INTRODUCTION. i* 



technicalities and nourish a love of out-o'-door life, all else 

 we must learn for ourselves. Nature is the only professor 

 to her own great lore of land and water ; her lectures must 

 be attended personally, and in her own open-air class- 

 rooms. 



Such sketches of English shooting as I have included are 

 suggestive rather than exhaustive outlines of the phases 

 of sport they touch upon ; if there is much in them that 

 is unorthodox, it is just in that I take special pride. 

 For some of the worst results of British game preserving 

 every naturalist must have an utter abhorrence. I would 

 as soon sit on a woodside gate for an hour of a summer 

 evening waiting with a "rook" rifle ready at hand for a 

 rabbit feeding out with the twilight from the hazels, as 

 " grass " a hamper of pheasants outside any Midland autumn 

 coppice. 



These notes should be acceptable also to the practical 

 agriculturist of to-day, who is surely now wiser than his 

 ancestors were, and willing to lighten and enliven his some- 

 what monotonous work by observation of, and a kindly 

 feeling for, the birds with which his vocation brings him in 

 constant contact. It is thus I have amused myself, indeed, 

 for lonely months and years when all other recreation was 

 hard to come at ; and these observations on bird migration, 

 habits, and whims, have made pleasant in all weathers the 

 monotony of Suffolk stubbles, the wild grass moorlands the 

 Hampshire herdsmen love, and the bleak highland straths, 

 purple in summer and white and cheerless in winter ! 



Country gentlemen within the last twenty years have 



