20 FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
try farmers, as a body, have neither the time, the inclination, noi 
the opportunities for making themselves acquainted with the 
names, habits, or manners of gaine-animals ; and consequently 
could not, if they would, have framed adequate laws for their 
protection. I believe that if they could now be brought as a body 
to understand that the provisions of these laws are not arbitrary 
and intended to suit the wishes of classes, they might be in 
duced to lend their hand to the good work of game-preservation 
A very few years since, the sportsmen proper—those I mean 
who shot for exercise, pleasure, and healthful excitement—and 
the poachers who shot for the markets, both coming from the 
cities, were the only enemies of the Quail and Woodcock. 
They were at that time entirely disregarded by the farmers, who 
had not the art to kill them on the wing, who did not care for 
them as delicacies, or articles of food, and who had no markets 
to supply with what they considered useless birds. So great 
was the extent of this disregard, that I have repeatedly, on 
firing a great number of shots in small pieces of woodland, been 
questioned by the owners what on earth I found to shoot at • 
and, on showing some twenty or thirty Woodcock, have been met 
by a remark that the speaker had lived on that farm all his life, 
and had not seen a dozen such birds in his life-time—and the 
name of the bird was unknown to them. 
At this period, which was the golden age for the sportsman, tra¬ 
velling was, comparatively speaking, expensive; it was often 
necessary, in visiting out-of-the-way places, where the best sport 
was to be had, to hire private conveyances; and the consequence 
was that the city poacher was in a great measure precluded from 
following his barbarous and dishonest trade. Add to this, that 
the country people were averse to the market-shooter, when 
they discovered his object, and cast obstacles in his way. 
All this is now changed—the rail-roads by which the country 
is everywhere intersected, enable the city pot-hunter to move 
about with his dogs, and to transmit the subject of his butchery 
to the market easily, cheaply, speedily. Nor is this all—the 
country now bids fair to monopolize the trade of pot-hunting. 
