243 



man in Great Britain, takes this view of the subject and gives away^ 

 mostly to his tenantry, all the game which is shot in his preserves 

 except what is used in the Royal household. 



To interest fellows like myself who have never had anything like 

 first-class shooting, I shall in the next few pages give records which 

 will open their eyes. I take them from Sportascrapiaua, the Bad- 

 minton Library, and my old scrap-book, which contains a curious 

 collection of sporting mems collected by me during the past thirty 

 years. The records are therefore thoroughly reliable. 



I begin with some of the shooting in olden time, and I may state that 

 up to about 1840 flint guns only were used, and in about 1870 breech- 

 loaders took the place of the muzzle-loading detonator. 



It appears from White's Natural History of Selborne, that iDartridge 

 were unusually plentiful in the years of 1740-41, and that "parties of 

 unreasonable sportsmen killed twenty, and sometimes thirty, brace in 

 a day." 



At Holkham — Lord Leicester's seat in Norfolk— I find the amount of 

 game shot in the following years to have been : — 



Year. 



Partridges. 



Total. 



1793 

 1800 

 1818 



1,349 

 3,865 

 1,711 



This shows that where pheasants and hares increase partridge will 

 decrease. 



Hares seem to have been wonderfully abundant in those times, for in 

 1806, on a complaint being made by the farmers of their being too 

 numerous on Sir Thomas Gooch's estate in Suffolk, no less than 6,012 

 w^ere killed over it in six weeks. 



As encouragement to Suffolk gamekeepers to increase their stock of 

 hares, pheasants, and partridges, a prize was offered, in 1811, to the 

 keeper who could show the best record, as regards quantity shot and 

 quality of the shooting, in any six days between 8th October and 8th 

 December. The prize was awarded for the following, which was shot 

 by thres guns over 4,000 acres : — 



