of venison, have soon also extirpated the stag, had not steps been taken for its preservation. Thus we find that, much as has been said and written by a certain part of the community in favour of the abolition of game-laws, such laws, in some shape or other, ever have existed in our country, since anything like a right of property has existed also. It matters little, as to the fact of the very ancient establishment of game-laws, whether a king encloses a portion of his kingdom for hunting purposes and the preservation of game, announcing it felony to hunt or destroy deer within its precincts, or whether of later date a landlord lets his land with the understood agreement that game is not to be killed on it: it is still game-laws.

I will not go further into this subject than an observation or two will lead me. It has been said (and indeed I cannot deny its truth), that game is not necessary to the support of man, and that what hares eat should be eaten by a sheep or ox. This is all true enough if we make up our minds merely to support nature; but then as melons, cucumbers, asparagus, and all the delicate vegetables, with strawberries and other fruits that occupy space in the garden, are not necessary for our support either, we might as well say they should not be grown, but the ground they occupy be planted with potatoes. When it is determined that ourselves and the pigs are to fare alike, such a plan would be most highly to be recommended; but if we are to be allowed French beans, in the name of good living let us have a bit of game to eat with them.

Another plea made against law for the protection of game is the quarrels and bloodshed it has occasioned. Doubtless it has; but this objection is really mere twaddle, and made by those who, not being sportsmen, consider his amusement and propensities as unworthy protection. Because, forsooth, it does not jump with their ideas, as to what does, they may say, as relating to the trouble and expense the sportsman incurs in protecting his game, "que le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle ;" another might say the same thing of the opera, or a converzatione; and so each person might say of the pursuit of another. But to come to the broad sweeping accusation, that game being protected occasions bloodshed prosecution-and this those anti-game-law advocates would term persecution-I would merely put a homely question to those most philanthropic beings. Would you vote for the abolition of a law that punishes a man for breaking into your house? "Oh!" exclaims the anti-house-breaking advocate, "the simile will not hold good; my life is in danger from the burglar." Not a bit, good sir, if you do not attempt to interrupt him in carrying off your silver forks: he no more means, or wishes, to murder you than does the poacher me if I let him take his course. "Aye," responds my opponent in statistics, "but a silver fork is a thing of intrinsic value." "Oh," cry I," you are there, are you? Now, pussy jumps out of the bag: touch your pocket touch your life. Where is your philanthropy now? I value a few head of game at as great a price as you do a silver fork. Now, if you keep a hot pot, or intend to patronize any one who does, doubtless you know to a fraction whether silver is worth 4s. 10d. or 4s. 10d. 7-8ths per ounce. My dear sir, you take a more prudent, tradesmanlike, and jesuitical way of estimating property than I have ever done. I am beat. A hen pheasant with her brood under her is not, in mercantile estima

tion, worth a silver fork. I make this amende honorable to you. Perhaps my reader will permit me to make a remark to him sotto voce. Ladies, in the softness of their hearts, I have generally found strong advocates for abolishing game-laws, and, when I have said that I would transport a fellow for killing a fox (which I certainly would do), have replied, "Would you be such a barbarian as to send a man from the bosom of his family for a nasty fox, or a thousand foxes?" Reader, my respected mother was not, I believe, a whit more cruel in her disposition than the generality of her sex; yet I do remember me, that when a man she employed to build her a poultryhouse left (as it was afterwards proved) a place accessible to his person in the roof, and subsequently did, in the best legal phrase I can muster, steal and purloin therefrom sundry and divers partridgebreasted, Dorking, and Poland fowls, together with sundry and various sorts of pea-fowl, and particular, as will (not) be hereinafter described, peacocks and peahens, I cannot (I wish I could) say I remember to have perceived any particular yearnings towards the fellon, who was prosecuted. I have done with any further remarks on game-laws, except adding, that if we are to throw open our preserves, lest by entering them the poacher may subject himself to be taken from his interesting family, let us at the same time leave open the butler's pantry, and above all not permit the poultry-house door to be locked, which most certainly was done on the occasion that occurred in my family-or rather in the feathered family appertaining to it; for if we are to consider that nothing is worth protection but that indispensably necessary to the existence of man, neither chicken, duck, nor goose should live while, if we reckon by pounds, shillings, and pence, the flesh of the ox is to be had at much less per pound.

Increase of population naturally leads to a want of increased means of supporting it, and this as naturally led to the levelling and clearing of forest or woodland; this, as in the present day, brought about an allotment of such land to those having property in its immediate vicinity, and as the game brought up in these forests had no longer their shelter as a home and refuge, they betook themselves to the open fields, hedgerows, and such portions of cover as were left uncleared; these covers became private property: hence probably the origin of preserves; and the man to whom a hundred acres of this land was allotted became the circumstantial, if not the natural, possessor of such animals as were indigenous to the soil. Before such property had a distinct proprietor, or supposing it belonged to the crown, and while all were equally permitted to roam over it, no dispute arose as to the killing of game there-those with the best dogs and most assistance got the most; but no idea of original or purchased right to the denizens of the wilds or forests existed. When, however, different proprietorships took place as regarded the soil, disputes arose as to the right of ownership of the game of such precincts, and these disputes brought on the appointment of persons to protect game, in another word gamekeepers, call them what they might in those days; and as the poacher of game and the preserver of it of course could not agree (or at least ought not, though many infamously do so), broils ensued, and hence the constant altercations between the poacher and gamekeeper; the former laid his snares to catch it to procure bread, the latter protected it to secure the same thing.

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

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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.

66

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.