23 



THE RABBIT BATTUE. 



A.BOUT me end of 1864, a discussion took place in the columns of 

 The Field on the subject of "Battue Shooting," in which the non- 

 contents appeared to have the best of it. 



In this discussion I took no part, but I must candidly admit that 

 it did then, and still does, seem rather strange to me that any noble- 

 man or gentleman who goes to a great expense in preserving game, 

 should not be allowed to kill that game in the manner which is 

 most pleasing to himself ; and I do not consider that a man like 

 myself, who goes to no expense in game preserving, but is content 

 to wander about over wild, half-preserved ground, and pick up a 

 brace or two of birds and a hare after a hard day's fagging, has any 

 right to tell my Lord this, or the Duke of that, that he is no sports- 

 man, because he rather prefers "a warm corner" in one of his own 

 well-stocked preserves, where he is sure of a shot about every five 

 minutes, to a day's hard work over a rough country, where one 

 shot in the hour is, perhaps, all he can expect. 



It is quite another question whether there is the spirit attendant 

 upon the battue that there is upon following a brace of good dogs 

 over a country tolerably supplied with game. I take it that this is 

 entirely a matter of taste. Probably the aristocrat finds quite as 

 much excitement in knocking over his twenty-five brace of 

 "rocketers " in two hours, as I do in bagging my twelve couple of 

 duck or snipe on a Swedish moss in the day. Different men have 

 such different ideas of sport. The salmon-fisher sneers at the punt- 

 fisher j the punt-fisher thinks that the ne plus ultra in angling is to 

 kill a two-pound roach with a single hair. The fox-hunter jibes at 

 the thistle- whipper ; and the man who -has once lived through a 

 fast thing from Crick Gorse, or the Coplow, wonders how any one 

 can call it sport to hunt with the Old Surrey. 



