104 WARWICK WOODLANDS. 



"Still less of deer stalking — for Scrope's book has been 

 read largely even here; and no man, how prejudiced so- 

 ever, can compare with the standing at a deer-path all 

 day long waiting till a great timid beast is driven up 

 within ten yards of your muzzle, with that extraordinary 

 sport on bald and barren mountains, where nothing but 

 vast and muscular exertion, the eye of the eagle, and the 

 cunning of the serpent, can bring you within range of 

 the wild cattle of the hills. 



"Battue shooting, I grant, is tame work; but partridge 

 shooting, after the middle of October, is infinitely wilder, 

 requiring more exertion and more toil than quail shooting. 

 Even the pheasant — the tamest of our English game — is 

 infinitely bolder on the wing than the ruffed grouse, or 

 New York partridge; while about snipe and woodcock 

 there exists no comparison — since by my own observation, 

 confirmed by the opinion of old sportsmen, I am convinced 

 that nine-tenths of the snipe and cock bagged in th^ 

 States, are killed between fifteen and twenty paces; while 

 I can safely say, I never saw a full snipe rise in England 

 within that average distance. Quail ev&\, the hardest 

 bird to kill, the swiftest and the boldest on the wing, are 

 very rarely killed further than twenty-five to thirty, 

 whereas you may shoot from daylight to sunset in Eng- 

 land, after October, and not pick up a single partridge 

 within the farthest, as a minimum distance." 



"Well ! that's all true, I grant," said Forester, "jet even 

 you allow that it is harder to kill game here than at home ; 

 and if I do not err, I have heard you admit that the best 

 shot in all England could be beat easily by the crack shots 

 on this side; how does all this agree!" 



"Why very easily, I think," Harry replied, "though to 

 the last remark, I added in his first season here; Now 

 that American field sports are wilder in one sense, I grant 

 readily; with the exception of snipe-shooting here, and 

 grouse-shooting in Scotland, the former being tamer, in 

 all senses, than any English — the latter wilder in all 

 senses than any American — fieldsport. 



"American sporting, however, is certainly wilder, in 

 so much as it is pursued on much wilder ground; in so 

 much as we have a greater variety of game — and in so 

 much as we have many more snap shots, and fewer fair 

 dead points. 



