34 FRANK forester's FIELD SPORTS. 



The Mouse and Cariboo may be hunted with more or less 

 sxxccess in Maine and Canada, as well as in the Eastern provin- 

 ces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. A few linger yet in 

 the north-eastern angle of New York, and on the northern 

 frontiers of Vermont and New Hampshire. There is, however, 

 little prospect of sport in their pursuit, west of the St. Johns, or 

 south of the Canada lines. A few Elk are said to exist still in 

 the western districts of Pennsylvania, and also in Kentucky, 

 but to find them in herds, and in fact to have a chance of killing 

 them, the hunter must go westward of the Mississippi. 



Even the larger species of hare, which becomes white in win- 

 ter, is becoming rare in New York south of the region of Lake 

 Champlain ; and, except among the craggy hills where he 

 can laugh at pursuit, he will soon cease to exist as an animal of 

 chase. 



So that in fact for the great majority of sportsmen, the number 

 of varieties of four-footed game is reduced to two species — the 

 common Deer, and the common Hare — the small grayish brown 

 fellow, I mean, who is erroneously called Rabbit — for be it ob- 

 served no Rabbit exists on the continent of North America, and 

 no Buffalo ; though I suppose to all eternity, men will persist — 

 even men of education, who ought to know, and do know, better 

 — in calling them by the names applied to them by the illiterate 

 and vulgar. 



I have no patience with the dependent provincial vulgarism of 

 calling all birds, beasts, plants and fishes, by the name of Euro- 

 pean animals or vegetables, to which they bear some fancied 

 resemblance, when no such things exist on the continent. 



There is scarcely a wild bird or a wild plant in this country 

 that does not go by some ludicrous misnomer. Thus a Thrush is 

 termed a Robin, a Vulture a Crow, a Grouse a Pheasant or a Par- 

 tridge, a Quail a Partridge — a Rhododrendon, an Azalia, and a 

 Calmia — all three as wide apart from each other, and from the 

 thing they are called, as an ivy bush from an oak tree — laurel ; 

 and so on, of almost everything that runs, flies or grows in the 

 woods or wilds of the United States. 



