16 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [ch. ii. 



given up to amusements, though I always had some book in 

 hand, which I read with interest. During the summer of 

 1826, I took a long walking tour with two friends with 

 knapsacks on our backs through North Wales. We walked 

 thirty miles most days, including one day the ascent of 

 Snowdon. I also went with my sister a riding tour in North 

 Wales, a servant with saddle-bags carrying our clothes. 

 The autumns were devoted to shooting, chiefly at Mr. Owen's, 

 at Woodhouse, and at my Uncle Jos's,* at Maer. My zeal 

 was so great that I used to place my shooting-boots open by 

 my bed-side when I went to bed, so as not to lose half a 

 minute in putting them on in the morning ; and on one oc- 

 casion I reached a distant part of the Maer estate, on the 

 20th of August for black-game shooting, before I could see : 

 I then toiled on with the gamekeeper the whole day through 

 thick heath and young Scotch firs. 



I kept an exact record of every bird which I shot through- 

 out the whole season. One day when shooting at Wood- 

 house with Captain Owen, the eldest son, and Major Hill, 

 his cousin, afterwards Lord Berwick, both of whom I liked 

 very much, I thought myself shamefully used, for every 

 time after I had fired and thought that I had killed a bird, 

 one of the two acted as if loading his gun, and cried out, 

 " You must not count that bird, for I fired at the same 

 time," and the gamekeeper, perceiving the joke, backed 

 them up. After some hours they told me the joke, but it 

 was no joke to me, for I had shot a large number of birds, 

 but did not know how many, and could not add them to 

 my list, which I used to do by making a knot in a piece of 

 string tied to a button-hole. This my wicked friends had 

 perceived. 



How I did enjoy shooting ! but I think that I must have 

 been half -consciously ashamed of my zeal, for I tried to 

 persuade myself that shooting was almost an intellectual 

 employment; it required so much skill to judge where to 

 find most game and to hunt the dogs well. 



One of my autumnal visits to Maer in 1827 was memo- 

 rable from meeting there Sir J. Mackintosh, who was the 

 best converser I ever listened to. I heard afterwards with a 

 glow of pride that he had said, " There is something in that 

 young man that interests me." This must have been chiefly 

 due to his perceiving that I listened with much interest to 



* Josiah Wedgwood, the son of the founder of the Etruria Works. 



