WARWICK WOODLANDS. 99 



rise in England within that average distance. Quail even, the 

 hardest bird to kill, the swiftest and the boldest on the wing, 

 are very rarely killed further than twenty-five to thirty, whereas 

 you may shoot from daylight to sunset in England, after Octo- 

 ber, and not pick up a single partridge within the farthest, as a 

 minimum distance." 



"Well! that's all true, I grant," said Forester, "yet even 

 you allow that it is harder to kill game here than at home ; and 

 if I do not err, I have heard you admit that the best shot in all 

 England could be beat easily by the crack shots on this side ; 

 how does all this agree !" 



" Why very easily, I think," Harry replied, " though to the 

 last remark, I added in his first season here ! Now that Amer- 

 ican field sports are wilder in one sense, I grant readily; with 

 the exception of snipe-shooting here, and grouse-shooting in 

 Scotland, the former being tamer, in all senses, than any Eng- 

 lish the latter wilder in all senses than any American field- 

 sport. 



" American sporting, however, is certainly wilder, in so much 

 as it is pursued on much wilder ground ; in so much as we 

 have a greater variety of game and in so much as we have 

 many more snap shots, and fewer fair dead points. 



" Harder it is, I grant ; for it is all, with scarcely an excep- 

 tion, followed in very thick and heavy covert covert to which 

 the thickest woods I ever saw in England are but as open 

 ground. Moreover, the woods are so very large that the gun 

 must be close up with the dog ; and consequently the shots 

 must, half of them, be fired in attitudes most awkward, and in 

 ground which would, I think, at home, be generally styled im- 

 practicable ; thirdly, all the summer shooting here is made with 

 the leaf on with these thick tangled matted swamps clad in 

 the thickest foliage. 



" Your dogs must beat within twenty yards at farthest, and 

 when they stand you are aware of the fact rather by ceasing to 

 hear their motion, than by seeing them at point ; I am satisfied 

 that of six pointed shots in summer shooting, three at the least 

 must be treated as snap shots ! Many birds must be shot at 

 and many are killed which are never seen at all, till they are 

 bagged ; and many men here will kill three out of four summer 

 woodcock, day in and day out, where an English sportsman, 

 however crack a shot he might be, would give the thing up in 

 despair in half an hour. 



