174 BIRD HAUNTS AND NATURE MEMORIES 



ancestors of ours built up a race with iron muscle, inured 

 to hardship, and, so far as venery was concerned, with 

 brains superior to the creatures they hunted. Strong 

 and active, keen-witted and cunning they were bound 

 to be; when these qualities were dull they starved or were 

 slain by the more powerful beasts. 



The true sportsman is a good shot, if shooting be his 

 hobby; he hates to wound and not kill clean. Often the 

 drive has little fascination for him ; he likes to tramp the 

 turnips or the covert; he enjoys watching the well-trained 

 dog, and insists that birds should be retrieved so soon as 

 shot. Indeed, he will fire his second barrel to stop a cripple 

 rather than leave a wounded runner to secure another 

 head. Not infrequently he is more or less of a naturalist, 

 watching the birds and other animals which are not 

 included in the game-list. Sometimes he permanently 

 exchanges gun for field-glass; some of our best orni- 

 thologists have been keen sportsmen, and still enjoy a 

 shoot. 



Unfortunately there exists another class; some of its 

 members are town-bred men who have no real love of the 

 country; they rent an estate and shoot over it at the 

 proper time because it is the proper thing to do. They 

 care nothing about their victims, but they like to make a 

 bag that they can boast about ; these are the men who are 

 most ruthless in destruction of their rivals, the predatory 

 birds and mammals. Bosworth Smith, pleading for the 

 birds of prey, especially the persecuted raven, said that 

 " as a rule it was not the great land- owner who was so 

 much to blame, except in the matter of that culpable 

 laissez-faire which led him to put a gun into the hand 

 of his keeper without instructing him as to what he might 

 and what he might not kill with it. The British land- 

 owner was, as a rule, pleased to see a rare bird in his 

 grounds; if he possessed a heronry it was the crowning 



