A dreadful idea to the keeper is the thought of cattle in his coverts.
The worst that a mad bull could do in a china shop would make a
faint picture of destruction beside the havoc wrought by cattle in
well-stocked preserves. Happy the keeper whose coverts are guarded
by good fences in the days when flies torture cattle, and colts are
most mischievous. If in hot weather a breach has once been made in a
fence by cattle or horses, they will persist in trying to find their
way into the woods. One can only pity the pheasant who sits on her
eggs, on some sunny bank of a covert fence, while a herd of unbroken
cart-colts go lumbering round the field, each shouldering each in an
ill-judged swerve from the fence. Even in their calm moments colts are
inquisitive, and leave nothing alone that is living and within their
reach. We remember a case where a pheasant nested on the outside bank
of a wood, and the colts in the field, pushing into the living fence,
actually nosed her from her nest, and there was good evidence that they
then chawed every one of her eggs. Most difficult of all creatures
to keep out of woods are roaming swine. The strongest of live fences
offers only a temporary check to their boring ability. And pigs have
good noses, and few rabbit-stops and nests of eggs on the ground escape
them. If a keeper's woods are infested by pigs he can scarcely be
blamed for shooting his own bacon.
The keeper has an eye for the trim and pleasing appearance of
his woods. He takes a genuine pleasure in their beauty. Jealous
of the untrodden appearance of his secret paths, his annoyance
is ill-concealed when the hunt cuts up his green rides. He would
cheerfully forego the reward for the finding of a fox if he could
preserve his rabbit-shorn sward--green and as smooth as velvet. And in
his soul is a secret hatred of the traffic of the woodmen's waggons.
Their great wheels crush and destroy the promising young underwood;
woodmen, removing tree-trunks, ruthlessly plough up lawn-like turf;
they have no care and no eye for the young growths of hazel, ash,
maple, thorn or brier, to say nothing of bramble and bracken; and their
waggons, carts and horses' hoofs spread a desolation which brings
curses to the keeper's lips.
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