FARMERS AND FIELD SPORTS 



ful if he has fair skill with the rod and 

 gun. For he who knows most of the 

 habits of fish and game will succeed best 

 in their capture, and no man, except the 

 naturalist and the professional fisherman 

 and hunter, has a better chance to gain 

 this knowledge than the farmer, whose 

 life brings him into everyday companion- 

 ship with nature. His fields and woods 

 are the homes and haunts of the birds 

 and beasts of venery, from the beginning 

 of the year to its end, and in his streams 

 many of the fishes pass their lives. By 

 his woodside the quail builds her nest, 

 and when the foam of blossom has dried 

 away on the buckwheat field she leads 

 her young there to feed on the brown 

 kernel stranded on the coral stems. If 

 he chance to follow his wood road in 

 early June, the ruffed grouse limps and 

 flutters along it before him, while her 

 callow chicks vanish as if by a conjurer's 

 trick from beneath his very footfall. A 

 month later, grown to the size of robins, 

 they will scatter on the wing from his 

 path with a vigor that foretells the bold 

 whir and the swiftness of their flight in 

 their grown-up days, when they will stir 

 8r 



