PAETEIDGES AND PHEASANTS. 16 L 



work outside a midland autumn wood but recently populated 

 from Leadenhall Market or game-rearing Suffolk ! Yet we 

 fancy, in this case at least, there is little wisdom in numbers. 

 Everything tends to show that the Englishman of the next 

 ten, years must be moderate in his views of sport, and for 

 ourselves we are ready for the change. Nothing, we think, 

 endangers at present our legitimate shootings in woodland 

 and stubble so much as over preserving, and debasing an 

 old-fashioned moderation in the desire to fill up our game 

 books and shoot a few more head of birds than our neigh- 

 bours. 



Perhaps it would be too serious a retrogression to shoot 

 pheasants as Lord Byron did at Six Mile Bottom, to revive 

 the slow hunter pointers with bells round their necks of 

 one writer, or even Lord Middleton's " pottering clumbers ; " 

 yet there was good relish in our forefathers' sports ! 



For them their woods did not mean " one crowded hour 

 of glorious life " and then idleness. The bloom might be 

 off the shooting season; the renter of moors had had his 

 last "drive," duly thinned out the weary old cock grouse, 

 closed his lodge, and come southward ; the keenness of the 

 partridge shooter for his special game was somewhat dulled, 

 yet there was still shooting to be had in the shires, and very 

 pretty work for the moderate-minded devotee to the gun. 



Harvest over, of course, the all-involving steel of the 

 reaper had long since ceased to shine amongst the miniature 

 forests of tall yellow stalks, sweeping to one common ruin 

 the trembling crop, the gaudy blossoms of the poppies, the 

 delicate sisterhoods of the climbing convolvulus, and a world 

 of such tender vegetation that put its trust in the shelter of 

 the giant grain around it. Yet with harvest commenced the 

 old fashioned lowland shooter's campaign. 



Who is there who amongst his earliest sporting achieve- 

 ments does not remember the delights of his first bout with 

 the rabbits in the stubble fields ? He must recall with 

 enthusiasm those outlying rabbits in Farmer Wurzel's 



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