naturally endowed; while the use of trained animals even is less resorted to than formerly, and the pointer seems likely to follow in the wake of the stalking horse and the Egyptian's retrieving cat.

If we put falconry on one side-and as we have already indicated, it is a subject that does not present itself for treatment in a study of Colonel Hawker, and is moreover of sufficient dimensions to require a paper to itself the decoy seems to have been the latest survival of the old order of things-if, indeed, it can be considered as of the old order at all. For, although we are told that the system was introduced into England by Sir William Wodehouse in the early years of the seventeenth century, when the famous case of Keeble v. Hickeringall' was heard on appeal in 1706, the Solicitor-General of the day stated in the course of his argument that decoys were not then of very long standing in England. By that time, however, the flint-lock had become well established; and as the art of shooting flying grew to be more and more universal, the decoy came to occupy an ancillary position. All this, of course, was more or less history to Hawker. The flint gun had been in universal use for over a century; it had been for years the object of constant attempts at improvement; its performances and capabilities had been investigated by a Committee of the Royal Society; the material, manufacture, weight, length and bore of the barrel, the constituents and dimensions of the charge and wadding, had been made the subject of experiment after experiment. Manton, Fullerd, Nock, Wilkinson, Egg, and many others were either beginning or had already begun their life-work; and steam was giving proof of its powers and possibilities. The times were surely ripe for the advent of a man, whose enquiring mind, ready grasp of unfamiliar detail, and other innate qualifications needed only the opportunities afforded at Longparish and Keyhaven to determine the direction of their development.

One of Hawker's more immediate predecessors was that most able park- and gamekeeper,' Mr. Lemon, who wrote a 'Dissertation on the Errors of Marksmen.' These he attributes very largely to the form of gun then made, pointing out that the long barrel, excessive bend and length of stock, wide muzzle, and exaggerated sight, all helped to make the gun throw low. It was then the universal custom to make guns with fifteen and a half inches of butt, and a very pronounced bend. Lemon observes that two and a quarter inches of 'flexure' is enough for any marksman, and advises that, if he cannot get down to that, he should lean forward :

'The

The more the flying marksman inclines his body forwards in moderation when he presents his gun, the more pliant and versatile will he be to the flexions of a swerving bird, and the more capable of traversing his gun with the celerity of one flying in a regular transverse or curvilineary direction.'

Lemon tells us that he always carried his gun at full-cock; but he had, it is evident, a true sportsman's intolerance of carelessness, and he does not hesitate to say of himself:—

'I dare venture to say that I am as good a shot as any that can at this period be found, but whether I am so able an instructor as any, I leave my readers to judge.'

His readers can at all events judge of his merits as a writer; the previous quotation is a fair specimen of his style, and here are some of the grandiose words he uses: maturated,' theoric,' 'collineate,'' supervacaneous,' 'vellication,' 'juncturely,' and ' anfractuosities.' Lemon refers, with some disparagement, to a book that had been published about six years before by 'A gentleman' (Lemon says clergyman') ' of Suffolk.' This writer's style is a very different one; here is a good example :—

'Where a Passion for the Diversions of the Field cannot be indulged to the extent of Elegance and Exactnes in all the several Departments, for want of the Primum Mobile; we may come to a Composition, relaxing a few Degrees from the Punctilios, and yet sport with Decency and Satisfaction-embracing, as it were, a Woman instead of a Goddes.'

His tastes, like those of so many reverend sportsmen (Russell was a typical instance), led him to breed dogs; and on the subject of coursing he actually breaks out into verse :—

'A Jack she makes upon the Overshoot,
And arrows it away to Copse amain.

Standing Amazement, panting Toby stands:

Puss-and the bung-tailed Horse-both gone for goods,
Consume it though-oh Lor! oh Lor! oh Lor!'

A greyhound, he says, should never look at a hare until two years old. He possessed in Proteus' a very notable pointer, who, as many gentlemen in the vicinity will remember, would stand for a gun at one bird, drop for a net at the next, and so on as I thought fit. In covert he would do the work of a brace of spaniels.' Rough pointers, he tells us, were introduced into Suffolk by the Earl of Powis, but 'sullennes and a violent attachment to mutton brought them into disgrace.' But his favourite was the red cocking spaniel.

'Mr.

'Mr. Mott, an old gentleman, called the Father of Sportsmen, has of this red strain that greatly exceeded; and, at this present, there is a similar stock at Sir Joshua Vannack's superior to most. The same Blood is doubtless to be met with in most parts of England: for it cannot be supposed that all the Gentlemen of Taste are faggotted up in Suffolk.'

But we must not wander into the kennel; at all events, not for a talk with Hawker. The comparative disregard of assistance from the brute creation, to which we have referred as characterizing the sportsman of to-day, seems to have been especially a part of Hawker's creed. Apparently he regarded the services of dogs as unimportant, and never owned any really valuable animals. This entry in the Diary for 7th September, 1819, is quite a typical one :—

'Having bagged 101 birds in my first four days' shooting to poor old Nero, who had been incurably lame in the shoulder for these ten months, I would not take him out to-day; and as I had no dog that would stir from my heel besides, I took two men with a rope about 30 yards long, and dragged the ground, being in want of birds, and I bagged 13 partridges, besides shooting 2 more which I lost.'

'Nero' died in the following February; he was a high-bred pointer with a cross of foxhound. Hawker used him as a retriever and for driving, and says, ' He was the best dog I ever had, ever saw, or ever heard of.'

