THE WOODCOCK. 171 



We have noticed with feelings of sorrow, a very prevalent 

 but at the same time very unfortunate ambition on the part of 

 many of our Sporting friends to boast of quantity rather than 

 quality of game killed. 



This brao-o-art feeling should be at all times discouraged and 

 reprobated among gentlemen, as quantity is not by any means 

 a safe test for a superior shot, neither is it the just criterion of 

 an accomplished Sportsman. But, on the other hand, quantity 

 not unfrequently goes to prove that he who claims this 'distinc- 

 tion has been more eager, more greedy, more selfish than his 

 companion, and perhaps less courteous and gentlemanly in the 

 field than he should have been. This foolish ambition as re- 

 gards quantity is often displayed in its most disgusting form, in 

 the wanton and reckless destruction of young Woodcocks, 

 which as before observed are shot by hundreds when too feeble 

 to save themselves by flight, when too young to afford suitable 

 food for the table, and under circumstances, oftentimes, when 

 these desolators of our fields and forests know full well that 

 they can make no use of them. How mortifying, how de- 

 grading in the eyes of humanity, that such a cruel, reckless, and 

 thoughtless propensity for the taking of life should exist in our 

 very midst, should be encouraged by the example of some of 

 those with whom we daily associate, and be discovered lurking in 

 the breasts of those whom, in the ordinary intercourse with the 

 world, we would fain pronounce amiable, humane, and con- 

 siderate. We agree with Mr. Skinner, when he remarks that 

 " a great fault in Sportsmen, is the ambition of killing for quan- 

 tity, which occasions them to protract their hunt until many of 

 the Birds are spoiled by the heat and delay. The Sportsman 

 should have a spice of chivalry in his composition ; he should 

 not be merely a wanton and reckless destroyer. He should 

 always spare the hovering Bird, and confine his efforts to others, 

 to the number he can carry in order to his home, for his friends 

 or himself. I have known this pernicious system of shooting 

 for quantity pursued on the Grouse, and, to gratify the false 

 pride of killing more than aay other party, the time protracted 

 until all the Birds killed on the first day were spoiled and had 

 to be thrown away. You should raise your voice against this 

 growing and vicious ambition, and establish it as a rule among 



