194 AMERICAN GAME. 
out any exception, the sport would be enormous; the 
birds at that season are in full vigor, in complete plu- 
mage, in the perfection of condition for the table, and 
are so strong on the wing, so active and so swift, that no 
one could for a moment imagine them to be the same 
with the miserable, puny, half-fledged younglings, which 
any bungling boy can butcher as he pleases, with the 
most miserable apparatus, and without almost as well as 
with a dog, during the dog-days of July. 
The weather is, moreover, cool and pleasant, and in 
every way well-suited to the sport at this season; dogs 
-have a chance to do their work handsomely and well, 
and the sportsman can do his work, too, as he ought to 
do it, like a man, walking at his proper rate, unmolested 
by mosquitoes, and without feeling the salé perspiration 
streaming into his eyes, until he can hardly brook the 
pain. 
But no such hope existing as that state legislatures, 
dependent, not on rational but on brute opinion, should 
condescend to hear or listen to common sense, on 
matters such as game laws, are we, or are we not, to 
abandon our plan, to sacrifice our knowledge and 
enlightened views on this subject to obstinate ignorance ; 
or shall we not take the better part, and decide, accord- 
ing to Minerva’s lesson in Tennyson’s magnificent 
Enone, 
- For that right is right to follow right 
Where wisdom is the scorn of consequence. 
