252 FRANCIS ORPEN MORRIS 



hawks who had come with an adoptive feeling to 

 succour the orphan. These two he killed, and then 

 left the nest. On returning afterwards he found 

 two more charitable individuals on the same errand 

 of mercy. One of these he killed ; the other he 

 also shot but could not find. No more came on 

 the like fruitless errand." Facts such as this had 

 only to be made public in order to enlist the sym- 

 pathy of every humane person ; many were the 

 expressions of hearty approval which he received 

 from those who thought with him whenever he 

 put pen to paper in dealing with the question of 

 " sport and slaughter." 



Frequently he exposed, and that in no measured 

 terms, the whole system of modern battue shoot- 

 ing. More than once did he describe how, in one 

 of his country walks in the year 1877, he overtook 

 a cart loaded up as high or higher than any cart he 

 had ever seen in his life before ; three men went 

 with it, and, according to his wont, he fell into con- 

 versation with them. The burden under which the 

 horses laboured proved to be a load of coops which 

 were being taken away for the winter, after having 

 served their purpose for hatching tame pheasants 

 under barn-door hens. How many more cartloads 

 there were to follow did not appear, but some idea 

 may be found when it is known that on this parti- 

 cular preserve a twenty-acre field had been covered 

 over with these hen-coops. 



This incident was the peg on which to hang a 

 long letter to the Times. In this letter, after de- 



