WILD FOWL SHOOTING. 289 



110 precaution of silence or concealment should be lost 

 sight of. The great art, too, is to get sitting shots, 

 by which only a good account can be rendered of a 

 flock of wild fowl. When so found, they are, for the 

 most part, sleeping; as, for the purpose of feeding, they 

 resort to marshes, fens, and swamps, on commons 

 and moors. Their time for repose is the day ; their 

 period of flight the earliest dawn, and from twilight 

 to dark at night. 



These observations only apply to wild fowl shoot- 

 ing with a shoulder gun, in distinction to the mo- 

 dern invention of cannonading them on salt water 

 with stanchion guns, introduced by Colonel Hawker 

 at least into the list of a gentleman's recreations. 

 With this sport, as we have said, it is not our design 

 to deal. It certainly does not come legitimately 

 within the range of this work, which professes to treat 

 of the rural enjoyments in which the gun is an agent; 

 and not of the toil or business of slaughtering the 

 birds of chase by wholesale, for retail, by the hands of 

 the metropolitan poulterer. 



The taste for battue shooting, by sea or land, we 

 would, under any circumstances, be loth to cater for. 

 From it has sprung all the sin and sorrow to which 

 our game laws have given existence ; a system, when 

 it is used as a stimulant of a morbid appetite, that 

 promotes the very evil it was intended to remedy. 

 The spirit of our field sports is to afford a wholesome 

 pursuit, which shall link healthful exercise with 

 manly habits ; this new-fangled contrivance, the 



