A SPORTSMAN AT LARGE 



CHAPTER I 



SHOW me a child of tender years who is keen on bird- 

 nesting (not for the purpose of making decorative strings 

 of eggs robbed from our dulcet songsters, and other homely 

 birds), but one who is keen on observing and studying the 

 habits and life history of the feathered flocks ; who makes a 

 well-arranged and carefully-classified collection, without de- 

 pleting any one nest, however rare may be its feathered 

 architects. Show me such an one, I repeat, and I will ear- 

 mark him (or her, as the case may be) as an embryo sportsman 

 or sportswoman. 



But the afflatus is often manifested in other directions. 

 A child may be keen on chasing butterflies for reasonable 

 collective purposes. Here you have a fox-hunter of the future. 



If he delights in sweeping the waters of the domestic duck- 

 pond with a gauze net and rejoices over ditisci, caddis worms, 

 dragonfly larvae, tritons, newts, snails and such small deer, 

 you may be sure that, in course of time, he will blossom into 

 an enthusiastic plier of the rod. 



One w r ho loves dogs will, as soon as he is old enough, want 

 to train them to the amenities of sport. This one will be 

 a huntsman, or a lover of the gun, or leash. 



But he whose only ambition is to shine in games and pas- 

 times, and who is content to ignore the children of Nature 

 and their fascinating manners and customs, though he may 

 become a great cricketer, football-player, boxer or athlete, 

 assuredly will never be a sportsman in the true and legitimate 

 sense of the term. 



