20 i-RANK forester's FIELD SPORTS. 



try farmers, as a body, have neither the time, the inchnation, noi 

 the opportunities for making themselves acquainted with the 

 names, habits, or manners of game-animals ; and consequently 

 could not, if they would, have framed adequate laws for their 

 protection. I believe that if they could now be brought as a body 

 to understand that the provisions of these laws are not arbitrary', 

 and intended to suit the wishes of classes, they might be in- 

 duced to lend their hand to the good work of game-preservation. 



A very few years since, the sportsmen proper — those I mean 

 who shot for exercise, pleasure, and healthful excitement — and 

 the poachers who shot for the markets, both coming from the 

 cities, were the only enemies of the Quail and Woodcock. 

 They were at that time entirely disregarded by the farmers, who 

 had not the art to kill them on the wing, who did not care foi 

 them as delicacies, or articles of food, and who had no markets 

 to supply with what they considered useless birds. So great 

 was the extent of this disregard, that I have repeatedly, on 

 firing a great number of shots in small pieces of woodland, been 

 questioned by the owners what on earth I found to shoot at • 

 and, on showing some twenty or thirty Woodcock, have been met 

 by a remark that the speaker had lived on that farm all his life, 

 and had not seen a dozen such birds in his life-time — and the 

 name of the bird was unknown to them. 



At this period, which was the golden age for the sportsman, tra- 

 velling was, comparatively speaking, expensive ; it was often 

 necessary, in visiting out-of-the-way places, where the best sport 

 was to be had, to hire private conveyances ; and the consequence 

 was that the city poacher was in a great measure precluded from 

 following his barbarous and dishonest trade. Add to this, that 

 the country people were averse to the market-shooter, when 

 they discovered his object, and cast obstacles in his way. 



All this is now changed — the rail-roads by which the country 

 is everywhere intersected, enable the city pot-hunter to move 

 about with his dogs, and to transmit the subject of his butchery 

 to the market easily, cheaply, speedily. Nor is this all — the 

 country now bids fair to monopolize the trade of pot-hunting 



