ffOir TO SHOW PHEASANTS 125 



towards it, there is a second cardinal principle to be 

 observed if you wish them to pass your guns, either 

 at the fair killing distance, or at a sufficient height to 

 make the performance interesting, and test the skill 

 of your best shots. This is, that they must be flushed 

 at a certain distance from the guns. In no case 

 should the flushing point be nearer than sixty yards 

 from the line where the shooters stand ; it will be 

 immeasurably better if it is well over a hundred. 

 Add to this that the birds should generally, where 

 possible, be flushed from higher ground than that on 

 which the guns stand, and you get all conditions 

 necessary for the result desired. 



Lord Walsingham has laid down all these prin- 

 ciples in the Badminton volume, and added a recom- 

 mendation, in which I entirely agree, of the system of 

 driving the birds (away from home) to an isolated 

 covert or clump, from which they can be brought 

 back overhead easily and surely. To such clump or 

 covert they must be pushed almost entirely on their 

 feet ; but the system — for which I think we are all, in 

 the first instance, indebted to Lord Leicester, who 

 has for nearly fifty years practised it, with the most 

 scientific and picturesque results, at Holkham— in- 

 volves absolute discipline on the part of both beaters 

 and shooters. You may bring pheasants, as they do at 



