under the strain or their bodies collapsed, it would do 

 them a world of good. We should hear no more from 

 them about helpless flocks of ducks ; what we should 

 probably hear would be expressions of wonderment at 

 the strangeness of any man being able to derive a 

 grain of pleasure from passing a bitter winter's day in 

 a horribly uncomfortable punt, making occasional 

 efforts to approach unapproachable birds, and perhaps 

 at last, as the result of the keenest calculation, securing 

 the chance of firing a shot yielding half a dozen 

 widgeon. 



A similar course of experiences among partridges 

 and pheasants might do as much good to other idiots 

 who, their imagination running riot, or writing on 

 the authority of some brother idiot whose ignorance 

 they take for knowledge, make the vilification of the 

 game -preserver and shooter their speciality. Sports- 

 men almost without exception have the liveliest and 

 most cordial sympathy with all movements tending 

 to suppress cruelty and lessen suffering, and to give 

 mankind an exalted view of his moral obligations 

 towards the lower animal creation ; but of the silly, 

 effeminate ignoramuses who shriek against sport the 

 Briton's birthright and the imagined iniquities of 

 its followers, they can have no feeling save contempt 

 mingled with some amusement and a little pity. 



