he had sworn, as actors in a
theatre do, by the large centre chandelier.

The entire working population seem to consider
direct perjury as the best means of defence. To
prove an alibi, by sending to the nearest low
beer-house, the resort of tramps, who are just at
that time passing by, and will be off the next
day, is the, constant habit of the accused. Tliere
they can always obtain well got-up men and
women to attend at the Petty Sessions, who, one
and all, having consulted beforehand together,
swear to the same lie, and before a bench of
magistrates at Petty Sessions, if there are Parsons
there, they are sure to be believed. Of course^
it is impossible to rebut their false testimonyj save
by the oath of the prosecuting witliess, and it is
Ciuious to see how a bench of magistrates will
cling to tlie defence made by non-resident and

ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. o2i

unknown witnesses when placed side by side with
the sworn accusation of one or two honest and
responsible men.*

I have seen a magistrate, a clergyman, having
to do with one of these false witnesses, after
the witness, by a low attorney, had been examined
in chief, and then cross-examined by the prose-
cutor, recur to tliat witness again, and take a
further examination of him while he stood behind
the bar, in the company of his fellows. I have
seen a magistrate allow a headborough, who had
been summoned and fined for committing an
offence, on his application, half-a-crown for serving
tJie summons on himself; I have heard a Chairman
of Petty Sessions very properly rebuke another
magistrate, who was a clergyman, for gross and
illegal conduct on the Bench : and with such
examples as these, and many others that could
be adduced, there are people still who set their
faces against the abolition of the Justices of the
Peace, and tlie substitution for that body of a
paid Judge, on the plan of the County Court.

'" If testimony on oath from either side clashes, then it becomes
a question which is the most reliable source whence it comes, and
decision should be arrived at accordingly.

VOL. II. Y

322 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

There can be no sort of doubt that if a magis-
trate was not deemed, by the Legiskitnre, judge
enough to act in petty cases in his own house,
Avhere, if they applied for it, any portion of the
public might have been admitted, the same class
of judicial functionaries had better not be called
on to legislate in a conclave held in open court.
Lord xilbemarle attempted a most excellent remedy
when he moved this consideration in the Peers ;
but he was in error in urging as one of the
reasons that it was wrong to entrust the decision
of cases to gentlemen who often owned the
property against which the crime had been com-
mitted, because they, the magistrates, on account
of their position, would have a strong bias against
the accused.

This is not so ; it is precisely the other wa^^
Benches of magistrates are so nervously afraid
of being charged with a partiality for conviction
in poaching cases and other rural thefts and mis-
demeanors, and they are, so to S2)eak, such very
impartial judges, that they commit themselves
much more frequently than those who are brought
before them.

The Bench, as at present constituted, puts clergy-

ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 323

men, when placed on it, in a very disagreeable,
as well as mischievous position ; for, wishing to
cuny favour, perhaps, with their parishioners,
and lean to the sinner, or what they call the
side of mercy, as they invariably do, — perhaps on
the score of charitable feelings, perhaps because
the thief or sinner is a liypocrite, and goes to
church, and is immensely loud in his responses
and aniens, in order to gull the parson, as he
very often does, — all clergymen shrink from being
useful to the community in a judicial position.

For myself, as a game-preserver and as a farmer,
if I catch j^eople within the bounds of a borough
offending in any way against the laws, short of
compounding a felony, I religiously abstain from
proceeding against them, for it is utterly hopeless
to obtain justice from a Bench so circumstanced.
Even in the County Court, presided over by an
excellent public Judge, if the accused prays a
jury, consisting, in all probability, of five men
the colleagues of the poacher or the thief, who
are permitted to form the jury, not being jocr-
sonally or by character known to the side having
a right to object, the Judge of the court, whatever
his charge may be, is set at defiance, and a

V ^

o^^ r^ACT AGAINST FICTION.

verdict returned utterhj at variance luith the
evidence.

