248 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
ungenial, repellent crockery, a mockery, sham! Now the 
original wooden platter was, I think, true Art, and the 
crockery copy is not Art. The primeval savage, with. 
out doubt, laboriously cut out a design, or at least gave 
some curve and shape to the handle of his celt or the 
shaft of his spear, and the savages at this day as labori- 
ously carve their canoes. The [English sportsman, 
however, does not cut, or carve, or in any way shape his 
gun-stock to his imagination. The stock is as smooth 
and as plain as polished wood can be. There is a sort 
_of speckling on the barrels, and there is a conventional 
design on the lock-plate ; conventional, indced, in the 
most d/asé sense of the word—quite d/asé and worn out, 
this scratch of intertwisted lines, not so much as a phea- 
sant even engraved on the lock-plate ; it is a mere kill- 
ing machine, this gun, and there is no Art, thought or 
love of nature about it. Sometimes the hammers are 
filed, little notches crossing, and there imagination stops. 
The workman can get no farther than his file will go, and 
you know how that acts to and fro in a straight groove. 
A pheasant or hare at full speed, a few trees—firs as 
most characteristic—could be put on the plate, and 
something else on the trigger guard; firs are easily drawn, 
and make most appearance for a few touches ; pheasants 
roost in them. Even a coat of arms, if it were the 
genuine coat-of-arms of the owncr’s family, would look 
well. Men have their book-plates and stamp their 
library volumes, why not a gun design? As many 
sportsmen scarcely see their guns for three-fourths of the 
year, it is possible to understand that the gun becomes a 
killing machine merely to them, to be snatched up and 
thrown aside the instant its office is over. But the 
gamekeeper carries his gun the year through, and sits in 
‘the room with it when indoors, still he never even so 
i 
