428 FATAL EFFECTS OF COLD. 



When we remember therefore, how greatly the wild- 

 fowler is subject to the risk of chills, and the fatal eifects 

 which are shown to frequently follow from such causes 

 it is not wonderful that so acute an observer of everything 

 pertaining to the sportsman's necessities, as Colonel 

 Hawker, should in his still classical work upon sporting 

 matters have been most emphatic in his cautions to young 

 sportsmen with regard to the care of their health. He 

 speaks we may rest assured from long years of personal 

 experience, after undergoing a life of almost unexampled 

 exposure and hardship, in the pursuit of his favourite 

 diversion; and yet in the irony of fate, it is worth 

 noting, that after all, he himself fell a victim to the 

 effects of this overstrain placed upon his once iron 

 constitution. The immediate cause of death was heart 

 disease, brought on by overwork, and though one of 

 the hardiest of men in regard to health, that could be 

 imagined, these things told upon him in the end, and 

 during his latter years he was constantly fighting against 

 illness, and finally died in London, August yth, 1853, 

 in the 6;th year of his age. * 



Colonel Hawker we may remark, was an old 

 Peninsular Officer, who served in the i4th Light 

 Dragoons (as they were then called). He was severely 

 wounded at the Battle of Talavera in 1809; retired 

 from the army in 1813; and died as above stated. 

 He was a good musician as well as a keen sportsman : 

 composed much music ; patented improvements to the 

 pianoforte in 1820; and was the author of several 

 literary works of merit, f In the valuable, and most 



* See The Diary of Colonel Hawker, 1802 to 1853, by Sir Ralph 

 Payne-Gallwey, 1893, p. vii of introduction. 



7 See the Dictionary of National Biography, by Leslie Stephen and 

 Sidney Lee, Vol. xxv, 1891, pp. 200 201. 



