The Copse

In the words of Baden-Powell, from "Lessons on the 'Varsity of Life."

       When I was a small boy at Charterhouse, outside the school walls was “The Copse,” a long stretch of woodland on a steep hill- side, extending for a mile or so round the playing fields.
       It was here that I used to imagine myself a backwoodsman trapper and Scout. I used to creep about warily looking for “sign” and getting “close up” observation of rabbits, squirrels, rats, and birds.
       As a trapper I set my snares, and when I caught a rabbit or hare (which wasn’t often) I learned by painful experiment to skin, clean, and cook him. But knowing that the Redskins were about, in the shape of masters looking for boys out of bounds, I used a very small non-smoky fire for fear of giving away my whereabouts.
       Incidentally, also, I gained sufficient cunning to hide up in trees when danger of this kind threatened, since experience told me that masters hunting for boys seldom looked upward. The Greeks made a bloomer when they styled man “anthropos,” or “he who looks up,” since in practice he generally fails to look above his own level.
       Thus, without knowing it I was gaining an education that was to be of infinite value to me later.
       It proved not only a help to me in the hunting of big game and also in the conduct of Scouting, but incidentally it started in me the habit of noticing small details or “sign” and of putting this and that together and so reading a meaning from them — in other words the invaluable habit of Observation and Deduction.