92 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE 



will give B. a very pretty lesson in the art of shooting, 

 and B. will find to his astonishment that A. and his 

 servant are fully aware of and well able to retrieve all 

 wounded or towered birds that have dropped some 

 distance behind the line, birds which B. thought his 

 town-bred rival would never have noticed. But they 

 are both good fellows : the provincial can learn much 

 from the metropolitan sportsman, and vice versA. If 

 B. is asked often enough by the Marquis of Carabas 

 to shoot the big wood, and by his neighbour, Lord 

 Turniptop, to drive partridges, he will imperceptibly 

 assimilate much of the nature of A., and as his ideas 

 widen and his circumstances improve, he will be 

 found eventually with a pair of really good London 

 guns, and may one day be able to kill three birds out 

 of a covey as they come over him. And it does not 

 surprise me when I come across a man of the A. 

 type, who in a wild country, where game is scarce, 

 proves himself as keen and as able to secure ten brace 

 of birds under difficult circumstances as any man of 

 the other type. The grammar of the business he 

 probably learned in early life, and has the unerring 

 memory and faculty of observation spoken of just 

 now. Accurate shooting, a natural gift, he has per- 

 fected by long practice and in divers places, and all 

 these things make him very difficult to compete 



