2 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



the Game Animals only that I had to do. In the prefatory 

 observations of that work, I endeavoured to make myself 

 miderstood as to what constitutes Game, in my humble 

 opinion, as regards animals of fur and feather. I did not, 

 it is true, expect, or even hope, to suit the views and 

 notions of everybody, particularly when I looked to the 

 great variety of soils, regions, and chmates, for the inha- 

 bitants of which I was writing ; and to the extreme lati- 

 tude and laxity of ideas concerning sportsmanship which 

 prevail in this country. 



One would sujDpose it was sufficiently evident, that a 

 work of the magnitude of the " Universal Encyclopaedia," 

 and nothing short of that, would suffice to give an elabo- 

 rate essay and disquisition on every separate sort of sport, 

 which every separate individual, of every separate State 

 in the Union, may think proper to practise for his own 

 pleasure or profit. 



I therefore determined to confine myself, in the first 

 place, to those sports only which are truly Field Sports in 

 the highest acceptation of the term, and which are estab- 

 lished as such by the consent of genuine sportsmen. 



In the second place, I restricted myself to those sports 

 which are purely and peculiarly American, and which, as 

 such, are not treated of at all, or, if at all, understand- 

 ingly, by European writers. 



The natural history, the generic distinctions, the migra- 