Some legal interference ought to be allowed
with juries thus constituted, for, in a borough,
if a gentleman brings a case before the tradesmen-
magistrates, among whom there is very often a
great jealousy, if the gentleman resident near
the town wlio comes before the County Court
happens to deal with a man not a magistrate;
and ihere is a tradesman of the same calling who
is a magistrate, the latter will set his flice against
the gentleman because he has not dealt with him.

You may make what are called improvements
in the dwellings of the poor, but 3^ou cannot
make the poor think them improvements.

You may teach boys at school to know that
theft is called a crime, but you cannot make them
refrain from stealing apples or other property.

Theft and a tendency to all sorts of crimes
are, in a portion of the lower classes of the
population, born, and bred, and grown to maturity,
in their breasts, and not all the j^i'cachings of all
the parsons in the world, nor all tlie rods of
schoolmasters, will lead or scare them from it.
The highest and most honourable feelings of

ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 325

county magistrates, soldiers, and gentlemen, —
men wlio would risk death at tlio cannon's moutli,
— Avill shrink from tlioir duty to some extent,
rather than let vulo-ar thieves or low attornevs
charge them with pa>rtiality, groundless and
uncalled-for as such a charge may be. A
■public Jadije^ paid to administer the laiv, is not
thus hampered. He has a task to perform com-
pletely indej^endent of any local bias of any
sort or description, and he will fearlessly, and
according to the exact letter of the law, do his
duty. The time 'will come when the petty juris-
diction will be thus provided for, and a very
great boon it will be to the community, and
immense in its effects on the suppression of crime.

326 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE SPORTSMAN IN RETIREMENT. — RURAL LIFE, AND
FOOD FOR THE POOR.

Acclimatization Society — Alderney Manor — Pairal Life and its
rieasures— The Lark— Tench— The Mole— The Water-Rail—
Mistaken Accusation against the Bullfinch, Goldfinch, and other
Small Birds — Mistakes of the same kind as to Game — Food for
the Poor — Conclusion.

There have appeared in the Times newspaper
occasionally letters suggesting a ^'National Accli-
matization Society," as a means for introducing
more food for the communit}^, rich and poor, in
the shape of birds, beasts, and fishes.

There can be no doubt but that if the Govern-
ment would patronize an association of that sort,
taking example from the success achieved in
Australia, that much good might remotely result
from it ; but to send for, to import, and then
to naturalize living things to a change of climate,
jnust meet with many failures, and be a work

THE SPORTSMAN IN RETIREMENT. 827

of time. What we need is an additional supply
of food novj and at once, with as little delay as
possible.

The late Marquis of Breadalbane and myself,
as President and Vice-President, set on foot an
Acclimatization Society, and the first meeting to
promote the question was held at the office of
tlie Field newspaper. There could not have
been a nobler or a better President, fond as ho
was of natural history, and lord of an enormous
territory, containing lakes and rivers, as well as
tracts of rich cultivation, forests, woods, and
moors. He introduced and acclimatized on his
wide domains the capercailzie, or '^cock of the
Avoods," and the bison from America, and reared
there the cross between the capercailzie and the
^ blackgame, the bison and the Ayrshire cow.

As far as my limited power went, I acclima-
tized, and in England bred and reared the prairie
2:rouse, crossed the American dusky duck with
the English wild duck ; and, had the Acclimatiza-
tion Society acted in the honest sjoirit of its
formation, sundry noble lords and large proprietors
had promised me their landed influence on which
to introduce experiments.

328 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

The very indifferent leg tlie Society lialted on
was this. Of course, to manage the business of
the Society and its foreign correspondence, it was
necessary to aj^point ^^a quorum" to act during
winter, when the owners of manors, gentlemen
sportsmen and fishermen, were at their country-
seats, or, so soon as Parliament was up, pursuing
their amusements elsewhere.

This quorum, or these quorums, completely mis-
managed everything. The funds of the Society
were most injudiciously squandered, public money
was wasted on private premises and on individual
amusement ; the splendid donation given by the
then Miss Burdett-Coutts, of five hundred pounds,
and other subscriptions were squandered away ;
and, seeing how matters were going, and that
it was impossible to rescue the state of affairs
from very questionable management and bad
hands, all the landed proprietors, noble lords,
and others, myself among them, took our names
out of the Society, and very soon after it
collapsed.

