154 OBJECTS IN MOTION. 



to make out what it is that made the movement. 

 Every sportsman has daily evidence of this fact in his 

 own experience ; for we hold it to be impossible for 

 a man of ordinary powers of observation to pass any 

 considerable time in a wild country, either as a hunter 

 or a traveller, without becoming aware that his eye 

 quickly accustoms itself to instantly catching sight of 

 anything moving in the landscape. 



Thus the close presence of game is commonly detected 

 in forest hunting in consequence of the twitching of 

 their ears, the flicking of a tail, or some other little 

 movement of a similar kind. The hunter should 

 endeavour to train his faculties to acquire this gift, and 

 should always be keenly on the look-out for any object 

 in motion. 



Mr. Charles St. John, formerly one of our best 

 authorities on sporting matters, * writing some 50 years 

 ago (whose book on Deer Stalking and Natural History 

 in the Scottish Highlands, is still regarded as a standard 

 work on such subjects) even mentions that he has 

 noticed that this constant habit of intently surveying 

 and taking in every detail of the surrounding land- 

 scape leaves its permanent impress upon the faces of 

 those who have served a long apprenticeship to the 

 hunter's craft, and that he had remarked that an old 

 hunter can almost be known by his countenance for, 

 he says 



"a man whose life is spent much in hunting, an<l in the pursuit 

 of wild animals, acquires unmnsriuusly a peculiar restless a n I 

 quick expression of eye, appearing to be always in search of 

 something." f 



ol.it 1856. 



f Wild Sports and i\uhu;,l IIi\l<-y in tin- Sit//\// ////;///<///</, l.y 

 Minrl'-^ St. John. N'.-w Kdit. of 1880 (originally published 1846). 



