SOME RECORDS AND COMPARISON'S 221 



shooting I do not find discussed in any of the better 

 known works, and I think one or two points are 

 worth noting. It will be observed that no hares are 

 mentioned in the record of Six-Mile Bottom, for the 

 reason that they were absolutely insignificant in 

 numbers, though this took place long before the 

 passing of the Ground Game Act. Neither were 

 hares mentioned in the marvellous records of the 

 Maharajah Duleep Singh at Elvedon, for the same 

 reason. From this we are forced to the conclusion 

 that such great authorities as the Maharajah, General 

 Hall, and his famous keeper, Jerry, all of whom made 

 partridges their first consideration, thought a large 

 number of hares a bad thing among birds. In this 

 opinion I entirely concur, especially as I know 

 that Lord Leicester and Lord Walsingham share 

 it. In the Londesborough record the number of 

 hares shot is large especially on the first day 

 remembering that the sport took place since the 

 passing of the Act ; but I know that some years 

 earlier the totals of hares on the same ground 

 would have been much higher, and those of par- 

 tridges lower. 



Here is a typical week, one of the best, at Gedling 

 in Nottinghamshire, the late Earl of Chesterfield's, in 

 a county that has always been famous for hares, and 