From the very first, when I saw some of
the men who somehow or other got tlieir names
on the list, — men Avho had never belonged to

THE SPORTSMAN IN llETmEMENT. 329

any association in tlicir lives tliat came to any
good end, — I was fearful of the result, and
expressed my doubts on the matter to many of
my friends. The result proved the correctness
of my anticipation, and the way in wliicli tlie
last public dinner of the Society was conducted
opened everybody's eyes to the speedy break-
ing-up of the affair, as one no longer to be
tolerated.

Well, then, unless the Government would take
importation and acclimatization in hand, there is
no sort of chance of any leading noble lords and
gentlemen belonging to it. We would not again
trust a quorum of men whom Ave knew nothing
of, or, indeed, if what we might knoAV of tliom
was not invariably in their favour; and then,
who could be found to attend to the public in-
terest, when approved men were not on the sjDot
to undertake the task of revision and correction
of abuses ?

It is, then, useless, at ijvesent^ to talk of a
^' National Acclimatization Society," but it is by
no means useless for us all ^^to put our shoulders
to the wheel " of the cart tliat really needs our
aid, and which would directly and at once im-

380 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

mensely increase, not only tlie annual amount of
food for the people, but, at the same time, acid
to the beauty of the domain and the amusements
of the lord of the manor. I allude to a subject
on which I have long written and for many
years advocated — I mean '^ the cultivation of the
waste lands and waters."

^' Mv shoulder " has lon^: been ^'at the wheel"
of what might be a well-filled cart, and on my
coming to Alderney Manor I at once cast all
theory aside, and set about establishing an example
that any one asking my permission might insjDCct,
and assure himself, as years went by, of the
results or failure of my endeavour.

The miserable-looking, brookless, pondless waste
bog, far below any needed drainage, for cultiva-
tion and utterly useless and devoid of life, as I
found it, now oflPers to the sun a little ri2)pling
brook of beautiful water from the hitherto hidden
springs, capacious pools for wild fowl and hsli ;
and my improved waste, that never held anything
but snakes, lizards, and adders, has been made to
offer continuous sport to myself and to my friends
with the gun and witli rod and line. On the
wastes there is every sort of wild fowl, and in the

THE SPORTSMAN IN RETIREMENT. 381

waters there are trout, perch, eels, gTidgoons, dace,
roacli, and mmnows.

Thus, tlien, as far as my efforts to increase
ilie food of the community, combined with my
own amusements, liavc gone, they have been
crowned with success. I have not been the vox
et prceterea nihil that many writers on this
subject have been and still are ; and, with little
or no aid from the public press, the fact, as
it stands, is known to a vast round of my
acquaintance.

Three pheasants,- and no wild ducks, was all I
found on the estate, save a snipe and a sprinkling
of partridges and liares ; now I am able to give
sport to my immediate friends who shoot with
me, and game to those who do not shoot. I have
plenty for my own consumption during the autumn
and winter, and game, wild fowl, and rabbits even
to give away, or to sell to the game salesman and
poulterer, Mr. Briggs, of Bournemouth, who readily
buys all I have to offer for public use. During
spring and summer I can fish in ponds created by
myself, and study the breeding habits of the fowl
who still at that time haunt the waters, look at
the brooding snipe in her nest at my foot, induce

832 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

the pewits not to be much afraid of me when I
approach their nests or their young; and thus I
liave turned a miserable waste of l^lack, bad, and
unburnablc peat into that which, by comparison
with what it was before, has become, so to speak,
^'a garden of Eden" — -at' least it is so, in my
retired way of living, to me.

It is not until May, or ^ ' the merry month of
May," as it has long been called, that the English
sportsman can 1)e said to rest from the saddle,
although tlie gun and greyhound ought to have
been laid aside on or after the 1st of February.
The death of a May fox should be the signal for
preparing to ^^summer the hunter" and rest the
hounds; and up to the 1st of May, though many
packs of foxhounds ]iad ceased to hunt, the salmon
rod always affords occupation of the most brilliant
piscatory kind.

