list of the "terrible high-bred cattle,"-hunters and hacks,—was the following announcement :— "The property of a nobleman. Lot 48.-A bay colt, five-years old, by St. Patrick, out of Gulistan." "What will any gentleman say?" exclaimed the truly popular head of the establishment, as my Rosinante was brought out." Sixty guineas, -excellent blood, the sire a winner of the Derby ;-fifty guineas— forty guineas-thirty guineas-twenty guineas. Will no gentleman offer twenty guineas?" " Why, the tail's worth half the money," cried a yahoo, in the crowd, "h'especially now they've taken to the lex Talioni principle of rubbing bipeds down with horsehair gloves." "Trot him. down; what will any gentleman offer-ten guineas?" Here a Bill Sykes-looking fellow, the master of a cruelty van, ejaculated "Eight guineas." "Eight guineas only offered; no gentleman advance on eight? Nine-ten-eleven guineas; a horse by St. Patrick, out of Gulistan, going for eleven guineas;-eleven guineas and a half-twelvethirteen.' "Thirteen and a half," cried a nervous man, evidently fearful of being shot, id est, having the horse knocked down to him. "Thirteen and a half only offered." Here the nervous man shook like an aspen. "Fourteen guineas-fourteen guineas; going for fourteen;-last time, fourteen-gone!" and the son of St. Patrick was knocked down at fourteen guineas. Although, in this instance, the kindness of the donor defrayed the greatest portion of the expense, by giving the colt a run at grass, we cannot refrain (as a warning to breeders or buyers of yearlings) from laying before them the expenses that would have been incurred had no such liberality been extended. First year (including birth and parentage) £36 0 0 Expenses to London (including coach-hire back, &c.) 3 13 0 A week's keep in London Stall, commission duty, &c., at Tattersall's 1 3 6 1 18 0 Total Deduct by Sale 82 14 6 (Errors excepted)-Balance against the gift horse £68 0 6 Reader, take the advice of an old hand, and always "look a gift horse in the mouth." SOME HINTS ON WILD FOWL SHOOTING. THE British sportsman may fairly exult, that though his dear little island may yield to some climes in the quantity and size of her game, yet, if a man be a true sportsman, a title which few indeed can claim, there is no period of the year in which he need remain totally idle. To recapitulate the sports which each month claims for herself, would be to encroach too much on the patience of my readers; I need only add, that the same severe weather which brings rest and refreshment to many a weary hound and hunter, affords ample scope for the skill and perseverance of the hardy wild-fowl shooter. Our midland counties as Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, and Lincolnshire-may boast that they are not excelled, if rivalled, in the quantity of their wild fowl, by any other part of the kingdom, some of our sea-coasts, perhaps, excepted, where, at times, wild fowl, in all their numerous varieties, may be said to swarm. But there the sportsman, with his hand-gun, has but a poor chance of getting much sport; though the duckman, who earns a precarious livelihood by making a trade of what the gentleman-shot follows as a pleasure, reaps a plentiful harvest. The fowl which abound most in our part of the country, are the wild goose, similar to the tame one, only of a dark grey colour, and smaller; the mallard, or male wild duck, answering to, and very much resembling, our tame duck; the pochard, called by our duckmen the magpie pochard, black and white, with eyes of a bright golden colour, but which they do not esteem worth the trouble of shooting, being very badly flavoured; the widgeon; and last, but not least in the eyes of the epicure, the diminutive teal. We are occasionally honoured by a visit from the stately wild swan, and in the winter of 1836, the cutting severity of which will be long remembered, a great many were seen inland, but they were, for the most part, very wild and difficult to get near. I examined one which was shot, and the difference between it and the tame one, was, its being of a smaller size, and a reddish brown. There have been many disputes with regard to their colour, some asserting that they are quite white; in fact, a swan was shot near me, in the same winter, of a large size, and perfectly white; but there was little doubt of its having been a tame one driven from its own water by the unusual rigour of the season. Wild fowl were hardly ever known so tame as in the winter of 1836. Indeed, I have approached within eighty yards of a large trip of ducks, sitting moping on the ice, quite tamed by cold and hunger. Numbers were shot, but, towards the close of the season, they were so poor as scarcely to be worth the trouble of following. I shot that winter a bird seldom met with so far inland; it was of the Grebe species, quite white, with a long tapering beak and legs, both of a bright red colour. It had a crest of feathers on its head, and was about the size of a widgeon. It seemed quite averse to flying, but dived very frequently, and continued under water for a great length of time. During severe weather, or after the subsiding of a winter flood, to which our low lands are very subject, we are visited by great quantities of snipes: so much has been already said about their habits, &c., that it will be only necessary