Sporting Sketches in Pen and Pencil. 



right at my feet, and I scored another brace. I had been within a dozen 

 yards or so of that old sawpit twenty times, but never thought of 

 heaving a stone into it. 



Partridge shooting, though now so popular, has only grown into 

 popularity during the last hundred years or so. When old Nicholas Cox 

 wrote in 1721, in George the Eirst's early days, it was not apparently 

 known or practised. Wildfowl were occasionally shot over, but what for ? 

 Eead and perpend. You are desired first to set nets over parts of the 

 river, and upon the fens and plashes. Then go early in the morning, 

 and if you espy any fowl on the river "discharge your gun, which will 

 make them fly to the fens and plashes, and then go and see what you 

 have taken." Then you may even shoot fowl by means of a stalking 

 horse, and you are taught how to cast shots by the use of a melting 

 ladle, some water, and a due admixture of auri-pigmentum, and the shot 

 thus produced is thought to he better without tails ; and even then you are 

 counselled to shoot with the wind, and behind or sidewise at the fowl, and 

 not full in their faces. As for partridges and other land fowl, there seems 

 only to be reserved various nets and engines, driving, setting, and liming. 

 Falconry, of course, was practised, and it was a noble sport, and on it our old 

 friend, of coixrse, holds forth at length ; but with the progress of the Georges 

 these methods of fowling fell into desuetude ; and as the next century took 

 root and flourished, we find the old single barrel, flint and steel poker, in 

 vogue ; and in 1818 Scott wrote as follows : — 



" The ammunition, flints, and wadding, the latter in good store, wiU not 

 be forgotten ; nor ammunition of another kind, both solid and fluid, when 

 a long day is expected. Other items may not so readily occur, and yet in 

 the course of the day may have their turn of consequence : for instance, a 

 rod to which a scraper may be affixed. These rods are now made to take to 

 pieces for the pocket, and are useful to scrape a barrel which has been fired 

 a considerable number of times." (Scrape a barrel ! Shades of Paddy Grant, 

 Purdey, Boss, and Lancaster ! where are ye ?) " A small piece of brim- 

 stone may be taken wherewith to rub the face of the hammer should a miss 

 fire happen; and a piece of copper wire conveniently suspended to prick 

 the touch bole must not be forgotten." 