Well, then, all sport but fishing being over, let
us see the sort of life that can be led by a liard
rider and a good sliot when the horn, tlie cheer,
and the breech-loader are Inished, and lie no longer
cares for, or has not money at command to enjoy,
the London season.

The sweet violets have long perfumed the air;

THE SPORTSMAN IN RETIREMENT. 833

tlic primroses, succeeding to the empurpled violet
queen, liave clothed the ground beneath the trees
in the woods ; while pale gold, dear, beautiful cows-
lips deck the sweet meadow-grass. Every male
bird is singing to the partner of his nest. When
the sun shines bright, all nature seems in love,
and dark and dismally unfeeling is the heart and
soul of that man who cannot turn in . thankful-
ness to God for the mere gift of warm existence.

To hear the pheasants crowing and the birds
singing around the bed-room window ere the day
has scarcely broken, is amply enough to call the
sportsman and naturalist from his couch with a
joyful spirit to share in the gladdened world; and
Avhen, in the midst of such harmony of scent and
song, the casement is thrown open, and the warm
fresh air enters the lips and breathes on the
breast of man, why he really needs not hound
nor dog to lure him forth, for Nature herself to
him is all in all.

If he has a farm in his occupation, there arc
the crops up fresh and green to greet him, with
that sweet leader of Nature's orchestra of the
fields, the skylark, ascending thankfully to heaven
higher and higher, but still immediately over the

O'li FACT AGAINST FICTIOX.

little nest upon the groimd, as if to bear from
above a dewclrop on his Aving to 2)ay his loving
homage to his brooding mate.

This rm-al life, so loved and followed, pm-sued
imder judicious guidance, and the close study
of every living thing, puts me in possession of
many little facts, small in individuality, but large
in the aa^2:reo:ate, which seem never to have been
known to the old and now obsolete naturalists.

I can at once answer the question of what
led to the vulgar error, by one of our old poets
poetically used, as to the ' ' tench being the phy-
sician of the waters," other fish seeking to ^' rub
aofainst his healinsr sides." A casual observer
might be inclined to that poetical delusion by
seeing two tench, male and female, in the act
of spaAvning. If the surface weeds in the water
had been cut and removed, the tench would seek
the brink of the shore, and the overhanging grass
that depends from the bank to the surface, at
some little depth in the water, and there may
be seen two backs, one slightly below the otlier,
swimming, and gliding, and floundering along in
contact, tlie one, from its position, being more
visible than the other. These fish are both tench,

The sportsman in retirement. 385

and it lias been this incident tliat led casual
observers into the mistake. Carp spawn on the
surface weeds, and so do tench, but if you put
them to it, the tench wdll seek the grass that
is pendent in the waters.

Now there are very few people who know why
the mole makes so many hills ; but if they will
take the trouble to beat about as many mole-
hills as I have done,— it is excellent exercise for
the arms, the biceps muscle, and the chest, when
no other exercise is at hand, — they will have ocular
demonstration of the following fact. The mole
will go on making his ^^run," and move an
infinity of mould from side to side, Avith those
wondrously adapted claws of Jiis, without being
necessitated to lift it to the surfece. In his bur-
rowing progress, however, he is often stopped by
a stone ; of this impediment he has but one way
of ridding himself, and that is to get it to the
surface. In beating the molediills about in one
field, this circumstance will very often be found to
occur, but not always; and in nine cases out of
ten, or thereabout Sj a stone will be found in every
molehill, not quite on the top of the molehill, but
above the middle of it, and this in fields where

336 FACT AGAINST FICTIOX.

stones, at tlic depth at v.-liich the mole works,
are very rare. For some time I was in doubt
whether this stone was not wedged in by the
mole when he had done heaving up, to prevent
the fall of the hill, but since then I incline to
the idea that the stone is there to be rid of its
obstruction.

