UPLAND SHOOTING. 
107 
winter and deep snow-drifts Quail-destroying of 1836, to rescue 
that delightful little fowl from total extinction, stand forth in 
likewise now, in protection of the Woodcock. Sufficient for 
the day is the evil thereof. Railroads are ruining the hopes— 
the pleasures of the sportsman ; our best shooting grounds now 
swarm, on the first of July, with guns more numerous than 
birds; the Warwick woodlands, once inaccessible to the pot¬ 
hunter and the poacher, may now be reached for fifty cents ; 
may now be swept clear in a single day ; nay, are swept clear 
of half-fledged younglings, by men, boys, and bunglers, and 
ruthlessly devoured before the season has set in, by ignorant 
voracious cockneys. 
Reform it altogether!* 
Enact that the Woodcock shall not be slain—shall not be 
possessed—as Mr. Blunt possessed him—on plate or in stomach, 
until the first day of October. Every true sportsman—every 
sportsman whatsoever, will go hand and heart with the law— 
will watch and prevent the illegal sale of the bird; and then, 
ye gods of woodcraft! Sylvans and Fauns ! and thou, friend 
of the hunter, Pan ! what sport shall we have in brown Octo¬ 
ber, when the sere underbrush is bare of leaves to mar the 
sportsman’s aim; when the cool dewy earth sends up the odor 
of the game in fresh steams to the Setter’s keen and sagacious 
nose; when the pure air braces the nerves and fans the brow, 
delicious; when the full-grown, white-fronted, pink-legged 
Cock springs up—not fluttering feebly now, and staggering 
stupidly into the muzzle of the gun, to drop again within twenty 
yards, but on a vigorous and whistling pinion, with sharp-piping 
alarm note, swift as a rifle-bullet, soaring away through the 
tree-tops, or darting, devious with abrupt zig-zags, among the 
thick-set saplings. 
Him, no boy can blaze at, his twenty times in half an hour, 
and slaughter after all with one chance pellet, or happily wea¬ 
ried down without one ! Him can no German gun achieve, of 
cast-iron, scattering its shot over an area of twenty feet, harm- 
