This, however, only relates to the preservation of animals as objects of the chase. We will look at the influence of time in the manner of pursuing it.

In the primitive days of hunting, no matter what might be the kind of game pursued, the killing it was the first object of the hunter; he killed it either from a wish to exterminate its species, or from a desire to obtain it for food. With fox-hunters the same desire influences them at the present day, and a kill is the great desideratum; but it proceeds from a different feeling altogether: we do not want to kill a fox to eat him, still less from any wish to exterminate his race, but simply for the following reason-a kill keeps up the courage and dash of the foxhound, whereas only one fortnight's succession of blank days or runs to ground would render him dispirited, and he would shortly lose all that energy so characteristic of the high-bred fox-hound, on the maintaining of which the chief hope of the foxhunter rests.

Every Englishman addicted to field sports (or at least those born within the last two or three centuries), laughs at a foreigner's ideas of hunting, and no one has indulged in such ridicule more than myself; but time and reflection have taught me that such derision is in the first place illiberal, and in the second not indicative of the best possible good sense; for if we refer to history, or pictures painted by ancient masters, we must infer that the English hunting of five hundred years since was not very different from that in use with the French monarch of one hundred years ago; and the flying pack of Leicestershire, with the immortal Tom Smith at their side, differ no more from the pack of the departed Louis of France than they do from that of Henry the Eighth of England, who, could he be resuscitated (which heaven forefend!) with his welter weight, would make but a sorry figure now in the Quorn country.

Whether field sports are considered in the light of killing that which is obnoxious or dangerous to us while alive, or whether we kill it as an article of food, or pursue it for sport only, doubtless the inhabitants of any country act and always have acted up to the best or most pleasant mode to them of carrying on field sports; they may differ from our own, but not now so much as ours differ in 1856 from what they were even so late as the year 1600.

THE SPORTING RESOURCES OF IRELAND.

"This morning, July 1, 1856," says our Waterford friend, "hearing a squeal in the grass, I ran and took a young rabbit from a rat which had attacked it, and had already made a hole in its back." He does not tell us that this trifling incident was the reason of his disserting, in a pleasant sporting style over a course of capabilities, till he reached at length page 48; but it is not at all improbable that the rat-and-the

A A

rabbit incident supplied to his ardent mind the little latent spark that 'was alone wanting to throw a light upon a subject of some general, as well as local, interest.

He affirms that the "principle" involved in the "adaptation" of his plan "is universal;" and, although the words are largish, there is not a bit of exaggeration about them. Our sporting companion, we see, is not a regular boring author; and of course he will not be the less liked on this account, for as Byron said—

"One hates an author that's all author-a fellow

In foolscap uniform turned up with ink."

We imagine the author of "The Sporting Capabilities of Ireland" can shoulder his gun a deal more dexterously than he can pace his pen ; although he does not write at all amiss for an amateur. But we fancy

him more of a keen sportsman than a clever scribbler. His style is none of the most nervous and eloquent; to the want of polish, too, now and then, he adds some mannerisms which have a rather disagreeable effect. But, on the other hand, his language is unambitious, and as free from all affectation and ambiguity as that of a genuine gentleman and a real sportsman always should be, and generally is.

The object which the sporting Deputy-Lieutenant of Waterford appears to have at heart is, to make his own county in particular, and Ireland in general, a sporting country-a country for game. The means by which the desired object may be easily attained through combined action, he holds, lie in only two words-destroy vermin. Kill vermin, and there can be no doubt game will get up, under certain conditions, of which protection is a cardinal one. Immigration, or a good introduction; fair-play or fostering care, there clearly must be. We might derive some information about this matter from the records of the Colonial Office, if common sense alone, without resorting to analogies, did not quite suffice. It is true the wild bull grazed upon the plain, the timid sheep browsed on the herbage, the goat skipped upon the rock, the salmon swam in the stream, and the hare sat in her form; whilst the partridge, the pheasant, the woodcock, the grouse, and other winged treasures, each appropriately obeying its own proper instincts, had a being but the birds of the air, and even the fish of the water, as well as the animals of the earth, owe much to man's care. Game will not cover a thousand hills and valleys, either in Ireland or anywhere else, without food, shelter, and protection.