Among the more recent wild birds that liave
become attached to me is a Avater-rail. The
rail comes to the whistle for the ducks to feed,
and eats barley in close approximation to man,
and in full confidence in the safety he affords.

Superficial observers, by confidently pronouncing
their casually or ill-considered opinions, very often
do much harm, and create for many a poor little
innocent creature an enmity undeserved — thus, in
the beautiful bullfincli, and goldfinch as well, be-
cause the birds are seen to pick off and apparently
eat some buds from fruit-trees ; none of these mis-
observers permit what maij he inside the bud, and
already destroying the possibility of perfection, to
enter their minds. Tlic}^ buiki their opinion on
one visible sign, and tarry not to ascertain if there
is not another lurking behind it, which is really
the sole source of the mischief they observe. Tims,

THE SPORTSMAN IN RETIREMENT. '387

the filiclics seek the hidden grub, and thus the moles
industriously work beneath the perishing corn,
already fading in its blades from the briglit green
hue of spring to the sear and yellow tint, and
really devour in thousands the wire-AVorm already
devastating the crop.

Before any one ventures on an opinion concern-
ing the habits of anytliing in Heaven's creation,
however humble its little life, he should first
gather correct information, not only for his own
guidance, but for the guidance of other people. A
lie in ijrintj to speak plainly, gathers, from the type
and colour it assumes, a shade of truth, like many
a weak and erroneous falsehood when founded on
the merest circumstance, and these mistakes are
often the most difficult of all to set right.

Thus, in the very erroneous, inicharitable cry
that the Communists and Eed Eepublicans, and
blatant men who have no just means of rising into
])ublic notice, have made against the Game Laws,
we therein find them charging the lesser lives with
mischief they do not do, and with devouring corn
at seasons of the year when Nature gives them no
appetite for it. If a hare or rabbit's ears apjoear
from among the green and growing crops, the

VOL. II. z

338 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

animals are set down as eating nothing but the
blades of corn, whereas I have shot them at all
seasons for the purpose of investigation, and found
that a short green grass was among the roots of the
young wheat, and that was the food thc}^ chiefly
sought, and Avhich accounted for the disappearance
of their ears, and their heads being so low down
while in the act of feeding'.

By this it is by no means my intention to say
that hares and rabbits will not eat the blades of
corn ; I merely desire to show that their appetite
is not confined to what Avould become the food
of man, and that the purposed blame heaped on
them by false demagogues is, to an immense extent,
undeserved. Pheasants and partridges through the
spring and summer are 2Der23etually among the green
corn as well as among and beneatli the .full-grown
crop ; but they can only eat the corn for a few da}'s
just when it is sown, and not afterwards till the
grain is quite ripe : unless laid by storms, it is
out of their reach.

The hare and rabbit only casually eat the corn
when in its fresh, green, and unripened state. Of
this I am })erfectly sure, that all the means for in*
creasing the food for the people, suggested by that

THE SPORTSMAN IN RETIREMENT. 339

mistaken and miscliievous clique^ that are so fond of
croaking and making nuisances in Hyde Park, and
suggesting the most absurd things to our gracious
Queen, are totally worthless and irapracticahle ;
and that feeding the labouring classes has no
more to do with their real intentions than the
love of a Chinaman for a dead and putrid ])ig has
to do with the probability of his desire to keep a
clean stye for a fattened hog. We find these
demagogues, as I have previously said, trying to
deprive the people of the annual supply of tliirty
thousand tons of rabbit food, without one avail-
able suo:2restion from them as to how so liiY^jrc a
deficiency of meat was to be met. In fact, there
exists no immediate way of meeting a deficiency
so establislied.

To take an idea from ' Guy jMannering,' when
Meg Merrilies tells Dirk Hatteraick, in the
cave, that he ^' will be hung," and lie replies that
'^ the hemp is not grown that will do it," — an
assertion met by her '' that it {6- sown, it is grown,
it is hacked, and it's mown," — so with Meg Mer-
rilies we cannot say of the meat that is to take
the place of the rabbits. We, if we ever could do it,

should have to l^reed more largely, and to await the

z2

3.1:0 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

births of calves, lambs, and little pigs, many of
wliom miglit never come, and to wean and tarry
for years for the growtli of calves ere they could
be dignified with the name of beef, or be fit for
the general consmnption.

