Writing on 31 March 1860 about a staghound that had been worrying sheep, and had killed above a hundred in a month, he observes:--“The farmer is generally a selfish man, not caring much about his neighbour; and they did not take the thing up in good neighbourly spirit until Thursday last, when all the farmers in the different parishes assembled, some 150, to drive up the country, which was the only way to succeed; and they succeeded in finding him in a coppice not far from Meacombe. A man discharged both barrels at him, and wounded him: then the horsemen went in full chase for some three or four miles, and regularly rode him down and dispatched him.... I often find farmers laughing at the misfortunes of another, but now the loss was so general that there were but few to laugh.” On 19 January 1840 he has a few words on a neighbour who was too fond of talking politics:--“Old ***** is very cross and tedious--I can hardly bear with him. He is all but a Tory, indeed he likes to associate more with Torys than Liberals: he detests Whigs; and nothing but Chartism, or something like it, will do for him, for he has lived all these years in expectation of a Revolution, and none come, and is afraid he shall die without seeing it.” He writes on 24 May 1852:--“A greater nuisance there cannot be than a magistrate in a little rural district.... We never before had a magistrate nearer than *****, and if any little paltry squabble happened between parties, their courage invariably cooled down on crossing the water, and almost invariably they returned home without a summons. But now whilst passion is up they have only to go to *****, and a summons is granted, I find, much to the regret of many after cool reflection.” There is a footpath here that cuts off the corner at Wreyland Cross, and leads down to Wreyford Bridge; and he writes, 20 July 1856:--“The farmer has nailed up and wreathed up Wreyford Park gates, and says (I am told) he will summons anyone who passes that way. I asked his landlord if he had sanctioned it; he said No, but when the farmer applied to him, said he might do as he liked.... I told him I should take down the wreath, and if he chose to summon anyone, I was the best he could summon, for I would prove about sixty years a quiet and unmolested pathway, and my mother about eighty, and others in the village more than fifty.” (He was sixty-seven then, and my great-grandmother was ninety-one.) He writes next day that the farmer is taking the obstruction down.