264 PHEASANTS 



hope that your sons will spend every 

 day they can snatch from business or 

 work in the open country ; read patiently 

 and perhaps painfully ; only succeed in 

 teaching the boy to take delight in the 

 ways of nature, and your labour will not 

 have been in vain. 



Perhaps all this is hardly in line with 

 modern ideas ; it probably seems to many 

 prosy and dull, besides having little to do 

 with covert-shooting. But still, covert- 

 shooting in some of its aspects becomes 

 so nearly part and parcel of that desire 

 to be amused at all costs which manifests 

 itself in so many ways, that the writer 

 cannot refrain from making his humble 

 protest against a common enough con- 

 tempt of simple things. 



All are not cast in the same mould, 

 but every boy should at least be given 

 fair chance of making friends with nature, 

 of learning to be happy without wishing 

 to be eternally amused. The adaptable 

 age lasts only for a short time, we soon 

 forget the character in which the open 



