pests of which it is comprised are the owner's taking, is worn with pardonable pride. A moleskin vest constitutes a graduation in woodcraft so to speak. Sometimes a brace of leverets are found in a tussocky grass clump, but these are more often allowed to remain than taken. And there are almost innumerable captures to be made among the feathered as well as furred things of the fields and woods. Chaffinches are taken in nooses among the corn, as are larks and buntings. Crisp cresses from the springs constitute an important source of income, and the embrowned nuts of autumn a harvest in themselves. It is during his early days of working upon the land that the erstwhile poacher learns of the rain-bringing tides; of the time of migration of birds; of the evening gamboling of hares; of the coming together of the partridge to roost; of the spawning of salmon and trout; and a hundred other scraps of knowledge which will serve him in good stead in his subsequent protest against the Game Laws.

Almost every young rustic who develops into a poacher has some such outdoor education as that sketched above. He has about him much ready animal ingenuity, and is capable of almost infinite resource. His snares and lines are constructed with his pocket knife, out of material he finds ready to hand in the woods. He early learns to imitate the call of the game birds, so accurately as to deceive even the birds themselves; and his weather-stained clothes seem to take on themselves the duns and browns and olives of the woods. A child brought up in the lap of Nature is invariably deeply marked with her impress, and we shall see to what end she has taught him.

Under the Night.

the embryo poacher has once tasted the forbidden fruits of the land—and it matters not if his game be but field-mice and squirrels—there is only one thing wanting to win him completely to Nature's ways. This is that he shall see her sights and hear her sounds under the night. There is a charm about the night side of nature that the town dweller can never know. I have been once in London, and well remember what, as a country lad, impressed me most. It was the fact that I had, during the small hours of the morning, stood alone on London Bridge. The great artery of life was still; the pulse of the city had ceased to beat. Not a moving object was visible. Although bred among the lonely hills, I felt for the first time that this was to be alone; that this was solitude. I felt such a sense as Macaulay's New Zealander may experience when he sits upon the ruins of the same stupendous structure; and it was then for the first time I knew whence the inspiration, and felt the full force and realism of a line I had heard, "O God! the very houses seemed to sleep." I could detect no definite sound, only that vague and distant hum that for ever haunts and hangs over a great city. Then my thoughts flew homeward (to the fells and upland fields, to the cold mists by the river, to the deep and sombre woods). I had never observed such a time of quiet there; no absolute and general period of repose. There was always something abroad, some creature of the fields or woods, which by its voice or movements was betrayed. Just as in an old rambling house there are always strange noises that cannot be accounted for, so in the night-paths of nature there are innumerable sounds which can never be localised. To those, however, who pursue night avocations in the country, there are always calls and cries which bespeak life as animate under the night as that of the day. This is attributable to various animals and birds, to beetles, to night-flying insects, even to fish; and part of the education of the young poacher is to track these sounds to their source.

I have said that our family was a family of poachers. The old instinct was in us all, though I believe that the same wild spirit which drove us to

the moor and covert at night was only the same as was strongly implanted in the breast of Lord ——, our neighbour, who was a legitimate sportsman and a Justice of the Peace. If we were not allowed to see much real poaching when we were young we saw a good deal of the preparations for it. As the leaves began to turn in autumn there was great activity in our old home among nets and snares. When wind and feather were

favourable, late afternoon brought home my father, and his wires and nets were already spread on the clean sanded floor. There was a peg to sharpen, or a broken mesh to mend. Every now and then he would look out on the darkening night, always directing his glance upward. The two dogs would whine impatiently to be gone, and in an hour, with bulky pockets, he would start, striking right across the land and away from the high road. The dogs would prick out their ears on the track, but stuck doggedly to his heels; and then, as we watched, the darkness would blot him out of the landscape, and we turned with our mother to the fireside. In summer we saw little but the "breaking" of the lurchers. These dogs take long to train, but, when perfected, are invaluable. All the best lurchers are the produce of a cross between the sheep-dog and greyhound, a combination which secures the speed and silence of the one, and the "nose" of the other. From the batches of puppies we always saved such as were rough-coated, as these were better able to stand the exposure of long, cold nights. In colour the best are fawn or brown—some shade which assimilates well to the duns and browns and yellows of the fields and woods; but our extended knowledge of the dogs came in after years.

The oak gun-rack in our old home contained a motley collection of fowling pieces, mostly with the barrels filed down. This was that the pieces might be more conveniently stowed away in the pocket until it was policy to have them out. The guns showed every graduation in age, size, and make, and among them was an old flint-lock which had been in the family for generations. This heirloom was often surreptitiously stolen away, and then we were able to bring down larger game. Wood pigeons were waited for in the larches, and shot as they came to roost. The crakes were called by the aid of a small "crank," and shot as they emerged from the lush summer grass. Large numbers of green plover were bagged from time to time, and often in winter we had a chance at their grey cousins, the whistling species. Both these fed in the water-meadows through winter, and