190 
FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SFORTS. 
couch, lulled by the murmur of the wind in the never-silent 
tree tops, by the far plash of falling waters, by the plaintive 
wailing of the whip-poor-will, and the joyous revelry of the dew- 
drinking katydids—the sleep, under the blue vault of the skies, 
guarded by the winking eyes of the watchful planets only,— 
sweeter and sounder, lighter and more luxurious, than princes 
catch on beds of eider-down and velvet. 
Lo ! you now, reader, have not we too caught the inspira¬ 
tion, and ere we knew it, waxed poetical ! 
One thing alone is wanting to the perfection of summer 
shooting as a sport—I speak not now of the unfitness of the sea¬ 
son for hard exercise ,—no season is, in truth, unfit for the dis¬ 
play of manhood !—nor of the unfitness of the half-grown broods 
for slaughter!—and that one thing is, the want of variety in the 
species of game. In autumn, hearty, jocund, brown autumn, the 
woodman’s sport is indeed manifold. Even when his dog has 
pointed, though he may guess shrewdly from the nature of his 
movements and the style of his point, the sportsman knows not 
what may be the game which shall present itself to his skill. It 
may be the magnificent Ruffed Grouse, whirring up with a flut¬ 
ter and an impetus that shall shake the nerves of a novice; it 
may be a bevy of quail eighteen or twenty strong, crowding 
and jostling one another in their anxiety to avoid the danger, 
and distracting his aim by the multiplicity of objects; it may be 
a full-grown white-fronted Woodcock, soaring away with its 
sharp whistle high above the tree tops ; it may be the skulking 
Hare, bouncing among the kalmias and rhododendrons, vulgarly 
generalized as laurels—they might as well be called cabbages ! 
—it may be Teal or Wood-duck, or if we are in the open, it may 
be Snipe, skirring away zig-zag over the rushy level. 
This it is which gives so strange a zest to the field sports of 
an American autumn day, and which renders the autumn shoot¬ 
ing of this country the wildest and most interesting of any it 
has ever been my luck to encounter—of any, I presume, in the 
world, unless it be that of Northern India, on the lower slopes 
and in the plains at the foot of the Himalayah Mountains. 
