308 UPLAND SHOOTING. 



magazines. "When I cautiously peeped over his shoulders, 

 1 always found him looking at the cuts of guns. Of late, 

 he has asked me many questions concerning their 

 mechanism, the proper weight, bore, how to hold on moving 

 objects, etc., etc. I knew the latent fire that was raging 

 within him, for my boyhood days seemed just passed, and 

 vivid is my recollection of the time of my longing for a 

 gun — my first gun. I was not surprised, therefore, when 

 last night he, with boyish enthusiasm, recounted to his 

 mother and me the successful shots he had made during 

 the day with his spring-gun; the sparrows he had killed, 

 the tin cans he had hit when thrown up by his compan- 

 ions. Finally he came to me when I was writing, and 

 gently threw his arm around me, looking tenderly into 

 my eyes vrith his deep-blue ones, while in timid voice he 

 said : ' ' Papa, how old were you when your papa bought 

 you your first gun?" And then his voice grew stronger, 

 and he continued with earnestness, ' ' I would rather have 

 a gun than any other thing in this world." When you 

 are fourteen, my son, said I, then I will — ' ' Why, my 

 boy," exclaimed his mother, "when you are large enough 

 to go iuto the fields and hunt, the birds will all be gone — 

 killed off.' ' The growing scarcity of game was so appar- 

 ent to her, that she made this remark. She was not 

 interested in the preservation of game, except so far as to 

 feel an interest in what she knew was of moment or 

 interest to me. There was solemn truth in what she said, 

 and unless we, whose place it is to obey the law and to 

 pass laws which in our wisdom and experience we know 

 to be for the protection and ]3reservation of game, do our 

 duty, we are unfit to be classified as sportsmen, and 

 should hide our heads in shame, bury ourselves in our 

 several places of business, try to forget our early lives, 

 the days we spent with Nature in the forests, at the hill- 

 sides, by the gurgling brooks, on the silvery streams, on 



