A dreadful idea to the keeper is the thought of cattle in his coverts. The worst that a mad bull could do in a china shop would make a faint picture of destruction beside the havoc wrought by cattle in well-stocked preserves. Happy the keeper whose coverts are guarded by good fences in the days when flies torture cattle, and colts are most mischievous. If in hot weather a breach has once been made in a fence by cattle or horses, they will persist in trying to find their way into the woods. One can only pity the pheasant who sits on her eggs, on some sunny bank of a covert fence, while a herd of unbroken cart-colts go lumbering round the field, each shouldering each in an ill-judged swerve from the fence. Even in their calm moments colts are inquisitive, and leave nothing alone that is living and within their reach. We remember a case where a pheasant nested on the outside bank of a wood, and the colts in the field, pushing into the living fence, actually nosed her from her nest, and there was good evidence that they then chawed every one of her eggs. Most difficult of all creatures to keep out of woods are roaming swine. The strongest of live fences offers only a temporary check to their boring ability. And pigs have good noses, and few rabbit-stops and nests of eggs on the ground escape them. If a keeper's woods are infested by pigs he can scarcely be blamed for shooting his own bacon. The keeper has an eye for the trim and pleasing appearance of his woods. He takes a genuine pleasure in their beauty. Jealous of the untrodden appearance of his secret paths, his annoyance is ill-concealed when the hunt cuts up his green rides. He would cheerfully forego the reward for the finding of a fox if he could preserve his rabbit-shorn sward--green and as smooth as velvet. And in his soul is a secret hatred of the traffic of the woodmen's waggons. Their great wheels crush and destroy the promising young underwood; woodmen, removing tree-trunks, ruthlessly plough up lawn-like turf; they have no care and no eye for the young growths of hazel, ash, maple, thorn or brier, to say nothing of bramble and bracken; and their waggons, carts and horses' hoofs spread a desolation which brings curses to the keeper's lips. * * * * * A Tragedy of the Woodlands We know a wood near the Hampshire Highlands that was once famous for its ash, and would be as famous now if the wood's owner had his keeper's fine feeling. The keeper's heart was cut if frost blackened the leaves; this was a grim tragedy. And there were larches of gun-barrel straightness. An order was given that the wood should be laid low. The woodmen came with saw and axe, beetle and wedges, they cut all the trees, and sent them to the guillotine of the travelling steam-saw, which spoiled as fair a meadow as any in Hampshire. Next the woodland was thrown open to cattle, horses, and sheep. Then the keeper was dismissed: and glad he was to go.