38 CAPERCALZIE SHOOTING. 



officer ? If a giraffe had been submitted to liis ac- 

 ceptance, "we presume he ^vould have asked the seller 

 where he procm^ed his merchandise ; and a caper- 

 calzie was at the time as little likely to have come 

 honestly into the hands of a Highland gillie as a 

 cameleopard. But then the cock of the wood was 

 only game, and game stood and stands in the con- 

 ventional category of no man s chattels ; the fact 

 that .very probably the papa and mamma of the 

 capercalzie aforesaid stood Mr. Fowell Buxton in as 

 much as a pair of his dray-horses, to the contrary 

 notwithstanding . 



We know but little of the fair sporting after the 

 capercalzie. Mr. Grieff affords us a melancholy 

 account of its slaughter in his comitiy, Sweden. 

 There, he informs us, it is shot in the night-time, 

 by torch-light. This plan, which he states it as his 

 opinion is veiy destructive, and we should think on 

 good grounds, is, he believes, principally confined to 

 the southern provinces, and thus effected : — 



" Towards nightfall, people watch the last flight of 

 the capercalzie before they go to roost. The direc- 

 tion they have taken into the forest is then carefully 

 marked by means of a prostrate tree, or by one 

 which is felled for the purpose. After dark, two 

 men start in pm^suit of the birds ; one of them is 

 provided with a gun, the other mth a long pole, to 

 either end of which a flambeau is attached. The 

 man with the flambeau now goes in advance, the 

 other remaining at the prostrate tree to keep it and 



