242 THE COOKERY OF THE PHEASANT 



the atmosphere is balmy, and the undergrowth aro- 

 matic. But for many reasons the grandees and great 

 landowners have never turned their attention to game 

 breeding and game preserving. In a succession of revo- 

 lutions the people have made wild work with the woods, 

 and each Spanish peasant is a born poacher. Till 

 yesterday, and — in many districts — even to-day, every 

 muleteer carries a long single-barrel across his saddle- 

 bow. His wary eye is always on the watch for anything 

 that will relieve the monotony of the puchero. We sus- 

 pect if a Spanish gentleman took to serious preserving, 

 he would make a leap into the frying-pan of the Irish 

 landlord. There used to be fair wild pheasant shoot- 

 ing a generation ago in the Asturias ; but there was 

 a Marquess, who was a grand seigneur and a bene- 

 volent despot, and his dependants were as conservative 

 as the Bretons of the Chouannerie. He had always a 

 warm welcome for English sportsmen, and could even 

 venture to bring over eggs from England, with a fair 

 prospect of seeing the broods come to maturity. Yet 

 we may presume, from the name of the Isle des 

 Faisans in the Bidassoa, that pheasants must once 

 have been fairly plentiful in these parts, though, ac- 

 cording to a story of Brillat-Savarin, the bird, as 

 late as 1780, was a very great rarity in wealthy Lyons. 

 Brillat-Savarin writes with such an air of veracity, that 



