RURAL SPORTS 



harm in telling my readers of any of the means, that I have 

 employed ; especially as I know of few greater misfortunes than 

 that of breeding up things to be school-boys all their lives. . It is 

 not, that I have so many wonders of the world : it is that I have 

 pursued a rational plan of education, and one that any man may 



Jursue, if he will, with similar effects. I remembered, too, that 

 myself had had a sportsman-education. I ran after the hare- 

 hounds at the age of nine or ten. I have many and many a day left 

 the rooks to dig up the wheat and peas, while I followed the 

 hounds ; and have returned home at dark-night, with my legs 

 full of thorns and my belly empty to go supperless to bed, and to 

 congratulate myself if I escaped a flogging. I was sure of these 

 consequences ; but that had not the smallest effect in restraining 

 me. All the lectures, all the threats, vanished from niy mind in a 

 moment upon hearing the first cry of the hounds, at which my 

 heart used to be ready to bound out of my body. I remembered 

 all this. I traced to this taste my contempt for card-playing and 

 for all childish and effeminate amusements. And, therefore, I 

 resolved to leave the same course freely open to my sons. This 

 is my plan of education : others may follow what plan they please. 



376. This Chapter will be a head without a body ; for, it will 

 not require much time to give an account of the rural sports in 

 America. The general taste of the country is to kill the things 

 in order to have them to eat, which latter forms no part of the 

 sportsman s objects. 



377. There cannot be said to be any thing here, which we, in 

 England, call hunting. The deer are hunted by dogs, indeed, 

 but the hunters do not follow. They are posted at their several 

 stations to shoot the deer as he passes. This is only one remove 

 from the Indian hunting. I never saw, that I know of, any man 

 that had seen a pack of hounds in America, except those kept by 

 old JOHN BROWN, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who was the 

 only hunting Quaker that I ever heard of, and who was grandfather 

 of the famous General Brown. In short, there is none of what we 

 call hunting ; or, so little, that no man can expect to meet with it. 



378. No {qoursingj I never saw a greyhound here. Indeed, 

 there are no nfires that have the same manners that ours have, or 

 any thing like their neetness. The woods, too, or some sort of 

 cover, except in the singular instance of the plains in this Island, 

 are too near at hand. 



379. But, of shooting the variety is endless. Pheasants, 

 partridges, wood-cocks, snipes, grouse, wild-ducks of many 

 sorts, teal, plover, rabbits. 



380. There is a disagreement between the North and the South 

 as to the naming of the two former. North of New Jersey the 

 pheasants are called partridges, and the partridges are called 

 quails. To the South of New Jersey, they are called by what I 

 think are their proper names, taking the English names of those 

 birds to be proper. For, pheasants do not remain in coveys : 



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