i68 GUNS 



of field sports — shooting, hunting, and angling.^ 

 But I must say that I am unconvinced that the 

 keen sportsman is necessarily a less humane man 

 than those who decry our field sports chiefly on 

 the ground that we have no right to inflict pain on 

 living things. 1 believe it is a narrow and mistaken 

 view to take, that field sports brutalise a man. The 

 sporting squire of '* Locksley Hall " was, to his 

 rival, as a dog which ** hunts in dreams " ; one who 

 would hold his wife as *' something better than his 

 dog, a little dearer than his horse." In reality, as 

 we know from the recantation in " Locksley Hall 

 Sixty Years After," he was the ^^ sound and honest 

 rustic Squire." There are various grounds on 

 which the three great English field sports can be 

 defended, if ever there should be a real need for 

 defence. One of the strongest of these, to my 

 thinking, is that, by these fine exercises on horse- 

 back and afoot, we are storing health and hardness 

 against the stealing years. It is a bounden duty 

 that we keep supple in limb so long as possible in 

 life, and never suffer the physical part of us to 

 rust. Field sports are about the best means to that 

 end. But to excel in these pursuits, to be racy of 

 the chase, we should begin early in life. One 

 hears of men who do not take to shooting till they 

 have reached middle age, and who, notwithstanding, 



^ Angling was called by Wordsworth the "blameless sport." 

 Greatly, however, as I care for and believe in angling, I never could 

 bring myself to think that the question of pain or suffering inflicted 

 does not come in here at all. 



