Morning journal and courier., 1889-04-13

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 control of the property. Frequently with him are half dozen accountants and clerks. The next man below him is the bailif. His province is to look after the home farm and
 cattle. This is no sinecure, for on some of
 the greatest estates farming and grazing are I conducted on larger scale; and this entire | ly exclusive of the fancy farming and gar denipg in whicRnearly every one of the mo- | bility indulges Sometimes enclosed by the
 inner walls enclosing the castle itself,
 though oftener at some little distance away
 in well ordered arrangement will be found
 out tbuildings, graneries. machinery storage 1 houses, mill houses where grain is threshed, 1 logs are sawed and feed is ground by steam, l and covered enclosures for young stock, in l number and capaciousness quite surprising ! to even one accustomed to the provision for l the same by the most noted American farm- | CTS. A host of hangers-on find lazy employ ! ment here. Then upon demesne of several ! thousand acres there will be head game ! keeper who will be allowed 8 dozen men to ! assist him in breeding and caring for the
 game, and in protecting it from the inroads ! of poachers, who are often of better quality l and far more daring than the village ehaug- l ran or vagabond. Some of the finest forests | in the world are upon these estates. Each | requires head forester with a half dozen | men under him. Any one familiar with the | operations in great American city park will ! readily understand how these may be kept | busy. New trees are being constantly planted. Too heavy grewths are thinned ! out. Every sound tree-trunk is sold to be I cut in deals; every unsound one finds ready | sale for fuel. If 8 river run through de-
 mesne several men are required for constant ly beautifying it's banks and Keeping the ! poachers away from it's fish. The roads and driveways alone of fine demesne require as much attention the driveways of Central Park, New York. Then there is a master sawyer and his men for cutting posts, repair- ing gates and fences. There are painters, ! glaziers, carpenters, number of whom are kept in service and busy the year round
 The head gardener requires half dozen as- slstants. And if guest, your coachman's call of "Gatel7-''Gate!" will, in ride about an ordinary estate, bring to the lodge gates of different entrances fully half doz- en bronzed old lodge-keepers from out of fower-embedded, ivy-covered lodges. Eve- " one of these are army "pensioners;" he- roes bold, at their British army pension and ten pounds year, whose lives fade out here in these shadowy hooks among the hares and
 pheasants, with perhaps one gate-call and a
 pot of beer day to keep their scattering
 useless wits together.
 One of the most interesting occupants ot
 these great estates is the pheasant. I have some good friends among the game keep
 CTS, and thus got on close terms with the pheasant. Somebody, an Irishman perhaps,
 has called it ''the sacred Ibis of Great
 Britain" It is certainly worshiped; and
 where in the world else is there so match lessly beautiful bird, ct the same time so delicious On leaving the grill, the oven or the pot! Tens of thousands are some- times yearly bred in the great wooded de- mesnes about the castles. They are half domesticated and are fed oats and corn, near their haunts, every one of which is known to the keepers. In order to secure the largest possible supply of eggs, during the last Of February the birds are ''starved" | by non-feeding for 8 few days. Great s'fg ure A. traps are set near their haunts. l Thin trails of oats are scattered between They follow these to the traps, which are sprung with strings in the hands of keep CTS at a little distance, any number de- sired being thus caught. They are then
 them. These are simply great wooded spaces in the grounds enclosed by fences of
 wire netting, provided with nesting places,
 where the birds are we'll watered and fed
 daily. They begin laying by April. The
 eggs are carefully daily gathered not only
 from the nests in the 'sreas, /" but from those
 of the unimprisoned birds The latter is
 not difficult task to the wise keepers; for it is singular fact that notwithstanding the pheasants' wild nature, they nest most free- ly in shrub-clumps along edges of walks and drives. The keepers tell me they love the sound and sense of eompanionship, though themselves wonderfully secretiYe and sly. Hundreds of dozens of pheasants' eggs are annually sold to gentry for domestic rearing for shilling each, or five pounds per hun dred.
 The pheasant, which lays from twenty to thirty eggs each is not good mother, and | s'domestic setting hens' are bought up from | the peasantry at two shillings each in scores. ! The hatchery, always excellently walled and l protected, consists of long series of arched | compartments, with sliding doors which de- | scend and close in the hen tightly, leaving | fNr ;r,Af osr The hen is removed from the nest daily, fed | and watered, and carefully put back on her l own nest, great care being taken that it is | not fouled or the eggs misplaced, and all | vermin are eradieated At the end of three l weeks the pheasant chicks have matched. ! The hen is now placed in conical, hand | made rush or willow coop, with free ingress l and egress for the brood, which is closed in | at night and let out at four o'clock every morning. They are fed hard boiled, chopped l eggs mixed with oat and oorn-meal, sort of I food the chief material of which is boiled | and dried horse-hesh, ground biscuit and | oyster shells. Several men are now required | for their care; and for three months the en-
 tire collection of coops Is changed like camp daily to new ground, and each day
 triHe nearer the cover or forest The food is | gradually changed to oats and cracked raw corn; the moment the young birds show signs of skulking they are removed from the l domestic hen mothers aud coops to the l ''sreas;" and in July they set at liberty l within the grounds and forest of the de- | mesne.
 Titled crack shots regard pbeasant-shoot- ing as very great sport. What I have seen | of it looks like murder. American autum- l nal "hog butcheringn has fully as many ele- ! ments of sport. Notwithstanding high l walls, gentleness of keepers and all possible | preventives, many pheasants leave the de- l mesnes, seeking the outer hedges and bog Jbora tIlaxyf fall fr, of tenants and guns of the poachers. There fore few days before pheasant-shooting be- gins all the outside help at the castle starts in circle miles from the demesne and, con centratiug towards the same, shout and "beat" with terrific hullabuloo, thus dri- wing many back within the preserves. Then milord and his friends, dressed as for snipe- | shooting on the moors, and provided each with two double-b e-barreled, breech-loading, csnter-6re fowling-pieces of No. 12 bore, and man for reloading, begin the slaugh- ] ter. The sportsmen are stationed in advance at the edges of open places. The game keeper, who Is $ sort of master of ceremo- nies, brings his assistants or "beaters" into line behind. Then they move forward per haps ten yards apart, the keeper, who knows every bush, hedge, copse or tree, directing the "beaters" in every movement. In an ! instant the preserves Is a perfect bedlam of | yells and explosions The men yell tHi-yi- 1 iii" as they ''ae eat' the bushes calling, as the startled birds flash from copse to copse, "Cock to the right!'-'Cock above."-ssTo 1 the left, eock!"-''Hi yi-i il-cock, cock, coek Right ahead. cock!"-while the death ! dealing guns answer with such rapidity that | they often get too warm to be held in the l sportsmeu's hands. This goes on all day, with an hour for lunch of Irish stew and | beer at two, when tine ''beaters" are fur- | nished liberal amount of bread, cheese and l beer; and their assistants, who follow the l hunters with carts and donltys, by night I have often gathered up one thousand slaugh- ! tered birds. These are shipped direct to l London to dealers, who provide hampers and tags and pay the lordly murderers from four to six shillings per brace. From twenty to fifty thousand pheasants from one Irish es- tate thus freq uently reach the London mar.