52 KRIDER'S SPORTING ANECDOTES. 



If you are naturally a sportsman, you will soon 

 learn how to approach and to kill them, albeit, 

 on the first few trials, the eccentricities which 

 they practice on the wing, and the elfish ease 

 with which they seem to evade the contents of 

 both barrels, will leave an impression on your 

 mind, which, however annoying then, becomes a 

 very pleasant and exciting reminiscence after 

 you have learned how to knock them down, right 

 and left, secundem artem. In this, gentle reader, 

 consists the gist of the secret of the true sports- 

 man's love for snipe shooting. As to exposure 

 and hard work, no man who has not a quick spirit, 

 sound health, and w r ell-strung muscles, should 

 attempt to hunt snipe. 



We have known, too, a life of indolence and a 

 consequent disposition to become stout, to spoil 

 more than one keen snipe shooter. But let a man 

 not too much encumbered with infirmities of the 

 flesh by which we simply mean fat carry with 

 him to the marshes a fellow feeling for snipe, in 

 the inverse ratio to their wary and weird-like 

 propensities, and the sport then compares with 

 some other varieties presently to come under 

 notice as grouse shooting on the Scotch muirs, 

 or deer stalking on the highlands, does with 

 shooting under the escort of a game-keeper in the 

 English preserves. 



