DRESS SUITABLE FOR SNIPE-SHOOTING. 289 



of snipe-shooting and the head-coverings of his time 1790 to 

 1819 remarks that "The power of the sun is a great draw- 

 back on the pleasures of the field. Most sportsmen provide 

 themselves with white turbans of quilted linen, which, cover- 

 ing the crown of their hats, keeps off the heat. The skin of 

 a pelican, with the soft down adhering like our swan-skin 

 powder-puffs, is, however, much lighter and cooler. Snipe- 

 shooting is particularly insalubrious in India, being mostly in 

 extensive swamps ; and as the birds do not lay (sic) but in 

 the middle of the day, the lower extremities are freezing (!), 

 while the head is melting with heat. It is very unpleasant 

 to follow game through quags, and to be sometimes nearly 

 up to the neck in mud and water. A facetious gentleman, 

 Lieutenant George Boyd, who was an excellent and keen 

 sportsman, whenever he went snipe-shooting used to squat 

 down in the first sufficient puddle he came to, so as to wet 

 himself up to the neck, observing that he found it very 

 unpleasant to be getting wet by inches, and that by this 

 process he put himself out of pain. He did not live long.'' 



Figure to yourself, as the French say, my gentle and 

 sporting reader, some facetious friend of your own say 

 Lieutenant George Brown of the 90th B. I. sitting calmly 

 in a mud-hole up to the neck in mire, with his head 

 covered with a pelican skin powder-puff, preparing for a 

 day's sport, and composing the terms of his will in antici- 

 pation of early demise ! If gentlemen addicted to snipe- 

 shooting will prime themselves for it by deep libations of 

 beer and spirits, and next sit up to the neck in mud and 

 water as a preliminary step, they should remember the fate 

 of Lieutenant George Boyd, " who did not live long." 



As Captain Williamson is very severe, and properly so, 

 on the pernicious habit of drinking to excess, a habit very 

 common during his service in India, let us hope he set in his 

 own person a good example to his brother officers, to whom 

 snipe (assisted by spirits and water) were far more dangerous 

 enemies than Moghuls or Mahrattas. If the gallant author 

 were not good in practice, he certainly was so in preaching, 



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