INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 



" Thus much may serve by way of proem." SWIFT. 



FROM what source springs that human instinct 

 which, for the want of a better term, we call a 

 taste for Sporting ? Is it because while life is 

 epicene vibrating between petticoats and trow- 

 sers the child is delivered over to Nature, that 

 we find the boy ever contriving means for the 

 circumvention of the denizens of "flood and field?" 

 Seek him even in innermost Cockaigne, where, 

 in strange apparel, under the denomination of a 

 Blue- coat scholar, his piscatory experience has 

 been haply confined to Burgess's essence of 

 anchovies, his practical ornithology to the study 

 of the sparrow on the house-top mark the youth, 

 we say, in circumstances which shall have limited 

 his familiarity with the creatures of the waters to 



