THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
discharged at close quarters at a sitting hare — or at a partridge on the 
ground, or wildfowl on the water, as the case might be — the result in most 
cases would probably be “ a miss.” 
The art of “ shooting flying ” was then unknown, and apparently was 
not acquired until something like a century and a half later. At all events 
the bir ding -piece, the caliver, and the stalking-horse were all sufficiently 
popular at the end of the sixteenth century to suggest many allusions 
to their use in the works of Shakespeare and other Elizabethan dramatists.* 
In 1574 the price of a caliver, with flask and touch-box, was 14s., and in 
1576, due perhaps to the latest improvement of the period, 24s. 
But to return to the hare. During the period which intervened between 
the custom of taking hares by poaching methods, and shooting them with 
improved firearms, it was the fashion for noblemen, lords of manors, 
and large landowners to maintain “ hare -warrens ” on their properties, 
and these were sometimes of considerable extent. From the descriptions 
which have come down to us it would seem that the hares in these warrens 
were preserved for coursing, especially in or near downland. Aubrey, 
in his “Natural History of Wiltshire” (1690), describing “the grandeur 
of the Herberts, Earls of Pembroke,” at Wilton House, Wiltshire, and 
referring, inter aliay to the kennels of hounds and other sporting dogs 
maintained there, particularly mentions the setting dogs used for hunting, 
and “ the grayhounds for his hare warren.” He tells us also that “ at 
Everley is a great warren for hares, and also in Bishopstone parish, near 
Wilton, is another, and anno 1682 the Rt Hon. James Earl of Abingdon 
made another at West Lavington.”f The hares of the Wiltshire downs 
were as famous then as now, and the fact that they are still sufficiently 
plentiful there is no doubt due to their continued preservation for coursing, 
notwithstanding the disadvantage at which they have been placed since 
the passing of the Ground Game Act, 1880, to which we shall have occasion 
to refer later on. 
When considering the precise meaning of the word “ warren ” at the 
present day, we have to distinguish between what is indicated by the 
legal expression “ free warren,” and what is popularly known as “ a war- 
ren.” The latter is merely an enclosed field or piece of down land in which 
coneys and hares are reared. Anyone may have such a place, and it would 
* See Harting, The Ornithology of Shakespeare, pp. 241-244. 
t The Natural History of Wiltshire, by John Aubrey, F.R.S., written between 1656 and 1691; edited by John Britton, 
F.S.A., and published by the Wiltshire Topographical Society, 4to, 1847. 
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