The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-04 00:00:00

THE GAME-LAWS.

Whether the farmer will derive more advantage
by the agitation against game being taken up by
persons who are not game preservers, than if the
landlords took up tine question, we shall not at pre-
sent affirm nor deny. But we can safely say this,
that many tenant farmers in all parts of England,
who feel the game to be a serious grievance, and
'ho have also been afraid of the Anti-Corn-law
League, are now much more friendly to the League,
since some of its leading members have come for-
ward as " farmers' friends" upon the game
question. We understand that Mr. Bright,
taking advantage of the extensive agencies and ma-
chinery of the League, has recently sent a circular
intu: every part of the kingdom, addressed to leading
agriculturists, asking information as to the injury
done to the crops by game. In a certain district in
Hampshire, remarkable alike for the fertility of its
soil and the abundance of its game, several farmers
have been consulted as to the replies which should be
made to the queries put to them, and they gave their
answers thus :

Question. " How many hares or rabbits are equal
to the keep of a sheep ?"
Answer. " Tv, o—with ►hat they eat and what
they damage."
Q. " What is the difference in value betwe en a
farm on which pale is preserved and one where is is
spot?"

A. " Twenty-eve per cent."
Q. "Do landlords generally make an allowance'
equal to the damage caused by game ?"
A. " They do not."
Q. "Is not gan le preserving very prejudicial to
good farming and t' a the interest of the farmers ?"
A. " It cannot bet otherwise."
Q. "Is it not inj arious to the morals and character
of the farm labourers?"
A. "Abundantlyy so."
It is then remarksed by those who make these re-
plies, that Mr. Bright should not have confined his
inquiries to hares and rabbits. In one field, occu-
pied by a farmer on an estate covering six miles
of country, the whole estate swarming with game,
118 many as two hundred pheasants have been
counted this year an twelve acres of barley stubble.
They had fed there during the ripening and harvest-
ing of the barley. Some of them were shot on the
stubble ; and one, we are informed by a Hampshire
correspondent, which came into the possession of one
et the farmers who signs the replies to Mr.:Bright,
was examined, and 4." contained in its crop 506 perfect
barleycorns, exclusive of corns half digested,
which are all prostebarvtettadscoamnebe shown to any
one."
It is then shown
dayese barleycorns are equal to a
gallon of barley eachfor
. each hundred birds.
In another field, (if tw t my-eight acres, on the same
estate, but net let to XenYa- t o enormous number
of 1,200 pheasants has been seen at odnce. This field
was sown with barley by the landlord the use of
the birds ; but Cie y were not confined to it, nor to
Salisbury
its locality. They invaded the farms* farmer,
writing some little time ago in the and
Winchester Journal, states that he has known
up-
wards of eight h undred grains of sound wheat,
a mass partly digested, taken from the stomach
i
taolabcell;
of one pheasant ..shot in a field newly s
supposes that to Ire the food of the bird for one day,e
that the seed lies thirty days in the ground, and
that therefore on,. pheasant extracts from the seed
sown twenty-four thousand grains ! Ile asks what
the loss must be where hundreds of pheasants flock
ir.to the fields, as is the case in his neighbourhood ?
" It may be said," l'ae observes, " that this calculation
i.. too high. I think not. In the case mentioned
everything was 3:air ; the bird was shot by
game-preserving nobleman, who gave it to a
tenant on the spot, and he had the curiosity to
.:aarnine it. Let those, howeVer, woo will not
b, lieve, obtain one and examine it ; and then put
th eir calculation as lo w as possible, and it will prove
high enough to show that instead of doing the farmer
gioci,lt inflicts on :nim an enormous injury." This
Eampshire farmer eludes here to assertions same-
ti .nes made that the pheasants relieve the farmers
a• grubs and insects, and seldom injure their
et nm. We lieve where they are preserved in such
numbers th y int Ist destroy a very considerable
q tantity of orn. We understand that a farmer in
Oat county, who has this year steeped his seed
's heat in' a liquid prepared from vitriol, with a view
t.. preventing a diriease to which wheat is liable in his
&stria, has had. toss misfortune to poison some of his