xii THE COMPLETE SHOT 



been that you can always make any sort of shooting a little 

 more difficult than your own performance can satisfactorily 

 accomplish to the gratification of your own most critical sense. 



Driving game and big bags are often, but not always, acts 

 of game preserving. 



On this subject I had written a chapter, but fearing that I 

 had not done that view justice, after a conversation I had with 

 Captain Tomasson, who has Hunthill and is the most 

 successful Scotch grouse preserver by the all driving method, 

 I asked him to criticise some articles I had previously written 

 in the Field, the sense of which I have tried to express again 

 in the following pages. He very kindly did so, or rather 

 stated the case for the Highlands, which I have substituted for 

 mine. It only differs in one respect from the sense of my own 

 suppressed chapter namely, it does not remark on the difficulty 

 of explaining why, if recent Scotch driving has partly defeated 

 disease, even more Yorkshire driving, prior to 1873, never- 

 theless preceded the worst and most general Scotch and 

 English disease ever known. However, everyone will argue 

 for himself: I can only pretend to present a mass of facts to 

 assist a judgment, but not a quarter of those I should like to 

 give have I room for, and I regret that Captain Tomasson 

 is even more restricted by space. 



I have shot over spaniels in teams and as single dogs, but 

 as I consider that I know less of them than Mr. Eversfield, 

 who probably knows more than anyone else, I asked him to 

 read and criticise my article, which he promised to do. But 

 in returning it he has professed himself unable to criticise, and 

 very kindly says that he likes it all, so I leave it, being thereby 

 assured that it cannot be very wrong. 



There is one subject connected with shooting, or the ethics 

 of shooting, about which there is much more to be said than 

 ever has been attempted namely, that partridge preservers 

 are now, and will be more in the future, indebted to the fox 

 for their sport. This may appear a wild paradox, but before 

 I am condemned for it I would, in the interests of the gun, 

 ask those who disagree to read my chapters on partridge 



