Page:The Hare.djvu/109

Rh of cordial good feeling that showed that, Act or no Act, the sport of his old friend and landlord—a relation enduring two generations of the respective families without a break in the intimacy—should suffer from no act of his old tenant. There is, even in these straitened times, many and many a similar instance to be named. No longer ago than October 1893 I saw killed in three days' partridge-shooting very close upon 300 hares, shot in the turnips alone, without touching a single covert. Here again most cordial relations exist, and have existed for generations, between landlord and tenant, and every consideration is paid by each party to the interests of the other.

But when hard times arrive and, instead of being able to maintain his shooting at the proper level, a sporting rent becomes an important consideration to the landowner, a different condition of affairs arises. A stranger, employing strange keepers, finds it hard to interest the farmers in his behalf. He has no control over their actions as regards ground game, however high may be the rent he has disbursed; and in but too many cases, after a few years of bickering and discontent, the shooting is thrown back upon its owner's hands. He finds it sadly impaired if he wishes to retain it himself, and much reduced in money value if he is still compelled to place it on the market. In