PARTRIDGE SHOOTING. 175 



shooting, it induces cheerfulness throws care 

 to the winds strengthens the body, and by 

 giving fresh tone to the mind when overtasked 

 by business, sends the sportsman back to his 

 office, or counting-room, with a new lease of 

 existence. It is the greatest possible service to 

 thousands of persons engaged in the arduous 

 pursuit of professions, which require intense 

 abstraction, and who would inevitably break down 

 if deprived of their usual relaxations in the 

 shooting seasons. " Black care," says the Latin 

 poet, "sits behind the flying horseman;" but 

 who ever heard of care striding over the fields 

 and through the woods with the sportsman ! As 

 the poet has his own world, within the mysterious 

 precincts of wliich the rest of mankind are not 

 privileged to enter, so the sportsman has his 

 separate existence which no one is permitted to 

 share, save Ponto, without whom, indeed we 

 could do nothing, and who, we are proud to say, 

 belongs to the order. Now dullards, wiseacres 

 and clodpates, stand afar off and scoff both at 

 the poet and the sportsman. " Sblood," as Hamlet 

 says, "there is something in this more than 

 natural, if philosophy could find it out." 



We should like, however, in the neatest way 

 possible, being very studious to avoid giving 