It reminds me of the dog who snapped at the
shadow of the meat he lield in his mouth reflected
in the water, and by that act lost the substance
his jaws contained.

Better let things be, than condemn them without
reason. Better that blatant tongues should be
still, than mislead the over-credulous, or, by false-
hood, seek a selfish aggrandisement — not an aggran-
disement in the end, but a mere time-serving and
time-sought popularity, personally desired, its pre-
mises laughed at, and its mischief, in the end,
despised.

Having lived long enougli now to look on this
side and on that, ^' the heart" no longer hot and
restless, but '^ subdued and slow," it is not without
some reason that I attempt to win for every living
thing, from tlie giant to the lesser life, more
kindliness at tlie hands of man ; and both for
man and animal the best and gentlest care of all —
that of woman.

THE SrORTSMAN IN RETIREMENT. 341

If I acliiovo one particle of tins, if I have
succeeded in my endeavour to win for any life
2)rotection, faitli, and charity, or attained any good
for those whose origin is so mysterious, and whose
licreafter is so veiled, then I shall not have written
in vain ; and when the time comes — the sad, but
not the dreaded time — when I must resign the
saddle, lay down the otter-spear, the salmon-rod,
the rifle, and the shot-gun, as I have already put
by the quarter-stafP, single-stick, and boxing-gloves,
tlien my heart, with unrepining resignation, will
meet the ^^ common fate" from wliich none can
escape, and bow before that high behest which
neither gives nor seeks a challenge, nor owns a
call from man.

'342 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

CHAPTER XV.

nature's school-room.

Where, in tliese days of tyrannical wliipjoings,
mortal rods, and coersive laws all running against
the natural and growing grain, and getting at
anything but the bottom of mischief, shall we
find a better school than that so long' ordained
by a creative power wdiich passes all compre-
hension, and sits enthroned, in contemptuous
silence, far, far above the puny efforts of ^'the
feeble tenants of an hour," or the struggles of
^^the degraded mass of animated dust," whicli
seeks to cover its own liideousness with a veil
of liypocrisy more easily seen through than a
London mist ?

Vast, unapproachable, and mysteriously beautiful,
some strange j^ower presides, awfully and mightil}^
magnificent in the frozen iceberg as in tlie
splendour of the glorious sun, yet none can tell

nature's school-room. 348

with any certainty what that power is or when
the last curtain over it will fall, what fate it really
is that awaits the insects who claim themselves
an exclusive heaveuj or whether or not ^'clust
and ashes " are to be the final meed of Vice and
Virtue, and thus that ^^ Chaos" shall be king
again.

Among the splendid places which so lavish
their charms in tlie varied sites of the United
Kingdom, I scarce know where to select one
which would best illustrate the lesson to be seen
and read in the months of April and May ; but
as it has so liappened that in this, the spring of
1874, I have again had leisure to study and
dream in the beautiful wilds of England, ^^ the
vale where the wild waters meet" and the
mountains and lakes of Ireland and Scotland,
with all tlieir far-famed grandeur and grace, must
be left untouched, and niy pen must once more
dwell on the tranquil scene set before me 1)}'
the lake and woods of Grichel. It is a curious
study afforded by the almost domesticated wild
fowl, who, sheltered there unmolested all tlio
winter, are induced, numbers of them, to stay on
throughout the summer, and to lay bare their

044 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

habits and their nests in conscious freedom from
any fear of closely observant man.