to mention two things with respect to them here. The first is, always, when snipe-shooting, beat down wind, as they invariably rise facing the wind, or sideways to it, and thus present a fairer and nearer shot, as they must pass you. Although some good judges recommend either taking aim the moment they rise, before they have commenced their unsteady flight, or else to wait till they have gone some distance, and settled down to a steady course; yet, if the sportsman could but keep cool, and fire the moment he brings his gun to bear on them, this bird, usually reckoned so difficult to kill, would but seldom escape. No doubt, to acquire perfection in snipeshooting takes more practice than any other description of trigger work (rabbit-shooting, perhaps, excepted); but how so many are constantly missed by old and experienced shots, who ought to be cool enough, at all events, is to me a mystery. It has been stated that snipes cannot rise without the help of their bills; this, however, is a most erroneous idea, and can no more apply to the snipe than to the heron, which bird it greatly resembles in formation; in fact, I have seen snipes settle close to me, and rise again without touching the ground with their bills. In severe weather, when the marshy ground and sides of the ditches are too hard for their slender bills to penetrate, snipes invariably resort to the osier holts, both on account of the shelter afforded there, and the nourishment found at the roots of the osiers. By entering an osier holt against the wind, and without a dog,-or, if you will have one, a very steady retriever, you may, in severe weather, sometimes get shots as fast as you can load, for snipes will generally lie closer in osier holts than anywhere else. In beating an osier holt, you may frequently spring an odd duck; but their favourite resorts in sharp weather, are the withered reeds by the side of a river, where they will sometimes lie so close as to allow you to pass them. When our meadows are flooded, they become a very favourite resort for wild fowl of all descriptions; and you may frequently see as many as five different sorts, gracefully floating on the surface, either engaged in chasing each other, or else diving to obtain the meadow grass, or weeds, which constitute their favourite food. They are then only to be approached in a small, flat-bottomed canoe, armed with a long and heavy gun, the barrel sometimes measuring eight feet, and carrying from twelve ounces to a pound of shot, or even more. This sport can seldom be followed with much success by the " gentleman gunner;" a man, to be an adept at it, must have been brought up to it from his youth, and know that all chance of success hinges on his patient watching, and frequent endurance of the most piercing weather. On the bleak winter night, the duckman will quit his fireside, and repair to the water, where he quietly waits till the hoarse quack of the mallard, or the low whistle of the widgeon, assure him that game is nigh. With no other covering than his well-worn shooting-coat, his legs encased in a pair of black grained water-boots, and a dark fur cap on his head, does he defy the cold, which, to any one less hardy, would be almost fatal. Kneeling down at the bottom of his boat, he paddles swiftly forward, taking care to keep her head to the wind, as ducks invariably sit with their faces turned towards it, or, if the night be quiet, with their breasts to the stream or ripple of the waters. When he has approached within 200 yards or so of the fowl, he lies flat down at the bottom of his boat, with his shoulder resting against the butt of his gun; his large paddle is then laid in, and he either takes a small one in each hand, or, if the water be shallow, two stalking-sticks; with these he urges the boat forward, till within about eighty yards, when his right paddle is shipped, and, aiming rather above the fowl, he fires; should his aim be correct, several couple may fall; but, owing to the difficulty of finding them at night, and the many crippled ones which escape, he may think himself lucky to bag three or, at most, four couple. The gentleman gunner usually fires his gun from a large swivel, which is a firm iron bar fixed in the seat of the boat, and fastening into a block of wood at the bottom, and thus feels no recoil : of course his aim is got by moving the gun up or down, as occasion requires. But the old-fashioned duckman despises all that sort of humbug, as he styles the swivel; his gun lies loose, resting on the head and seat of his boat; he takes his aim by leaning his weight on the right or left of the boat, without moving his gun, which serves either to depress or raise the muzzle of his piece; and, as he seldom has occasion to aim higher than about thirty yards, this method serves him very well, and, with a little practice, he rarely misses his object. When he fires, the recoil is slightly checked by his shoulder, and the gun then flies under his arm. The butt is padded to render the force of the recoil less felt; and, when we consider the immense charge, this is very necessary; in fact, it is wonderful how few duckmen are injured by it. I never tried this sort of shooting but twice; the first time I fired, the gun resting full against my shoulder, I quite forgot the very necessary precaution of letting it fly under my