POACHING i8i 



hardy constitutions, invigorated, no doubt, by their 

 mountain breezes, and particularly partial to field sports. 

 I was out sporting one day with a friend, who, having 

 killed a hare in the presence of the occupier of the land, 

 desired his keeper, a Welshman, to hand it to the farmer, 

 who, on taking it, gave us to understand that, although 

 much obliged, he would rather have seen the hare alive 

 running before the hounds. 



Where game is not strictly preserved, poaching is of 

 course carried on to a considerable extent, yet not on 

 the large scale practised in England ; as a proof of which, 

 partridges are more abundant even on unprotected 

 lands there than in many of the best English manors ; 

 in fact, the nature of the country (night nets being 

 unknown) is their chief protection from the gun of the 

 sportsman. I met with two distinct varieties of par- 

 tridge in North Wales ; the mountain bird being of much 

 smaller size and of a lighter brown than those bred in 

 the low lands, which are finer and of better flavour 

 than any I ever saw in England. The coveys generally 

 were larger, often exceeding twenty in number, and from 

 the hilly nature of the country, and the soil being light 

 and stony, it is evidently most favourable to the young 

 broods of winged game, from the absence of those large 

 fissures of the land in the heavier soils of England, 

 produced by the heat of the weather during the breeding 

 season, in which thousands of young partridges and 

 pheasants are annually engulphed before they have 

 obtained the use of their wings. The hares and rabbits 

 also were of larger size, the flesh of the latter being 

 exceedingly white and well flavoured. 



A few years ago shootings might be obtained on very 

 moderate terms, but the Manchester Cotton Lords are 