To an admirer of Nature, of scenery, and the
habits of wild birds, there is no place, — I had
nearly sung, ^^ There is no place like home," but
what I do sing is, ^' tliere is no place like Crichel,"
the beautiful residence of Mr. Sturt, wherein can
be studied the habits of the rarest and wildest
water-fowl from the very midst of their happy
congregation. I take the scene as set before me
in a still sunny day of the middle of April, and
select the locality for observation the green turf
of the park on the edge of the clear water of
the lake. On the opposite bank is a large wood,
the tall trees in which verge upon the water,
and in places dip their gracefully drooping boughs
as if to kiss the source of that strength that has
enabled them so far to out-top even the oaks and
elms in the furtlier park. Grown up between the
stems of the larger forest trees are the rhodo-
dendrons, tlie laurels, birch, and willows, all close
to the clear water, but leaving sheltered little
spots here and' there for tlie repose or rest of tlie
n(iuatic tril)es wlio frequent tills hospitable reghm
in summer and winter for food, for rest, and love.

r^'w.

NATURE S SCHOOL-ROOM. 3-15

With Sir Walter Scott, I can, at tlio moment, while
viewing this graceful scene, say, —

" The blackbird and the speckled thrush,
Good-morrow gave from every bush ;
In answered covert the cushat dove,
In notes of peace, of rest, and love."

For, indeed, the ^'cushats," or ^^ ring-doves,"
are answering each other from every fir-tree top,
while the less musical mmmurs of the blue-rock
jDigeons seem like a subdued accompaniment as
they sigh their nesting hope to the mate on her
eggs in the hollow tree, or, perhaps, in some
rabbit's hole at the foot of it.

High up, — always on the highest branches that
the tallest trees, of whatever description, afford, —
there sit the brooding herons, on their large but
slovenly-looking nests, their crested lords either
standing erect, like soldiers at attention, by the
nest, or soaring just above, in that smooth, graceful
way that the wide span of^ their pinions so silently
affords. To quote from Sir Walter Scott again,
^Hlie smooth lake's level brim" is dim2)led all over
with every species of wild fowl, save the gadwall,
— and I hope to see that added l)efore long to the
list, — diving, pairing, washing, or pluming their
glossy wings, as if they owned the water and the

846 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

woods instead of their lios2)itablc host, and that I
sat so near them as their guest, instead of as a
visitor at the kindly mansion.

Close to me glide upon their happy way (or
chase each other on wing just above the water)
pairs of teal. A little further off the pochards
play, the red heads of the male birds coming out
warmly as against the darker shades, while the
brilliant shelldrake, the goosander, the widgeon,
the golden-eye, the baldcoot, the lesser grebe,
and the moor-hen, all join in this scene of luippy
life, or add to the chorus of wild cries, while
my presence, or what, in other places, would be the
dreaded presence of tyrannical mortality, creates
neither terror nor distrust. I seem to sit among the
Ijirds as a sort of invited guest, to love, to watch,
and still to learn, the wondrous and beautiful
secrets of Natural History.

The flocks of swans around me — even their
pugnacity to other aquatic birds is, in this happy
scene, completely laid aside; they are all over
tlie lake, as if standing on their heads, while
bending beneatli the surface of the water to pick
tlie newly-springing tender weeds. Here and
there on the banks arc sitting, on their coarse.

nature's SCIIOOL-ROO.M. o47

open, and uncomfortable-looking' nests, many
female swans, and various sorts of geese; and in
tlieir vicinity tlie old male swans kce]) perpetu-
ally ^'pushing" after tlie cygnets of the previous
year, if tliey dare to look even in the direction
of the brooding mate. KSuddenly a heavy sound
of collective large Avings beats the quiet air, and
the young swans rise and fly from one end of
the lake to the other, to attain the lower or more
distant stretch of the lake, and happier riddance
from the spotless lords whose mates are every-
where thus jealously protected.

The flights of these young swans are often
joined by the different tribes of wild geese, who
scream their delights at any confusion that may
arise, mingled, in some instances, with jealous
ideas that some one of the passing flight might
designedly drop by the nest of their happy expec-
tations.

Every gander or goose, except man, cares for
his offspring when they are hatched, still adores
his wife or mate, Avhatever be the number of her
family, and never deserts his rising young. I
never knew a feathered goose in this respect to
1)0 disgracefully unkind or jealous, but I have

348 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

lieard that a swan was miserably astonished and
disgustingly angered by a servant boy or page,
Vv^ho took from the swan's nest the lawful eggs,
and put in their place those of an old grey
goose.

