HISTORICAL NOTES 83 



ing verses, more noteworthy perhaps as 

 giving a true picture of woodland sport 

 in a bygone age than for any particular 

 merit they may possess as poetry : 



No pleasure or pastime that's under the sun, 

 Is equal to mine, with my dogs and my gun. 



My spaniels ne'er babble ; they're under command, 

 Some range at a distance, and some hunt at hand ; 

 When a woodcock they flush, or a pheasant they 



spring, 

 With heart cheering notes, how they make the woods 



ring. 



O'er the trees, yellow Autumn her mantle now flings, 



And they eagerly enter the cover ; 



Up a cock pheasant springs, and th' echoing wood 



rings 

 With " dead ! dead, my boys ! Come in here, Rover." 1 



Well, those days are gone beyond recall, 

 and yet the writer must confess that, after 

 a fairly wide experience of every kind of 

 covert shooting, good, bad and indifferent, 

 days when the total ran into thousands, 

 days when the first hundred was only 

 reached after a struggle, places where 

 the birds flew gloriously and gave to the 



1 Songs of the Chace, 1811. 



