188 FRANK FORESTER S FIELD SPORTS. 



such as I trust I may have many, before this year has donned 

 the sear of the leaf, which is not as yet green. 



Jesting apart, this is the way to do it, both as regards the 

 flushing and shooting the bird, and the management of the dog ; 

 and, with respect to the last, I have only to add, that while it is 

 impossible to be too resolute, too firm, and almost impossible to 

 be too strict, if not severe, it is also impossible to be too patient, 

 too deliberate, or too quiet, with a delinquent dog. The least 

 outbreak of temper prostrates its own object. All punishment 

 aims at prevention. If you distract the dog's comprehension of 

 your meaning, the object of the punishment is lost. Remem- 

 ber, too, that the brute knows as well, whether he is punished 

 justly or unjustly, as you do. 



A quiet rating, and a gentle pull of the ear, is better than an 

 intemperate and noisy flogging ; but when you do flog, let it be 

 no child's play, teasing and irritating without punishing, — when 

 you do flog, flog in earnest. 



And this is a day's summer Cock-shooting, — a repetition of 

 this that I have described, varied by those thousand little un- 

 foreseen incidents, which render field sports so charming to 

 every sensitive and enthusiastic spirit. First of all, it is pursued 

 in the very loveliest summer weather, when the whole atmo- 

 sphere is alive with all sounds of merriment and glee, — it is fol- 

 lowed among the wildest and most romantic combinations of 

 rural scenery — in the deep, dim, secluded groves, far from the 

 ordinary tread of man, by the reedy and willow-girdled mar- 

 gins of calm inland waters, by the springy shores of musical 

 mountain brooks, in long-retiring valleys high up among the 

 hills, whence we look forth at unexpected turns over wide tracts 

 of woodland scenery — in places where the shyest and most 

 timid of warblers wake their wild music all day long, screened 

 by impervious umbrage from the hot noon-tide of July, where 

 every form of animal life and beauty abounds, unbeheld of or- 

 dinary mortals. 



And are not all these things a source of pleasure to the true 

 woodsman ? Is he not necessarily a lover not of sport only, and 



