376 OUTDOOR LIFE IN ENGLAND 



hours since we so hastily partook of the slender 

 meal which had to do duty for our usually sub- 

 stantial breakfast ; and although some few more 

 ardent sportsmen elect to remain with the hounds 

 as they proceed further up-stream, the majority of 

 us arrive at the conclusion that home and the 

 prospect of food offer irresistible attractions, and 

 so homeward bend our steps. 



Partridges are still partridges, and turnip-fields 

 are much the same as they ever have been ; but 

 partridge-shooting at the present day is a very 

 different kind of sport to what it was some thirty 

 or forty years ago. Nor can it be said that the 

 present style of sport possesses the same attrac- 

 tions as when stubbles were real honest stubbles, 

 the straw nearly up to one's knees, with plenty of 

 pickings left for the birds, instead of the closely- 

 shaven and closely-raked fields of the present day. 

 It was in those days not only possible to approach 

 within shot of the birds in the stubbles, but the 

 sport in them was often little inferior to that in 

 the roots. Breech-loading guns have usurped the 

 place of the dear, delightful old muzzle-loading 

 weapons, with their charming appointments of 

 powder and shot flasks, though it must be con- 

 fessed, as far as the loading part of the performance 

 was concerned, no one could desire to return to 

 the use of a muzzle-loading gun ; the process of 

 loading was necessarily slow, not to say dangerous, 

 especially in cold weather, when one's finger-tips 

 were numbed and well-nigh useless. But even 



