t speaks wonders for the good-nature and unselfishness of the farmer
who owns the fowl-run above alluded to that he never would send in the
vestige of a claim to the hunt secretary for the poultry he has lost
from time to time. But he is one of the old-fashioned yeomen of
Gloucestershire--a gentleman, if ever there was one--a type of the best
sort of Englishman. Alas! that hard times have thinned the ranks of the
old yeoman farmers of the Cotswolds! They are the very backbone of the
country; we can ill afford to lose them, with their cheery, bluff
manners and good-hearted natures.

Some of the people round about are not so scrupulous in the way of
poultry claims. We have had to investigate a large number in, recent
years. It is a difficult matter to distinguish _bona-fide_ from "bogus"
claims; they vary in amount from one to twenty pounds. Once only have we
been foolish enough to rear a litter of cubs by hand, having obtained
them from the big woods at Cirencester. Before the hunting season had
commenced we had received claims of nineteen and fourteen pounds from
neighbouring farmers for poultry and turkeys destroyed. One bailiff
declared that the foxes were so bold they had fetched a young heifer
that had died from the "bowssen" into the fox-covert. Whether the
bailiff put it there or the foxes "fetched" it I know not, but the
white, bleached skull may be seen hard by the earth to this day.

One of the claimants above named farms three hundred acres on strictly
economical principles. He has allowed the land to go back to grass, and
the only labour he employs on it is a one-legged boy, whom he pays "in
kind." This boy arrived the other day with another poultry claim, when
the following dialogue occurred:--

"I see you have got down sixteen young ducklings on the list?"

"Yaas, the jackdars fetched they."

"How do you know the jackdaws took them?" "'Cos maister said so."

"Do you shut up your fowls at night?"

"Yaas, we shuts the daar, but the farxes gets in. It be all weared out.
There be great holes in the bowssen where they gets through and
fetches them."

How can one pay poultry claims of this kind? It being absolutely
impossible to verify these accounts properly, the only way is to take
the general character of the claimant, paying according as you think him
straightforward or the reverse. It is an insult to an honest man to
offer him anything less than the amount he asks for; therefore claims
which have ev