22 FRANK forester's FIELD SPORTS. 



adopted be not taken to save this bird, it will be extinct every- 

 where within a hundred miles of the Atlantic seaboard — and in- 

 land, everywhere within a hundred miles of any city large enough 

 to afford a market. Within fifty years from the day on which I 

 now write, I am satisfied that the Woodcock will be as rare in 

 the eastern and midland states, as the Wild Turkey and the 

 Heath-Hen are at present. 



The Quail will endure a little longer, and the Ruffed Grouse 

 the longest of all — but the beginning of the twentieth century 

 will see the wide woodlands, the dense swamps, and the moun- 

 tain sides, depopulated and silent. I begin to despair — to feel 

 that there is no hope for those who would avert the evil day, 

 when game shall be extinct, and the last manly exercise out of 

 date in the United States of North America. 



The foregoing remarks contain, in brief, the reasons which 

 have induced me to prepare and offer to the public the present 

 work, on " the Field Sports of the United States, and the British 

 Provinces of North America" — a work, the intention and char- 

 acter of which, I shall take this opportunity of stating, are en- 

 tirely different from those of any book heretofore published in 

 this country. 



" In all European countries," I remarked, in connexion with 

 the observations quoted above, " writers on all branches of sport- 

 ing have long abounded ; many of them of high birth, many of 

 them distinguished in the world of science and of letters, and 

 some even of the gentler sex. The greatest chemist of his day, Sir 

 Humphry Davy, was not ashamed to record his piscatory expe- 

 riences in ' Salmonia,' a work second only in freshness and at- 

 traction to its prototype, by old Isaak Walton. That fair and 

 gentle dame, Juliana Berners, deemed it not an unfeminine task 

 to indite what, to the present day, is the text-book of falconry ; 

 and hapless beautiful Jane Grey thought she had given the ex- 

 tremest praise to Plato's eloquence, when she preferred it to the 

 music of the hound and horn in the good greenwood. Till the last 

 few years, however, America has found no son to record the feats 

 of her bold and skilful hunters, to build theories on the results of 



