PARTRIDGE SHOOTING. 



Many of our senior readers will, doubtless, 

 remember the time, when the prospect of a day's 

 partridge shooting was sweeter to their youthful 

 fancies, than the mellifluous sound of the Ionian 

 dialect, a high standard class circular, or even a 

 July vacation. Others, again, like the editor, 

 will confess that their ardor in this species of 

 sport was never so intense, as when hunting 

 woodcocks in their marshy solitudes starting 

 before the peep of day to set decoys for the 

 wild duck, or with Ponto and Dash, after 

 breakfast, to beat up the haunts of the wild 

 and wandering snipe. It was only during the 

 last season, while shooting over the wooded 

 hills near Green Lane, in the upper part of 

 Montgomery, that we were conscious of a 

 slight thrill of jealousy, when our companion 

 unexpectedly killed, towards the close of day, 

 a brace of fine snipe on a wet stubble-field. 

 We did not dream at the moment, of encoun- 

 tering our arch favorite on the very summit 

 of a bleak ridge, on the twenty-ninth day of 

 November; arid as the shooter complacently 

 smoothed down the plumage of the birds, and 

 carefully dropped them in the innermost recess 

 of his shooting coat, the action went to our 

 heart, Truth to tell, it cost us a struggle to 



