6 PREFACE. 



Besides its own fascination, this action must 

 be such as to require a high degree of skill in 

 man or dog, and generally in both, to effect 

 capture. Yet, though game must occasionally 

 drop to gratify man's inborn love of exercising 

 skill, there must be no murder. 



Then, too, the stage of action must be the 

 home of the bird, that natural scenery the 

 sportsman loves so well to roam without a gun. 

 And this must be depicted true in color to its 

 place and season. 



Small room for mistake is left me on these 

 points, after forty years of play with the gun 

 and eighteen years of writing for the sportsmen 

 of America. Chiefly for them this book is 

 written, and that rather to touch certain tender 

 chords of memory than to convey information ; 

 although the lover of nature who is not yet an 

 expert huntsman may, I trust, find some hints 

 of experience not altogether without value to 

 him. 



As to pictorial illustration, it is a sound rule 

 of art that a picture must explain itself: one 

 that requires exposition, or wandering of the 

 eye to connect leading features, is generally a 



