INTRODUCTION. 



The flattering reception with which "Wild Fowl 

 Shooting" was received throughout the United States, 

 and portions of the Old World, was the incentive for the 

 publication of this book; for, acting on the solicitations 

 of many of the sporting fraternity, who love the fresh- 

 ness of the field and the purity of the prairie winds, I 

 bring into the world another book, which I trust and 

 believe will be equally acceptable and enjoyable, and one 

 that will teach to this and to the coming generation that 

 there is a nobility of character in the true sportsman, 

 that will ever show itself, whether at home or in the field, 

 and that our love of field sports does not arise from the 

 desire to slaughter needlessly the feathered game, or 

 mercilessly to extinguish animal kind, but leads to the 

 protection of game; and that, when the law is open to us, 

 our pleasures are equally divided between bagging the 

 birds, and seeing the dogs, filled with animation, bound- 

 ing over hill and dale, or standing entranced and petri- 

 fied as they point the hidden game. To see the whir- 

 ring birds, that cause our hearts to throb in fluttering 

 excitement, to wander over the fields in the warm, bud- 

 ding spring-time, when the earth is clothed in bridal 

 raiments, or when the golden summer, rich in her harvest, 

 has dotted the earth with sheaves of ripened grain this 

 is our enjoyment. 



Let not the reader labor under the delusion, that the 

 capturing of a large quantity of game is the extreme 

 desire of the true sportsman; for the more adept one 

 becomes in the capturing of the animal species, the less 



