RABBIT-SHOOTING. 35 



But to get back to the present. Rabbit-shooting 

 appeals to all classes of the English community, 

 especially since the passing of the Ground Game Act. 

 Bunny is not despised at the biggest pheasant shoot ; 

 in rough shooting he adds materially to the weight of 

 the bag; the farmer looks upon him with especial 

 affection ; and he is the natural prey of that inextin- 

 guishable biped, the schoolboy. To look back to the 

 recollections of those holiday shooting parties, when 

 the eldest of the " guns " could scarcely count his three 

 lustres, makes one shudder with horror, and wonder 

 how any of us ever returned to our mothers. The 

 guns that went off accidentally, the reckless shooting, 

 and the still more dangerous moving about in covert 

 that went on would have turned the hair of an adult 

 sportsman gray. 



While one or other variety of the hare is found 

 in almost every part of the world, the rabbit is, I 

 believe or rather was, until the recent too successful 

 attempt at acclimatisation in Australasia confined to 

 Europe. Of all the European countries which I know, 

 it is most generally distributed in England. It is true 

 I read in the Austrian shooting statistics for 1890 that 

 83,687 rabbits were killed there during the year, but 

 the detail shows that of this total the three adjoining 

 provinces of Lower Austria, Bohemia, and Moravia are 

 responsible for 82,503. While four provinces are 

 entirely rabbitless, four more show totals not exceeding 

 twenty head. The provinces named above show also 

 the highest totals for pheasants, partridges, and hares, 

 which prove that they are, according to English 



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