PARTRIDGE SHOOTING 



Here they come, streaming high and fast, getting a broadside 

 from each of the men on your left. " One — two " with your 

 first gun, " three — four " with your second — the last a beauty, 

 and as they come clattering down like cricket balls about the 

 head of your right-hand neighbour, you feel you have done 

 your duty. 



' A hare leaps through a run in the fence bottom, sits 

 foolishly with ears laid back for a second, and then dashes for 

 it past you. Let her go, she will do to breathe the farmer's 

 greyhounds in February ; " here 's metal more attractive," 

 for birds are still coming. But the whimpering of your 

 retriever at the close view of the forbidden iur, and the conse- 

 quent objurgations of the keeper behind, sufficiently distract 

 you to make you snap at and miss an easy bird in front with 

 your first, and turn and fiercely drive it into him much too 

 close with your second. 



' " D — n the hare," you mutter aloud as you change your 

 gun ; but the men are getting near, you hear the whish and 

 rustle of the flags, a few more desultory lots come screaming 

 over, and pretty it is, looking down the line, to see them drop 

 out as they pass, for the performers on either side of you are 

 picked from the best in England. A few more " singletons " 

 to each gun, all killed but one, at which four barrels are fired, 

 and which towers far away back. 



'"Anything to pick up this side, gentlemen?" sings out 

 Marlowe ; in another minute he and his horse come crashing 

 through the gap, the white smocks and flags are peeping 

 through unforeseen holes in the fence, all the dogs are loose 

 and ranging far and wide, the guns and loaders scattered, 

 picking up in all directions, and the drive of the season is over. 



' Seventy-five brace in the single drive, of which forty 

 birds you can honestly claim, having laid their corpses in a fair 

 row ere they are hurled by the old pensioner into his sack, 

 and you find yourself shouted, whistled, nay, sworn at, to get 

 on to the next drive.' 



The red-leg Avas first introduced into this country by 

 L 81 