Our author himself gives us an illustration of the protective plan. "An English gentleman of my acquaintance," he says, "commenced to preserve an estate, on which he assured me there was not above one old hare. In the third year he had nursed it, and we shot there at Christmas for three days. On the second day we killed one hundred and forty-four hares, and upwards of a hundred pheasants. His keeper had been a poacher; but from particular circumstances my friend took him into his service, and a better keeper never was. I will not vouch for it that none of his former devices for attracting his neighbours' game were not brought into play. I only vouch for the result of his management, and which proves that management will bring about extraordinary results."

Of course it will. Nor is it at all necessary to put forth an argu

ment a hundred miles long to prove it. We all know that it is the nature of the ravenous tribes to prey directly on and keep down the grass or grain-eating tribes.

Our author is right in maintaining that there is nothing either in the climate or the soil of Ireland to prevent game getting up to the same numbers as in England. But there are evidently one or two other conditions, which we have already indicated, besides soil and climate.

He takes cognizance of all the causes to which the want of game is attributed, and demolishes them as summarily and as surely as he would bring down a bird that rose before him, concluding, in the Carthago delenda style, that vermin must be destroyed. He instances the plateau on which he himself resides. "This plateau is that part of the county of Waterford contained between the rivers Blackwater and Bride, from Waterpark on the confines of the county, to Tourin near Cappoquin, containing about twelve thousand acres of land, for the most part the property of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire. I should be inclined to estimate the head of vermin on this land at the least at two thousand. Let anybody calculate what each weasel requires for its daily sustenance on the average. It is supposed to be something fresh, whether a robin or a pheasant, and multiplying two thousand by three hundred and sixtyfive, it gives a product of seven hundred and thirty thousand. On this same plateau of ground I have reckoned about ten gunners. To these men I will assign an average of four head per day, which is beyond the reality. As to the number of days they shoot, I will allow them an average of fifty days in the season. This would give two thousand head of game to the men against seven hundred and thirty thousand to the vermin, in game, young ones, and eggs, which is at any rate enough to show that the noisy gunner bears no ratio in destruction to the frolics of the little weasel."

The proposed modus operandi, or machinery by which the desired destruction of vermin is to be effected, we alluded to just nowtrappers, who know their trade well, must be employed; and on a large scale too, or it will be of no use. They must be attracted to the emerald isle by that gold which governs all things; and almost all men, too, in these money-mongering times.

Having, however, now given a good general notion enough, perhaps, of the sort of book-it saw the light only a month or two since-we may indulge in the pleasure of coming down from its objects to its facts and its anecdotes, all of which are tolerably relevant, and some of them are rather racy too besides. At page 37 we have a "modern instance," showing that very good shooting may be had on a very limited surface. "A friend of mine took a small moor in Scotland, for which he paid fifty pounds last year. He very soon polished off all his own birds. This moor was surrounded by large and capital moors; and the jealousy of his neighbours' keepers was such, that they used to watch the boundaries of his march every morning at daylight, and every evening, which were his hours of sporting (while the middle of the day he devoted to fishing), to see that he did not intrude a poaching foot, which he never did. Nevertheless, to the disgust of the said keepers, he got an extraordinary head; so much so, that the proprietor of the neighbouring march, to whom he was unknown, wrote to ask him as a favour what he really had killed.

The secret lay in a few rich oat-fields, which attracted all the birds in the neighbourhood."

Here's capital fun-rich and retributive: "A lady in Cheshire having a fancy to keep some bees, and to feed her pets, sowed amongst other things some buckwheat. At a little distance there happened to be some extensive woods, the proprietors of which were ungallant enough to forhid her trespassing, which she took pleasure in doing in riding through them. These pheasants, not satisfied with the fare provided for them by their masters, used to pay a visit to the buckwheat of their neighbour; and her friends, being determined to take revenge for the want of gallantry, shot them. They threatened to prosecute her as a nuisance, to which she paid little attention. The neighbours next held an indignation meeting, and proposed resolutions, which were in like manner disregarded. At length these ungallant gentlemen were obliged to come down on their knees, and kindly proffer her the free use of their rides, provided she desisted from sowing buckwheat in future; which treaty of peace was soon signed, sealed, and delivered."

