252 A YEAR OF SPORT AND NATURAL HISTORY. 



making fresh harmonies for every day. Only an ardent lover 

 of nature and keen sportsman can appreciate such things fully, 

 but it is he alone who cares for rough shooting in preference to 

 all other, or knows the delight of trudging from morn to eve 

 through tangled heather and tall brake ferns, by reedy swamp 

 and rugged coombe, for the sake of a bag that pot-hunters would 

 consider beneath contempt. It is not the weight so much as 

 the variety that gratifies him ; and every bird, rabbit, or hare 

 bagged may represent in his eyes a triumph of skill in shooting 

 or in woodcraft. He does not assume superiority over nor affect 

 contempt for the battue men, as some of us do. He acknow- 

 ledges readily their dexterity in bringing down a " rocketer " or 

 stopping the leader of a driven grouse pack as it skims past a 

 peat stack ; but he thinks not without reason that they lose 

 more than half the sport in not finding their own game. His 

 great pleasure is to watch well-trained dogs at work, or to 

 exercise his own skill when their sagacity fails. 



Among the trophies that he displays with pardonable pride, 

 you may perhaps see a black cock or grey hen, whose wary 

 wildness was only out-matched by patient strategy, of which few 

 but moormen know the alphabet. Black game are not difficult to 

 get within range of during the sultry August or September days, 

 when they are fat with good feeding ; but with the first frosts of 

 autumn they become so shy that they are more difficult to stalk 

 than a cunning stag, and nobody who does not know all their 

 habits can drive them to the guns. They seem to scent powder, 

 too, a mile off, and though a shepherd may walk close by them 

 without disturbing one, the faintest sound of a sportsman's 

 footsteps brushing the heather will cause wily old birds to rise on 



