22 
PRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
adopted be not taken to save this bird, it will be extinct everv 
where within a hundred miles of the Atlantic seaboard—and in¬ 
land, everywhere within a hundred miles of any city large enough 
to afford a market. Within fifty years from the day on which I 
now write, I am satisfied that the Woodcock will be as rare in 
the eastern and midland states, as the Wild Turkey and the 
Heath-Hen are at present. 
The Quail will endure a little longer, and the Ruffed Grouse 
the longest of all—but the beginning of the twentieth century 
will see the wide woodlands, the dense swamps, and the moun¬ 
tain sides, depopulated and silent. I begin to despair—to feel 
that there is no hope for those who would avert the evil day, 
when game shall be extinct, and the last manly exercise out of 
date in the United States of North America. 
The foregoing remarks contain, in brief, the reasons which 
have induced me to prepare and offer to the public the present 
work, on u the Field Sports of the United States, and the British 
Provinces of North America”—a work, the intention and char¬ 
acter of which, I shall take this opportunity of stating, are en¬ 
tirely different from those of any book heretofore published in 
this country. 
“ In all European countries,” I remarked, in connexion with 
the observations quoted above, “ writers on all branches of sport¬ 
ing have long abounded ; many of them of high birth, many of 
them distinguished in the world of science and of letters, and 
some even of the gentler sex. The greatest chemist of his day, Sir 
Humphry Davy, was not ashamed to record his piscatory expe¬ 
riences in £ Salmonia,’ a work second only in freshness and at¬ 
traction to its prototype, by old Isaak Walton. That fair and 
gentle dame, Juliana Berners, deemed it not an unfeminine task 
to indite what, to the present day, is the text-book of falconry; 
and hapless beautiful Jane Grey thought she had given the ex- 
tremest praise to Plato’s eloquence, when she preferred it to the 
music of the hound and horn in the good greenwood. Till the last 
few years, however, America has found no son to record the feats 
of her bold and skilful hunters, to build theories on the results of 