The voice from Ireland drowns the notion of the small number of partridges there being the result of a want of turnips and other food for the winter's support; for Waterford sportsmen say that protection is more necessary to game than food or soil. "It is not the richest soils, where the greatest quantity of corn grows, that most partridges will be found; rather the reverse. The land in Norfolk, the best partridge county in England, is naturally poor. Suffolk is the second-best partridge county in England. Along the river Orwell, on one side they are preserved strictly, and I have there fired more shots than even in Norfolk. For twenty miles on the Colchester and opposite side of the river, there are scarcely more birds than on the banks of the Blackwater. On the downs of Sussex there is apparently little food or shelter of any kind, and still partridges are very plenty. On some of the heavy clay lands of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire they are plenty. In parts of Scotland they are abundant. In the county of Kilkenny the best partridge shooting is at the foot of the mountains, on land worth twelve shillings per acre; whereas, on the rich wheat land of that county, worth forty shillings per acre, there are very few. How is this remarkable and universal deficiency of any quantity of partridges in Ireland to be accounted for--more especially as no one county will be found totally without them? I believe the reason to be solely from the number of eggs and young destroyed by vermin. The quantity of magpies alone in Ireland is sufficient to account for it. While writing these notes, I found a partridge's nest containing sixteen eggs close at hand, which, counting the old birds, if undisturbed, would produce a covey of eighteen birds. What country can beat that?"

As if to correct English notions about bashful Irishmen, our author, with exquisite naïveté, says he mentions what might be done, and leaves others to do it! He then proceeds-" First," to "recommend the reinstatement of the ancient Irish elk, a specimen of whose horns is now to be seen in the halls of Dromana, measuring thirteen feet across. If a substitute must be found, let it be the moose of Canada, as a beast in some manner resembling it; with this difference,

that the head of the Irish elk was more neat and beautiful than that of the Arab horse, while specimens of his horns are still seen thirteen feet from tip to tip. The head of the moose, and his manner of carrying it, resemble those of a pig with a crock on his nose; the length of his head is the criterion by which the size of the animal is described, while his horns are but five feet across. I shot three male moose in one day; and, odd to say, it did not strike me at the moment to measure them at the shoulder as we do a horse, but I know they grow to twenty-four hands high. I can therefore only say that the measurement of the largest head of the three, from the butt of the ear to the tip of the nose, was thirty-one and-a-half inches. Like many ugly things, they have virtues innumerable; their flesh is excellent; their mouffle, or large heavy nose, in soup is superexcellent; their marrow is a treat to a gourmand; their skin makes what might be termed 'interminables;' their sinews make rackets for driving a ball, or those raquettes used amongst the savages, and which we denominate snow shoes; their hair is dyed, and is used for embroidering. It is not very hard to catch the young ones in the deep snow; but when you have got them, the difficulty is to hold them. However, they get very tame, and make capital gig horses, and go at a frightful pace, which seems always a trot, as I never happened to see one raise a gallop. They would make capital coachhorses for a Duchess in Hyde Park, which point I bring forward in their favour, as every Irishman likes his high horse, and has, moreover, to part with him when he meets a duchess."

Superstition seems, in some measure, to stand in the way of Irish sporting. To kill a weasel is to kill a fairy, according to popular ignorance; and consequently the crime is very seldom committed. Again, there are traditionally sacred pieces of water, and woe to the daring spirit that would profane them. It is profanation, according to the poor bigot's creed, to fish in them, or even to sound their depth.

Not the least interesting part of the brochure before us, to some, perhaps, may be the comparison instituted between Scotland and Ireland, regarded from a sporting point of view. But

"Est quodam prodire tenus, si non datur ultra❞—

to neither this aspect of the real question raised, nor to one or two other aspects, is there space even for indication in a periodical whose rule is-and it is believed to be the very bestnever to satiate their subscribers with too much of a good thing. It is often said of a horse, that the longest day is never too long for him; but such animals are rarely to be found in any other lands than in his whose tongue tells the tale. Rarer still, a great deal, is the reader for whom the longest yarn is not too long. Thence we conclude that it is always best to keep to the point as well as we can, and, at all events, not to put it in the power of any one to ask imputingly in reference to our writings-" Did they speak to the purpose, or did they not speak to the purpose? If they did speak to the purpose, to what purpose did they speak?"