SHOOTING. 223 



and capricious, and yet their destruction is easily attainable by 

 the fowling piece. The sportsman takes his station with calm- 

 ness and even non-chalance ; and selecting his object from the 

 number that are fluttering about him, deliberately waits for the 

 precise moment, when his victim may be destroyed with almost 

 unerring certainty. With game the affair is quite different ; 

 the object is larger, much larger, but the exact spot whence it 

 will spring is not ascertainable, while the sudden rush and noisy 

 confusion accompanying the rise, so astonish the tyro, or the 

 bungler, that the fowling piece is discharged not only too soon, 

 but generally at random. Hence it will easily be perceived that 

 little or no analogy can exist between swallow shooting and 

 partridge shooting. The secret of shooting may be easily ex- 

 plained, as it is comprised merely in coolness and deliberation ; 

 these, however, are not so easily attained as the superficial ob- 

 server might be led to suppose. A friend of mine, who has 

 followed this diversion for forty years, still continues a very indif- 

 ferent shot : the rise of a covey never fails to dissipate his pre- 

 vious mental resolves, and he has, nineteen times out of twenty, 

 the mortification of seeing the game go away untouched ; but 

 it must be observed, that, to say nothing of his firing too soon, 

 he has contracted a habit, which must for ever preclude any 

 thing like certainty in shooting : no sooner does his finger 

 touch the trigger, than he shuts both his eyes ! And yet, 

 though conscious of this preposterous defect, and aware that 

 if a bird fall from his gun, it is merely the effect of accident, 

 should he be shooting in company, and happen to ire at the 

 same time as his companion, he will not fail to claim the merit 

 of having killed the bird: indeed, to judge from his conversa- 

 tion over the bottle, a stranger would suppose, that, as a shot, 

 he was equal to Sir John Shelley. I have seldom met with a 

 bad shot who was not extremely anxious to be thought other- 

 wise ; and who would not, in his cups, relate, with much self- 



