86 PHEASANTS 



and its ways, but must be admitted by 

 the most critical to be, if not sport, at 

 least very good fun. 



The least imaginative among us must 

 sometimes indulge some slight wonder 

 as to what the originals of those stolid 

 family portraits that daily watch him at 

 his dining-room table might think of his 

 doings. We cannot often gratify our 

 curiosity, but we may have their opinion 

 of our covert shoots, for in the matter of 

 shooting pheasants as in most other human 

 affairs, it may truly be said that there is 

 nothing new under the sun. 



Announce in some smoking-room that 

 considerably more than a century ago 

 there were regular covert shoots, with 

 hosts of beaters, bags running into four 

 figures, ladies taking part in the shooting, 

 and all the attendant paraphernalia of 

 loaders, shooting-sticks, heavy hampers of 

 game sent to market and the like, and you 

 would almost certainly be contradicted, 

 for all these things we consider a product 

 of our own generation. 



