GAam AND SMALLHOLDERS.
It has often been said that game cannot flourish among a community of smallholders. One or two Irish experiences of recent, as of older, dates seem to disprove -this. One game preserver, in Ireland made a regular compact to give game to the tenants in exact proportion to the birds killed on each holding,, and told me that the method had worked like a charm. " I have now not one keeper but a score," he said in effect. On the other side I know no regions in England so _entirely barren of game of any. sort as some chalk ridges where the farms are biggest and, therefore, least intensive. Vermin multiply, and partridges and pheasants vanish. To give another instance bearing on the subject, the most remarkable example within my, own knowledge of the natural multiplication of pheasants is on the edge and among the Government smallholdings of South Lincolnshire. In spite of the entire absence of woods or coverts the pheasant is one of the commonest of birds, not seldom to be seen fre- quenting with the smallholders' poultry. Again, smallholders are much more thorough, as one would expect, than bigger farmers in dealing with rabbits ; and it is not, I think, generally realized how deleterious to ground birds many rabbits proye. Reduction of rabbits generally means increase of partridges.
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