We met, by chance, an old keeper who, on first acquaintance, seemed a remarkable specimen--for he informed us that his orders were to set not a single trap anywhere on his ten thousand acres. Thinking that we saw a movement of his eyelid, we put the blunt question to him: How many traps did he usually set? And he replied unblushingly, "Forty dozen." He kept no record of his bag of vermin; but as he trapped on such a wholesale scale (remembering that the estate is supposed to be trapless), no doubt his employer would be startled if he knew the numbers of vermin killed; his vermin bag must be exceptional. The old-fashioned keeper is stubborn; the kestrel, as we have said before, is seen too often on his gibbet, and he has no respect for the useful wood-owl, which he ruthlessly exterminates. A record of a year's bag of vermin on one big estate reads thus: Jays, 350; magpies, 160; crows, 150; squirrels, 140; weasels, 80; cats, 70; stoats, 60; hedgehogs, 40; hawks, 30; total, 1080. This record says nothing of rats, rooks or owls, though no doubt numbers of rats and rooks were sacrificed. * * * * * The Ways of Squirrels The gamekeeper whose bag of vermin in a year included 140 squirrels is, we may hope, exceptional. Squirrels are not always treated by keepers as vermin. Now and again a squirrel has been proved guilty of meddling with the eggs and young of pheasants--but so rarely that even keepers speak of these misdeeds as "not worth mentioning." The traditional crime of squirrels is that they damage various sorts of coniferous trees by nipping their shoots when young. Even if they gave this work all their time and attention, their numbers in the woods to-day are so small that the whole damage done would not amount to a very great injury to the country. Squirrels are the most innocent creatures in the woods, so far as any harm to game preserving goes. It is their misfortune that many keepers look upon them as a convenient form of ferret-food. We have found a freshly killed squirrel, apparently the victim of a bird of prey, beneath a spruce fir, from which a barn owl flew as we examined the body; no doubt owls would take a chance to attack a squirrel. As to what squirrels kill there is little evidence. We have known a squirrel to do away with part of a brood of tits in an apple-tree, and one which visited a pheasant's nest, carrying away an egg, and once we saw a young pheasant in a squirrel's mouth; but we have no doubt that the bird was picked up dead. The squirrel's alarm-cry reminds us of the sound produced from the hole in the body of a rubber doll; it is amusing to see how he stamps his fore-feet while uttering this cry, as if doing his best to frighten away his human intruder by a show of force and fury.