ABSTRACT
On the whole, it must be admitted that very little has been learned of recent years beyond what was known to our progenitors regarding the habits and habitats of game . But much has been discovered as to its care and preservation, and more as to the best ways of bringing it to the gun. It is in dealing with these latter problems that the keeper should show himself amenable to ideas, and try to keep in touch with the newest views, and profit by them-not, indeed, by blindly accepting each new theory as gospel, but by testing it carefully in the light of his own experience-in other words, by giving it a fair trial. One has only to use one's eyes to observe how the old-fashioned and discredited practices of the past are still followed on some of our best shootings. The prehistoric butts on the skyline, the indiscriminate burning of heather, the smoking-out of rabbits, the bands of yelling beaters, advancing in a straight line to the guns-all remain with us as persistent monuments
of the conservatism of the keeper, despite what comes to his ears of greater success achieved under newer methods. As far as some keepers-and their masters-are concerned, Lord Walsingham, Sir R. Payne Gallwey, Mr. Stuart Wortley, Mr. Lloyd Price, Mr. Harting, Mr. Tom Speedy, and The Mackintosh of Mackintosh, might never have made an experiment or written a word. They seem to forget that sport is not like doctrinal theology-final and irrevocable; but a branch of science, varying under the stress of thought and experience.
