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game there is by running a brace of good dogs over it. It will not do to depend upon accounts given in the previous season of the head of game killed, for it may have been killed down too closely; nor should there be an agreement to take it in the spring after the season has concluded, because here the incoming tenant is in the hands of the one outgoing. So also, whenever the agreement is made, it should be arranged that the ground should be at once given up, for I have known a wonderful difference between the head of game, on an extensive beat, in the first and that in the last week of September. Keepers, we all know, can poach if they like, and if they are not to be retained by their new masters it is to be expected that many of them will take advantage of the knowledge acquired during their previous term of office. Wherever, therefore, you have decided upon taking a manor, make up your mind either to retain the keeper, if you think him trustworthy, or to displace him at once, if otherwise; although you are likely even then to lose a considerable quantity of game. evident that a strange man cannot compete with one who knows all the haunts of the game, as well as of the vermin attacking it; the old hand has the opportunity of robbing you if he likes, or if he does not do so directly, he can indirectly, through some of those half-poachers, half-keepers, with whom so many are in league. The best time to make choice of a moor or partridge manor is in the month of February or March, when you may, by a little perseverance, have ocular demonstration of nearly every head of winged game on the beat. By taking out a brace of strong and fast pointers or setters you may easily beat over a couple of thousand acres of arable land, or double that quantity of moor land, and you will thereby find at least three-fourths of the birds. In this proceeding you must take care not to let the keeper palm off the same birds upon you two or three times over, which he may easily do if you are not on your guard. To avoid this trick, observe the line which the birds that have been put up take, and instead of following that line, which the keeper will most probably try to induce you to do, just keep to the right or left of it. In beating, also, go straight a-head, if the manor is extensive, and do not follow

the same plan as if you were shooting. Take one field after another in a straight line; and though you will not thereby see so much game as you otherwise would, you will, at all events, avoid the mistake of fancying that there are 150 brace instead of 50. With regard to pheasants, you may always be shown these birds at feeding-time, as the keepers know where to find them as well as barn-door fowl. If, therefore, they are not shown, depend upon it, if it is the interest of the keeper to show them, that they are not in existence. As to the number of hares and rabbits, you may generally make a pretty good guess at them by the state of the runs and meuses. If these are numerous and well used, there is sure to be plenty of fur; or at all events there has been till very recently. The spring months are also the only ones in which vermin can be successfully trapped, and therefore you have every reason for taking your moor or manor at that time of the year.

There are sundry points of importance by which likely ground may be known. In the south, where pheasants and partridges are to be preserved, there should be one or more large coverts in the centre, in which pheasants are secure at all seasons, and in addition a number of small ones, which are all the better if in the form of belts. A belt surrounding a property, as is too often the case, is by no means desirable, because the pheasants in it are sure to feed upon the adjacent lands, when they are liable to be shot or poached. If the corn is all bagged, or the stubbles are mown directly after harvest, or if the course of husbandry leads to their being broken up soon in the autumn, the partridge shooting will not be good, unless there are plenty of turnips, mangold wurtzel, seed-clover, or other green crops. A light sandy soil suited to turnips is also that which partridges thrive upon; but there must be water at all seasons, or in a dry one they will be liable to die away wholesale. So also with the pheasant-coverts; they ought all to have water in them, and this should be perpetual, and not merely a winter pond, liable to be dried up in the summer. In the choice of moors, as well as in that of manors, the management of the adjacent beats should be taken into consideration. Game being one man's property to-day and his neighbour's to

morrow, it follows that there must be a "give and take" system continually going on, and if the adjacent lands take all they can and give none in return, the effect is felt in the course of the year. But moors require special circumstances to be examined into. There is a necessity for a certain amount of old heather to protect the birds, not only at the breeding season but all through the year, and if this is not in existence the moor cannot be a good one for a number of years, as the heather takes seven years to attain its full growth. But, supposing that there is a good crop of old heather left, provision must be made that it shall not be burnt in too great a quantity annually. A certain extent of burning is desirable, but all that is destroyed beyond a seventh or eighth of the whole area tends to the reduction of the desirable extent. These points, therefore, must be carefully looked to, and the lease so arranged that an excessive burning will vitiate it, or be met by the payment of a penalty on the part of the landlord.

