208 GAME PRESERVERS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS. 



take up his point again fifty yards off, waiting 

 for us to come and advise him how to act 

 under such unusual circumstances. Which was 

 the easy bird to shoot? One of these grouse, or 

 the tame pigeon, which is out of the trap you 

 least expect, and you verily believe before the 

 string was pulled, and is away with a dash and 

 twist which an Irish snipe might envy ; and, 

 though you have the best gun in England in 

 your hand, and though you would go home a 

 richer man by 500/. if you could, you simply 

 cannot shoot him ? 



Eightly understood and properly carried 

 out, men's dominion over the beasts of the 

 field and the fowls of the air may be called a 

 new dispensation for them, and it is an infi- 

 nitely more merciful one than the original state 

 of things under which they suffer and struggle 

 for existence, while allowed to destroy each 

 other on every day in the year. 



When he refuses to interfere with 'the 

 balance of Nature,' man wraps his talent in a 