arm; the result was, as might have been expected, my shoulder was nearly dislocated, and my nose and mouth swollen to a very unnatural size, even for a duckman! The second time I had a swivel fastened in the seat of my boat to which the gun was fastened. But, lo! what was my surprise when, on looking up after the explosion, I found the seat half blown out, and the boat itself about twenty yards farther back than it was when I fired; the diver, which I had shot at, quietly regarding me with with a most astonished air. After this, I followed the old adage" let well alone;" so I sold my gun, turned my punt into a fishing-boat, and rested quite content, with my hand duck-gun, which I find will kill very well at ninety yards. To some of my readers this may seem a very short distance, for I hardly ever asked a person how far his duck-gun would kill, but I invariably received for answer, "O, somewhere about 150 yards;" indeed one gentleman assured me he could almost make sure of ducks at 250! In spite of this modest assertion, I think 130 yards is the greatest distance wild fowl can be killed with any certainty; perhaps they may have been killed at greater lengths, but it was more by chance than anything else. I have, up to this time, been treating of night shooting, but shooting wild fowl by daylight in every way resembles it, except that the duckman uses his hand-paddles when he has approached to within about 400 yards, or else the ducks would perceive him, and, once alarmed, all hopes of getting a shot are at an end: he takes care to have his boat, dress, and everything about him, of a dark colour, as nearly resembling the colour of the water as possible. I have thus endeavoured to give some sketch of the fen duckman, as he is now found; but, alas! with the increase of draining, wild fowl and snipes are gradually becoming more and more scarce, and about us, where once you might have had twenty or thirty shots at the latter, you may now think yourself lucky to get ten or twelve. In fact, at some future time these papers may become valuable as a memorial of what our happy country once boasted. After the lapse of a few short years our fenny counties, which, till lately, had preserved their natural surface, bidding defiance to the spade and ploughshare of the avarcious landowner, will yield to the rapid encroachments of the drainer, and where the wild fowl once delighted to feed, will, perhaps, be the site of some flourishing town. Our partridge shooting, and hunt ing, will be destroyed by the railroads, which are increasing with such fearful rapidity, and which threaten, unless coals fail, not to leave a square mile in the whole country. But, before this takes place, the hand that wrote these pages, and the eyes that read them, will be alike forgotten. The fields which we have so often traversed in pursuit of our favourite game; the springs and marshes which we knew as the resort of the snipe, woodcock, and crafty mallard, will be trodden by another; and the voice of many a dear friend which has cheered us during the fatigue and heat of the long September day, will be hushed for ever. But I have already trespassed more than I had at first intended; so, I lay aside my pen, hoping that the endeavours of every true sportsman may be crowned with success, whatever branch he undertakes, from the Indian, who can bag his brace of tigers and a buffalo or two before breakfast, and eat them, too, for all I know to the contrary (for we hear of such wonderful things out there), down to the schoolboy who passes hours by the side of some gurgling stream, patiently watching the movements of a bit of stick, his substitute for a float. Тоно! THE LATE MAJOR-GENERAL THE HON. LINCOLN STANHOPE. IN our November Number we gave a characteristic sketch of this gallant officer, who has since paid the debt of Nature; and we hold it but right that, in these pages, some kindly memorial should be registered of one who was so long distinguished as the liberal and tasteful advocate of many of the pursuits to which they are dedicated. No man ever enjoyed a more general popularity; few, if any one, more justly merited. By his brothers in arms he was universally esteemed and respected; and while his taste in equipage and appointments was the theme of all praise, the courteous deportment which gave them éclat secured him from the possibility of invidious feeling or observation. In early life he was a leader of the Four-in-hand Club, and, subsequently, gave name to a carriage of less pretence, but of scarce less fashion, than the driving barouche. He was also a member of Crockford's, to which alone his social disposition inclined him, for he never played. The Honourable Lincoln Stanhope entered the army in April, 1798, and was gazetted a major-general in June, 1838. He led one of the regiments of dragoons on the field of Talavera, and for many years commanded the 17th light dragoons, in India, where, full of honours and respect, he became the father of the Bombay native cavalry. After thirty years of active service, in 1826 he returned to this country, and became one of the élite of the fashionable and sporting circles; respected and esteemed in his life, and mourned and honoured in his death, by all who had the fortune to be ranked in the number of his friends, or to have enjoyed the happiness of his society. |