CONTRACTS FOR TAKING MOORS OR MANORS.

In all contracts for taking manors or moors the agreement ought to be in writing, and properly executed on a stamped paper. The following form has been found to answer all the purposes required, and is more simple than most of those in general use:

;

MEMORANDUM of an agreement made this day between A. B. of and C. D. of; the said A. B. agrees to let the said C. D. (without power of sub-letting or assigning) the whole of the game on the lands, farms, or moors in the parish of from this present date to the of that is to say, that he, the said C. D., shall have full power by himself, or others having his authority, to kill game over the above-named lands, during all lawful times and seasons. And in consideration of the same permission of A. B., the said C. D. agrees to pay the sum of on the 25th day of January in each year; but the first payment to be made at the signing of these presents. And the said C. D. further agrees that he will preserve the game in a fair and proper manner, and that he will not destroy, in the last year of his

tenancy, more than he has done, or ought to have done, in the previous ones.* And in case the quantity of heather burnt in any year on the said moor is greater than the average of the last five years, the said A. B. agrees to pay to the said C. D. any such sum as may he considered the amount of damage by the arbitrators chosen as below mentioned. And, in the event of any difference of opinion, it is further agreed by and between the parties to these presents, that the same shall be referred to two arbitrators, one to be chosen by each, with power to choose an umpire, if necessary, whose decision shall be final. In witness whereof we do hereby sign our names, in the presence of E. T. ; A. B., C. D. Dated this 25th day of March, 1855.

KEEPER'S CERTIFICATE.

This will be alluded to under the head of the Game Laws.

THE KINDS WHICH CAN BE REARED ARTIFICIALLY-METHODS OF OBTAJNING EGGS-HATCHING-REARING-KEEPING TAME PHEASANTS-TURNING OUT-REARING GAME IN A WILD STATE.

THE KINDS WHICH CAN BE REARED ARTIFICIALLY.

Among the varieties of game which are met with in this country, pheasants are the only ones which can be reared with any great advantage by artificial means. Partridges, black-game, and even red grouse can be bred in confinement, but the trouble and expense attending upon the plan are so great as to prevent its ever being adopted on anything but a very limited scale. But pheasants may be hatched under a domestic hen, and brought up by hand in any number, the

To be added when a moor is taken, but not required for any other kind of preserve.

chief danger being of their contracting the diseases which attack the poultry-yard, and especially that known as "the gapes." It is found by experience that whether the wild pheasant is allowed to sit on all her eggs or not, in most seasons she will only rear about seven or eight young birds; and so if the keeper can take half her average number of eggs from her, and put them under a hen, all that he brings up may be considered as clear gain. When woods are to be heavily stocked this hand rearing is all important, for without it a large head of game is found to be beyond the powers of the most careful and experienced keeper. The hen cannot cover more than half her brood when they grow into anything like size, and at that time they contract colds, &c., and die off with the result which I have alluded to above. Nor can the wild hen pheasant find food for more than a certain number, while the keeper has it in his power to obtain unlimited supplies for his tame birds. Hence it has come to pass that for high preserving the artificial rearing of pheasants is universally adopted.

METHODS OF OBTAINING EGGS.

The great drawback to the artificial rearing of game is the temptation which is offered to keepers to procure the eggs necessary for the purpose by improper means. They are constantly offered to him by loose characters, who obtain them by robbing the nests; and too often it happens that the keeper buys them regardless of the mode in which they are obtained. The competition in getting a good head of game is so strong that neither keeper nor, very frequently, his master, cares much how the thing is done, so that it is done; and as eggs must be procured somehow, the robber of the nest gets rewarded instead of being punished. The penalty of five shillings per egg is very easily enforced, but we rarely hear of the law being carried out, for the simple reason that very few keepers can come into court with clean hands. Yet nothing can be more suicidal than this, for every one is robbed in his turn; and many a preserver pays for his own eggs, which would remain in their nests if there were no premium for the robbery offered by himself and his

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