4 FACT AGAINST FICTION, 



Observe the difference now ! Pointers and setters 

 are not used ; but from three to four or five gunners 

 —I can give them no more apt definition, mingled 

 with nine, ten, or twelve beaters— tramp in a line of 

 march across the turnip fields, and as the beaters 

 behead the doomed turnips with clumsy large-nailed 

 shoes, they make a noise like the roar of a surging 

 tide or the tramp of soldiers on a march, vainly 

 expecting that if they take short beats backwards 

 and forwards, leaving it to the selection of the much 

 wiser old cock partridges, without using their 

 wings, to run and double round them, that they 

 will thus ^^ tramp up" every bird in a given field 

 and get a shot at him. 



They do not, however, tramp them up as wanted ; 

 they do not induce the birds to lie ; for the coveys, 

 hearing this measured tread of many feet and a 

 noise of human voices so unusual approaching 

 them, take to their legs before the strange ad- 

 vance, and then to their wings, ere their drilled 

 assailants come within shot. 



When a party of tliis description, so drilled and 

 armed, commence a ^^ tramp" against wild birds, 

 they seem to lay aside all thoughts of the birds 

 having any sense at all. Keepers, very likely 



