From Fox's Earth 



present generation of sportsmen may not see the 

 undoing, neither did they see the doing. In their 

 last season grouse will be shaded, as they were 

 on the first. 



Nature never alters her ways, either in the 

 giving or the taking. She is wondrous kind even 

 to the renters of moors ; she shows so little at a 

 time. 



Nor will new servants fill the place of the old, 

 in the open any more than they do in the house. 

 The eye of the gamekeeper is nothing to the eye 

 of the hawk. The two do not mean the same 

 thing. The one has a narrow, the other a far 

 outlook. One works for his employer, the other 

 in the interests of the moor. The one is there 

 to keep the birds wild, the other to make them 

 tame. 



And tame they will become ; by degrees, perhaps, 

 but steadily. Half the wildness of wild creatures 

 is a continuous fear and watchfulness ; half the 

 tameness is to have no enemies. Disturb the 

 balance of nature, and you have no nature in 

 either scale. The falcon which strikes the fittest, 

 points on to a fitter still an ideal beyond. In 

 her absence is reversion to the reality behind, 

 barely covered out of sight. Kill her and with 

 the same bullet you kill the grouse as you know 

 it, and arrest sport. 



Straining after the leader of the covey she 

 appeals to chivalry and every sportsmanlike 



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