class="narrative">Besides the damage to game, the concentration of too many foxes in one district is opposed to the interest of the hunt—first, because the attendant destruction of neighbouring poultry causes an unpleasant feeling; next, because when the meet takes place the plethora of foxes spoils the sport. The day is wasted in “chopping” them at every corner; the pack breaks up into several sections, despite whip, horn, and voice; and a good ran across country cannot be obtained. So that once now and then a judicious thinning-out is necessary; and this is how the skins come into the hands of the keeper’s wife. The heads go to ornament halls and staircases; so do the pads and occasionally the brush. The teeth make studs, set in gold; and no part of Reynard is thrown away, since the dogs eagerly snap up his body.

Once or twice she has made a mole-skin waistcoat for a gentleman. This is a very tedious operation. Each little skin has to be separately prepared, and when finished hardly covers two square inches of surface. Consequently it requires several scores of skins, and the work is a year or more about. There is then the sewing together, which is not to be accomplished without much patience and skill. The fur is beautifully soft and glossy, with more resemblance to velvet than is possessed by any other natural substance; and very warm. Mittens for the wrists are also made of it, and skull-caps. Mole-skin waistcoats used to be thought a good deal of, but are now only met with occasionally as a curiosity.

The old wooden mole-trap is now almost extinct, superseded by the modern iron one, which anybody can set up. The ancient contrivance, a cylinder of wood, could only be placed in position by a practised hand, and from his experience in this the mole-catcher—locally called “oont-catcher”—used to be an important personage in his way. He is now fast becoming extinct also—that is, as a distinct handicraftsman spending his whole time in such trapping. He was not unfrequently a man who had once occupied a subordinate place under a keeper, and when grown too feeble for harder labour, supported himself in this manner: contracting with the farmers to clear their fields by the season.

Neither stoats’ nor weasels’ skins are preserved, except now and then for stuffing to put under a glass case, though the stoat is closely allied to the genuine ermine. Polecats, too, are sometimes saved for the same purpose; in many woods they seem now quite extinct. The otter skin is valuable, but does not often come under the care of the keeper’s wife. The keeper now and then shoots a grebe in the mere where the streamlet widens out into a small lake, which again is bordered by water meadows. This bird is uncommon, but not altogether rare; sometimes two or three are killed in the year in this southern inland haunt. He also shoots her some jays, whose wings—as likewise the black-and-white magpie—are used for the same decorative purposes. Certain feathers from the jay are sought by the gentlemen who visit the great house, to make artificial flies for salmon-fishing. Of kingfishers she preserves a considerable number for ladies’ hats, and some for glass cases. Once or twice she has been asked to prepare the woodpecker, whose plumage and harsh cry entitle him to the position of the parrot of our woods. Gentlemen interested in natural history often commission her husband to get them specimens of rare birds; and in the end he generally succeeds, though a long time may elapse before they cross his path. For them she has prepared some of the rare owls and hawks. She has a store of peacocks’ feathers—every now and then people, especially ladies, call at the cottage and purchase these things. Country housewives still use the hare’s “pad” for several domestic purposes—was not the hare’s foot once kept in the printing-offices?

The keeper’s wife has nothing to do with rabbits, but knows that their skins and fur are still bought in large quantities. She has heard that geese were once kept in large flocks almost entirely for their feathers, which were plucked twice a year, she thinks; but this is not practised now, at least not in the south. She has had snakes’ skins, or more properly sloughs, for the curious. It is very difficult to get one entire; they are fragile, and so twisted in the grass where the snake leaves them as to be generally broken. Some country folk put them in their hats to cure headache, which is a very old superstition; but more in sport than earnest. There are no deer now in the park. There used to be a hundred years ago, and her husband has found several cast antlers in the wood. The best are up at the great house, but there is one on her staircase. Will I take a few chestnuts? It is winter—the proper time—and these are remarkably fine. No tree is apparently so capricious in its yield as the chestnut in English woods: the fruit of many is so small as to be worthless, or else it does not reach maturity. But these large ones are from a tree which bears a fine nut: her husband has them saved every year. Here also are half-a-dozen truffles if I will accept them: most that are found go up to the great house; but of late years they have not been sought for so carefully, because coming in quantities from abroad. These truffles are found, she believes, in the woods where the soil is chalky. She used to gather many native herbs; but tastes have changed, and new seasonings and sauces have come into fashion.

Out of doors in his work the assistant upon whom the gamekeeper places his chief reliance is his own son—a lad hardly taller than the gun he carries, but much older than would be supposed at first sight.

It is a curious physiological fact that although open-air life is so favourable to health, yet it has the apparent effect of stunting growth in early youth. Let two children be brought up together, one made to “rough” it out of doors, and the other carefully tended and kept within; other things being equal, the boy of the drawing-room will be taller and to all appearance more developed than his companion. The labourer’s children, for instance, who play in the lonely country roads and fields all day, whose parents lock their cottage doors when leaving for work in the morning so that their offspring shall not gain entrance and get into mischief, are almost invariably short for their age. In their case something may be justly attributed to coarse and scanty food; but the children of working farmers exhibit the same peculiarity, and although their food is not luxurious in quality, it is certainly not stinted in quantity. Some of the ploughboys and carters’ lads seem scarcely fit to be put in charge of the huge cart-horses who obey their shouted orders, their heads being but a little way above the shafts—mere infants to look at. Yet they are fourteen or fifteen years of age. With these, and with the sons of farmers who in like manner work in the field, the period of development comes later than with town-bred boys. After sixteen or eighteen, after years of hesitation as it were, they suddenly shoot up, and become great, hulking, broad fellows, possessed of immense strength. So the keeper’s boy is really much more a man than he appears, both in years and knowledge—meaning thereby that local intelligence, technical ability, and unwritten education which is the resultant of early practice and is quite distinct from book-learning.

From his father he has imbibed the spirit of the woods and all the minutiae of his art. First he learned to shoot; his highest ambition being satisfied in the beginning when permitted to carry the double-barrel home across the meadow. Then he was allowed occasionally to fire off the charges left in after the day’s work, before the gun was hung against the beam. Next, from behind the fallen trunk of an oak he took aim at a sitting rabbit which had raised himself on his hind-quarters to listen