The First of September. 



At this time double barrels had just been invented, and an accident had 

 lately happened with one, which had resulted in the blowing to pieces of a 

 gentleman's arm ; and Scott says, in considering the case,. " Granting the 

 barrels to be unobjectionable, and the caution with which they were managed 

 fairly in the same predicament, the use of the double gun would stand 

 finally condemned by the present accident." Bravo, prejudice ! And though 

 he admits subsequently that a double barrel may be used with care, without 

 much extra danger, yet he has a fine old-fashioned hatred for new-fangled 

 inventions, and clearly has no liking for them, and at the best only a sort 

 of suspicious toleration. However, the public soon ceased to be influenced 

 by such views, and double barrels were succeeded by the introduction of the 

 percussion system, with caps or tubes, and all complete, and these in turn 

 have yielded to the breechloader ; and whether any sort of repeating breech- 

 loader will succeed that, so as to allow of yet more and grander slaughter 

 in a given time, time only can show. Certainly the mania for slaughter has 

 had something to do with the destruction of what the old school termed 

 good sportsmanship. "We used to be satisfied with from twelve or fifteen 

 to twenty or twenty-five brace a day. Now less than from fifty to one 

 hundred is voted slow. 



The birds are too numerous now to admit of dogs being successfxilly 

 employed, for if only one bird is accidentally flushed, covey after covey 

 rises until the field is emptied. Dogs being very much less in request, and 

 gunners much less in the habit of using and working them, less pains are 

 bestowed upon their breaking, and they are less efficiently himted, and this 

 of course deepens the evU. Improved farming, clean drilled turnips, and 

 short stubbles, with the constant disturbance by stock of various kinds, and 

 labourers at work, renders the bird wilder and wilder, until it is a question 

 even with the best dogs and the best sportsmen whether you could kill 

 birds over dogs as we used to. Though for the first few days, where birds 

 are not too plentiful, one can still get a savour of the good old sport of 

 shooting to a pair of good dogs. But it is not worth keeping dogs for, and 

 the practice of flushing every covey on the groimd and following none, 

 very soon assists powerfully in putting them on the qui vive. Formerly we 

 went out with two or three lads as markers, who were perched in com- 



