PHEASANT. 371 



if a large number of birds are reared for sport — and why 

 should not landed proprietors provide such amusement 

 for their friends at a time when partridge shooting is 

 well nigh over? — there is no means so effectual for 

 obtaining an equal amount of shooting for several guns, 

 as the "battue;" whilst the most inveterate opponent 

 of the "slaughter" system (if a sportsman at all) will 

 not venture to deny that pheasants, as well as running 

 game, in large quantities, can be shot down by no other 

 means. There is every reason, however, to believe that 

 the majority of those writers who are loudest in their 

 denunciations against the ^^ battue," and can find no 

 milder epithets than "blood-thirsty and unsportsman- 

 like," to mark their abhorrence of it, are either practically 

 unacquainted with the working of the system, or are 

 deficient themselves in that necessary coolness and skill, 

 without which even pheasants, big as they are, will 

 escape from a perfect volley of double barrels. Such 

 individuals seem wholly unable to associate the enjoy- 

 ment of a "heavy" day's covert shooting with skill in 

 the use of firearms and physical endurance; quite 

 overlooking the fact that, amongst the sportmen 

 accustomed to congregate towards Christmas-time at 

 the country seats of noblemen and wealthy squires, 

 for the pui-pose of joining in these great ^'battues," 

 are some of the very best shots in the world ; men for 

 whom no day, on the open moors or in the treacherous 

 snipe marsh, is too long; no sport, in any quarter 

 of the globe, too hazardous, though pursued by them 

 merely for pleasure and excitement. If such men as 

 these, and there are many, can enjoy, for a change, 

 a "big-day" in some well-stocked coverts (when hunt- 

 ing probably is stopped by the frost), one would 

 scarcely term it an " uusportsman-like" diversion, even 

 though carried to excess in the niimber of head killed 

 in a single day. There is not certainly much bodily 

 3 b2 



