A mysterious affair occurred in a garden, which a gamekeeper was called in to investigate. It appeared that the inhabitants of the house had been awakened in the night by a din as if the roof of a tin church had fallen off, a din proved to be associated with a piece of corrugated iron in the garden, used as a stand for pots and pans. The mystery to be explained was what had upset the stand and the pots. A tuft of the fur of a hare on the tin gave the clue, with a nibbled patch of parsley a few yards away. It was determined that a cat had come suddenly round a corner on a hare enjoying an unlawful feast, and that the hare in her fear had dashed headlong into the corrugated iron, thus raising pandemonium; one effect was the hare came no more to that garden.
Food for Pheasants
The cost of feeding pheasants is a question of some interest at this season—to those who must foot the bill. The keeper is commonly blamed for running up too big a bill; a happy medium between his maximum and his employer's minimum is probably the correct amount of money required for food. The object of supplying corn to pheasants is not always understood. It is less to feed the pheasants—for they can usually exist on natural food, if not very thick on the ground—than to keep them from straying, by giving them a pleasing and profitable employment. That keeper makes a mistake and is extravagant who strews maize on a clean-swept ride. His pheasants in a few minutes will swallow a cropful and will be free during the rest of the day to seek and find mischief. They explore foreign woods, and if they like them, stay away from home. But they may be kept where they should be if pleasantly engaged in feeding. Straw-corn—such as rough rakings and damaged sheaves from the tops of ricks which are being threshed—not only serves to feed pheasants, but forces them to spend the greater part of their time, which otherwise would be spare time, in searching for each mouthful. One plan is to tie bundles of straw-corn round the trunks of trees so that the pheasants must jump to peck the ears. The empty straw is piled up again and again for the birds to scratch down; it is only necessary to throw in a little loose grain. Such a miniature stack will amuse the birds for hours at a time, and helps to keep them at home.
The Lingering Leaves
Leaves may still cling to the newest growths of underwood long after the older underwood is gaunt and bare. The sap, perhaps, is fresher and more vigorous in the younger wood—prolonging the period of ripening—and the new buds have not pushed out far enough to dislodge the leaves. In coppices that have been thinned one sees how unusually big, and how strong and enduring, are the leaves on the shoots of tree-stumps—as though the whole energy of what was once a tree is concentrated in the few shoots and leaves. Where hedges are clipped, dead leaves remain in place far into the winter, possibly because, owing to injury, the growth is retarded of those layers of cork which form to assist the buds in dislodging the worn-out leaves. On the sides of rides trimmed annually the leaves form quite a screen in late autumn—to which one sportsman put down his many misses at rabbits, and ordered his keepers to walk along every ride and pick off all the leaves that remained. The shoots of underwood that has been cut always grow more luxuriantly in a hot, dry summer than in a rainy one; every copse-worker will tell you this is the case, though we have not come across one who could solve the riddle.
Planning Big Shoots
In early November many keepers are putting the perfecting-touches to plans that have been maturing all through the year. From the second day of February the keeper whose work is not merely work, but the most absorbing interest the world has to offer, has been weighing continuously a thousand details—studying each in its relation to others—scheming to arrange all so that in combination they shall bring the best possible results when the big days of the shooting season come to pass. Few shooting men realise the immense importance of apparently trivial details. Let a single one—such as the exact placing of a "stop"—be forgotten or disregarded, and the whole of a day's sport by modern methods may be ruined. Many good beats, many good days, have been brought to naught by a sportsman coolly and without permission despatching an important "stop" on an errand. And afterwards he will protest in all good faith that he commandeered the "stop" only because he seemed to be standing idly at a corner, as if waiting for something to do.