234 GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL. 



to continue her retreat as long as possible, and 

 her deep and bloodstained tracks are visible up to 

 the spot where she has fallen. At her side stands 

 her shivering calf, destined, poor thing, to a cer- 

 tain and lingering death. It has followed its dam 

 to the last, and now, unconscious of the cala- 

 mity that has befallen her, is vainly endeavouring 

 to extract a drop of nourishment from her rigid 

 carcase. Many and many a sportsman who, as he 

 gazed on this beautiful work, has experienced a 

 pang of remorse, and readily acknowledged its 

 benign influence, is, alas ! too apt to forget in the 

 field the moral lesson which it inculcates, and to 

 prove, by his reckless expenditure of powder and 

 shot in the ensuing season, that other animals 

 besides red deer are doomed to the miseries en- 

 tailed by a random shot. 



It would be useless to deny that all field sports, 

 even when conducted on the most humane prin- 

 ciples, are attended with a certain degree of 

 cruelty, but it is obvious that none should ven- 

 ture to prefer such a charge except those who 

 rigidly, and from conscientious motives, abstain 

 from all kinds of animal food. All other persons 

 afford an indirect encouragement to the depriva- 

 tion of life, and are as deeply implicated in the 

 culpability as the actual perpetrator of the deed. 

 How unjust, then, to abuse the grouse shooter 



