284. MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
Now woodcock invariably return year after year, if 
unmolested, to the same wood to breed, as do salmon to 
the same river. Therefore it follows, that if, year after 
year, nine tenths of all the birds, old and young, are shot 
off, as they invariably are in the present system of sum- 
mer shooting, the breeding stock must in the end be 
wholly cut off, and the race must become extinct. 
Nor is this theory; for it is proved too true by experi- 
ence; and over vast tracts of country, where woodcock 
swarmed some twenty years since, an ostrich is now a 
scarce less likely bird, to encounter. 
Moreover, the extreme heat of the season, and the 
extraordinary difficulty of preserving the birds when killed, 
in fit condition for the table, renders July shooting not 
only irksomely laborious, but useless. 
The only reason that can be adduced for persevering in 
this destructive and foolish law, is the plea, that, if wood- 
cock shooting in July were abolished, there would be no 
‘July shooting of any kind. Be it so! we can conceive it 
possible for the most ardent of sportsmen to exist one 
month in the year, or say two, for February is almost 
equally barred out with July, without shooting, especially 
as beating low, swampy woodlands reeking with moist heat 
and swarming with mosquitoes under a sun at ninety 
degrees in the shade, is not altogether what it is cracked 
up to be; though very young men may rejoice in it, and 
very strong men battle through it, day after day, from 
sunrise unto sunset. 
As it stands, however, law and custom sanctioning it, 