When the mule swan saw the horrible distor-
tion of his graceful hope, he stood erect Avith half-
spread wings, and hissed for hours ; but the poor
gander, much less keen in his percejotion, doatod
on the brood of swans presented to him, suspected
nothing, and in his farm-yard never became a
'^ goose of sorrows," and thus escaped an ^^acquaint-
ance w^ith grief."

I must not omit to add that all around mo
crowed the splendid pheasant, the partridge called,
and the willow-wrens, the redstarts, and the fly-
catchers, chimed in, and, with the brisk tomtits,
common and crested wrens, sky and wood
larks, chafiiinch, green-finch, and yellow-hammer,
all added to Nature's harmony, in spite of the
mischievous daws and starlings, who clamoured
for roguery inharmoniou.sly, as some as foolish
daws in human shape chatter at the opera.

I remember to have written long, long ago,
that when the thews of limb and strength begin

nature's school-room. 340

to decline, what a liappy tlioiiglit it was to know
tliat the Avcaiy head could ever find on the breast
of beauteous and bountiful Nature a sweet and
indulgent resting-place, on which to escape the
pangs which the loss of other enjoyments seemed
to inflict.

Let the inquiring glance of man turn which way
it will, there is a lesson of love, a song of liap})i-
ness, a something that is sweet and to be admired,
in every nook and corner, meadow, bank, or bush.
There, in yonder fresh, green bank^ nestles the
modest primrose, as if she wooed a protecting
breast to shield her loveliness and to save her from
the luscious bee ; thickly spread on the mead
beyond, her sister flower, the lowly but scented
cowslip, in thousands, decks the grass, while the
gold and green marshmallow, — or '"mashmallow,"
as it is more commonly called, — adds lustre to
Nature's carpet, but honeyless tries in vahi to
attract a passing wing.

To vary the lesson Nature yields from above,
let us now give freedom to the cormorants, to issue
from their Avooden houses, and to disport them*
selves in that portion of the clear and swiftly-
o'lidino; trout stream allotted to their food and

350 FACT AGAINST FICTION.

liealtliful recreation. Unless Nature had spread
before ns tlie page of this aquatic lesson, who
would have been able to judge of the rapid evolu-
tions of so large a bird beneath the water with or
against the rushing stream, and its power to turn
and cope Avitli the swiftest fish that swims, either
the strong bright dace or the pliant eel? Yet
here we see that these hsh have no chance to
outstrip their foe; and that if they evade him
by suddenly availing themselves of a crevice in
the bank, at full speed the cormorant's sea-green
eye can detect their ambush, and seize them with
his mierring bill.

Then, when the cormorant thus shows to us
the strange and admirable appliances with whicli
pre-observant Nature has supplied him, it is tliiis
that we become aware of tlie destined purpose
the bird is Bent to enact, and then, to me, at least,
occurs the doubt of a similar pre-observant wisdom
existing elsewhere, or as Ave are supposed to believe
that it does exist ; and I cannot drive this question
from my mind — If it Avas by some all-Avise and
powerful will destined that the lamb and the lion
Avere aliva/js to lie doAAm peacefully side by side,
why Avas tlie lion formed to be carnivorous, and

nature's school-eoom. '^51

why or how came he to be trusted with his terrible
teeth and claws ?

Nature is in itself a beautiful, and, perhaps, a
terrible study. The bowels of the earth contain
truths as mysterious as they are opposed to all
mortal doctrines in regard to sundry beliefs. A
terrible destruction and the most violent changes,
where floods (not one flood) and fires have caused
disruption, dissolution, and partial decay, — all this
is visible, — then who or where is the man or con-
clave of men who shall dare to make sure of the
future ?

THE^ END.

LONDON : PRINTED BY
EDWARD J. FEANCIS, TOOK's COUliT,
CHANCERY LANE, E.

WabGtar Family Library cf Velerlrfary Medicine
Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at
Tufts University
200 WestDoro Road
North Grafton, MA 01536

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