At the age of fifty-two, when he wrote his book, shooting was the 'Suffolk Clergyman's' favourite diversion. He sums up his experience in the sentence, 'The art is, tota teres atque rotunda, wrapped up in one single word-patience.' He must decline, he says, to enter at any length upon the subject of the barrel, and recommends his readers to place themselves in the hands of Pearshall, of Bury, and Smyth, of Saxmundham. His own preference was, he tells us, for a barrel with about four inches' relief at the muzzle, but

'I made Application to a Gentleman, having, by his Eminence in this Art, acquired a bouncing Fortune in a Crack, and retired without Flaw, who assured me that it was not in the Power of any Man living to finish two Barrels alike.'

Like Lemon, the 'Suffolk Clergyman' has a sportsman's horror of a careless companion :

For my own Part, I am always in fear with Strangers, especially Slaughtermen. A sing'd Wig gives an offensive Smell, and a Man's Nose of any reputable Length is in Danger at every Cross Shot.'

With regard to 'cross-shots,' his counsel is to step forward with the right foot if the bird goes to the left, and vice-versá,* and to 'shoot at the Head in every direction, if possible; and I cannot see any Necessity for greater Allowance.' Nevertheless, swinging on the bird was known and practised. Lemon speaks of 'bringing your body to a motion correspondent with the motion of the bird'; and in Markland's 'Pteryplegia' (published fifty years before) the sportsman is counselled to

'Attend the motion of the Bird, and gain

The best and farthest lineal Point you can;
Carrying your Piece around, have Patience till
The Mark's at best extent, then fire and kill.'

Page also (of whose pendulum target the 'Suffolk Clergyman' speaks but slightingly), in his 'Art of Shooting Flying' (1767),

says:

'By means of your keeping the gun in motion with the object, a shot may be sometimes recovered, though it hangs fire.'

Page was a Norwich gunmaker, who also made watches and surgical appliances, as appears by his catalogue. He (like Sir Thomas Frankland, the great apostle of caution) never cocked his gun until he was bringing it up. Page goes at some length into the subject of loads. The conventional charge was 'a pipebowl of powder and a bowl and a half of shot'; but he prefers, he says, equal measures of each, which gives a weight-ratio of about 1 to 7, and he generally primes out of that quantity. He gives details of a series of trials with guns of varying length of barrel, bore, weight, wads, and loads, and is in favour of a pretty stout wad closely rammed. On the subject of ramming, opinions differed widely. In 'Pteryplegia,' for instance, we read,

'In charging, next, good workmen never fail
To ram the powder well, but not the Ball';

while the author of 'An Essay on Shooting' (1789) writes:

The powder should be only slightly rammed down, for which purpose it is sufficient to press the ramrod 2 or 3 times on the wadding. . . . The shot should never be rammed down tight. . . and the wadding should then be gently put down, but much less close than that of the powder.'

He gives as his reason in both cases that it keeps the charge from spreading too soon. Wadding seems to have been a question equally vexed. The substances most usually employed

*Sir Thomas Frankland's counsel was to fire with the opposite barrel.

were

were tow,* card, old hat, leather, brown paper, and cork. Page declares in favour of brown paper. Dr. Markland, on the other hand, sings:

'Now search for Tow, and some old Saddle pierce,

No wadding lies so close, or drives so fierce.'

6

And the author of 1789 recommends the greenish-grey moss t which is found growing on apple-trees, as making the barrel less greasy and foul than paper, which always contains a certain quantity of oil'; though he puts old hat at the top of his list as best of all, and soft brown paper next.

Hawker does not seem to have been so particular in the matter of wadding as he was with regard to other details; the material and manufacture of his barrels, for instance. The barrel of his 96 lb. stanchion gun burst on February 19th, 1818:

'And I was for a considerable time on fire (with a pound of gunpowder in my pocket). . . The barrel, a Birmingham one, which was to all appearance clean, proves to be scarcely better than unbeat ore or granite stone. Let this be a caution to discard all barrels that are not twisted.'

The best English barrels were then made from old horseshoe nails, or 'stubs,' and the gleaning of these on the roads round London was a regular calling. They were packed in small hoops in the form of a flat cake, and forged into bars about two feet in length, four of which went to a barrel of the then usual length, viz. 32 to 38 inches. The twisting was not unfrequently counterfeited by means of a thread, wound spirally round the barrel and wetted with aquafortis, previously to the general 'browning' of the barrel. This was also done with the French canons à ruban and wire barrels, and the only method of detection was investigation of the grain of the metal by means of a file and aquafortis.

The best iron, however, was that which came from Spain. It was very difficult to obtain, although, according to one writer, 'during the late war some gunsmiths procured it in tolerable quantity by purchasing from the agents of Spanish prizes the barrel hoops which, either from the cheapness of iron in Spain, or the want of flatting mills, &c., are unnecessarily thick and clumsy.'

Hawker's friend, Mr. Fullerd, of Clerkenwell, was apparently one of these. He used to say that he had wrought a great deal

Tow was considered dangerous. It was thought that lighted fragments occasionally remained in the barrel and exploded the powder of the subsequent load. Sir John Swinburne lost his eye by an accident of this kind in 1799. † Moss was the wadding used in the Berney spiral cartridge which Hawker so highly extolled for its certainty (17th March, 1840).

Vol. 180.-No. 359.

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