26 FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
tie I do know of American field sports—and so infinitesimal is 
that little, that I am almost compelled to own, with the sage of 
old, “ all that I do know is, that I know nothing”—and to a 
constant and long-maintained habit of intercourse and familiar 
correspondence with better, though not more thoroughgoing, 
sportsmen than myself, in every part of the United States, and 
of the Provinces. 
Upon any general defence of field sports I do not here think 
it worth the while to enter. All men whose opinions are worth 
one moment of attention, have long ago decided that they are 
the best, the manliest, and the most desirable, in every respect, 
of national amusements, tending to prevent the demoralization 
of luxury, and over civilization, the growth of effeminacy and 
sloth, and to the maintenance of a little manhood in an age, the 
leading characteristics of which are fanaticism, cant, and hypo¬ 
crisy, added to a total and general decay of all that is manly or 
independent either in the physical or moral characters, alike of 
individuals or nations. 
To those who think field sports cruel, immoral, wicked, and 
brutalizing, I have only to make my lowest bow ; and to en¬ 
treat that they will give me and my book, as I shall assuredly 
give them and their opinions, the widest possible berth ; assuring 
them that, without the slightest respect for their opinions, I 
have no idea of intruding upon their premises, nor any desire to 
convert them from their comfortable and self-hugging creed. 
In all ages and in all countries, genuine field sports—from 
which I, of course, exclude the really cruel and brutalizing 
amusements of bear-baiting, dog-fighting, cock-fighting, and 
other similar pursuits, which are for the most part followed 
only by the vicious and worthless population of large cities— 
have been approved of and encouraged by the wisest men, 
by statesmen and philosophers and philanthropists, not merely 
as legitimate • pursuits whereon to expend and exercise the 
buoyant animal spirits, and ardent animal propensities of youth 
—which must have an outlet one way or another—but as the 
best mode of preserving the combined advantages of the mens 
