PARTRIDGE-SHOOTING 209 



could be condemned by public opinion, 

 but unhappily the tendency seems rather 

 the other way round, and you may 

 commonly hear the shooter congratulate 

 himself in such wise : " My word, that bird 

 was a long way off ; I never thought I 

 should have got him." To which the 

 proper answer never given is, "Well, 

 sir, if it was neither pace nor curve but 

 only distance that made the bird hard to 

 kill, you are condemned out of your own 

 mouth, and are guilty of a most unjusti- 

 fiable and unsportsmanlike action, for you 

 deliberately, in the hope of bringing off 

 a fluke, took every chance of wounding 

 the bird ; and I fear would have eaten 

 your dinner none the less comfortably 

 this evening for the thought, which 

 would never have occurred to you, that 

 the poor brute was cowering somewhere 

 in misery through your heedless action." 



Enough of a distasteful subject. But 

 boys, when they first enter the shooting 

 field, cannot be too carefully taught to 

 play the game by the birds, and never 



14 



