New York! But no you don't-no you don't, master judge! I am not to be had to-night!'

"Faith! but you are had pretty thoroughly. Oh! how I wish "Frank Forester were here-I'll tell him if I die for it, and he shall cook it up for some of the magazines, that's poz. But how did you find out that you were had, Fred?'

66

"Why, I tell you, I have read books about America, if I never have been here before, and I know that there are pheasants in Pennsylvania, and partridges in New York and Virginia.'

"Well, well, I grant that-I grant that-but did you chance to read, too, that the partridge of New York is not the partridge of Virginia—and farther yet, that the partridge of New York is the pheasant of Pennsylvania and New Jersey? And farther, once again, that neither the partridge of New York nor the partridge of Virginia is a partridge at all-nor the pheasant of any place on this side the Atlantic a pheasant?'

“No, Harry, I never did read that—and you may just as well stop stuffing me, when I sit here with the proof of your villany before my eyes.'

6

Where, Fred-where is the proof-hang me if I know where you are in the least-where is the proof?'

66.6

Why this is too much! Do you think I'm blind, man?— there!--there in that picture-don't I see pheasants there, and hares too?'

"Oh! yes, Fred-yes, indeed!' shouted Archer, choking down a convulsive laugh that would burst out, at times almost overpowering him. Yes, that is it certainly-and those are hares and pheasants-and that's a right smart Jersey trotter, I some guess-a critter that can travel like a stick-and the boy holding him—that's a Long Island nigger, now I calkilate,—oh, ya-as! and that's a Yorker on a gunnin' scrape, stringing them pheasants! ya-as!' and he spoke with so absurd an imitation and exaggeration of the Yankee twang and drawl, that he set Heneage laughing, though he was still more than half indignant. "No!' he said, when he recovered himself a little,―no, I didn't say that-the boy is not a nigger.'

"A white nigger, I some think! responded Archer, still on the broad grin.

"No, not a nigger at all-and that does not look much like an American fast trotter either-nor has that man much of the cut of a New Yorker.'

"No, I should think not very much. Negroes are not for the most part so very white-and, as you say, American trotters have not, in general, quite so much hair about their fetlocks, or quite such lion manes-it might do for a Canadian, though-but then unluckily they are not apt to be white!-and certainly you might travel from Eastport to Green Bay and not meet a man with laced half boots and English leggins, unless you chanced to stumble on your most obedient; and as to the blue Leicester smock-frock, such as that lad has got on, there most unquestionably is not such a thing on this side of the Atlantic-but never mind, Fred, never mind. That gray cob is quite as much like Ripton or Americus, and that little fat-faced chaw-bacon is as much like a Long Island nigger, and that broad-shouldered Yorkshire gamekeeper more like a New York gunner, than those long-tailed, green-headed, golden-breasted pheasants, to any American fowl, be he called what he may. Why, Heaven preserve your wits, Fred! that is an English picture, by an exceeding clever Royal Academician, Lee!-Fred, you must have heard of him! A Day in the Woods,' he called it, and a right good day's work he has made of it. Now, listen to me; there is not one wild bird or beast in America, unless it be a few ducks, that is precisely similar to its European congeners. The woodcock is a distinct variety, Scolopax minor, rarely exceeding eight, and never eleven, ounces-he is redbreasted, and is in the Northern States a summer bird of passage; coming early in the spring, sometimes before the snow is off the ground, laying, rearing its young, and going off when the winter sets in to the rice-fields, and warm wet swamps of Georgia and the Carolinas. The bird called in the Eastern States the partridge, and every where southward and westward of New Jersey the pheasant, is, in reality, a grouse-the ruffed or tipped grouse -Tetrao umbellus-a feather-legged, pine-haunting, mountainloving bird, found in every state, I believe, of the Union, in the Canadas, and even up to Labrador. There are many other grouse in North America, of which none are found in the States, except the great abundance in Long Island and New Jersey, and the

pinnated grouse, or prairie-fowl, formerly found in the northeastern parts of Pennsylvania, though on Long Island it is now quite extinct, and nearly so in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They are still killed on Martha's Vineyard, a little island off the coast of Massachusetts, where they are now very rigorously preserved; and in Ohio, Illinois, and all the Western States, they literally swarm on the prairies. The spruce grouse, a small and very rare kind, is found in Maine occasionally, and in a portion of New York, between the head waters of the Hudson and the Canada frontier. Four or five other species are found in Labrador, and on the Rocky Mountains; but none of these, though well known to the ornithologist, can be included in the sportsman's list of game. The partridge of Virginia is the quail of New York; commonly known as perdrix Virginiana-though of late there has been a stiff controversy as to his name and genus. It is proved, I believe, beyond cavil, that he is not exactly a quail, nor a partridge either, but a sort of half-way link between them; the modern naturalists call him an ortyx-a very silly name, by the way; since it is only the Greek for quail, to which he is in truth the more nearly connected. His habits are far more like those of the quail than of the partridge, and he should be called quail in the vernacular. If you want to get at the merits of the case, I will lend you a book written by my old friend, J. Cypress, Jr., and edited by Frank Forester, in which you will find the controversy I have mentioned. These three birds we shall kill to-morrow, and you will be convinced of the truth of what I tell you. Properly speaking, there is no rabbit in America—the small gray fellow, who is commonly so called, sits in a form, and never burrows, nor does he live in congregations-while the large fellow, who is found only in the Eastern States, and some parts of New York and Jersey, and turns white in winter, is in fact a variety of the Alpine Hare. The first, I dare say, we may kill to-morrow; certainly not the latter. The snipe, moreover, which is called English, to distinguish him from all the thousand varieties of sandpipers, shore-birds, and plovers, which are called bay-snipe, indiscriminately, and from the woodcock, which the country folks call mud snipe, blind snipe, and big-headed snipe, just as their fancy prompts, is not-so say the ornithologists, exactly

the same bird as his English brother; although his habits, cry, feeding-ground, and so forth, are exactly similar, except by-theby, that here he perches on trees sometimes.'

"Heavens and earth, what a whopper!' interrupted Heneage. "Just so I told Sam B-d-t when he told me so six years ago, and ten days afterward I saw it myself, in company with Mike Samford. Bill R, of Newark, knows it right well, and has seen them do so himself, and so does Frank!'

"You be hanged!' answered Fred.

"You think so now,' said Harry, but you'll know better one of these days. Meantime I have about finished my yarn. All I have got to say more is, that the only birds I have found precisely similar here and in England are the mallard and duck— the teal, which is called here the green-winged, in contradiction to our garganey, which these folks call the blue-winged teal. And now, ring the bell, and fill up a fresh glass of punch.' So said, so done; and, ere the tumbler was replenished, Tim made his entry.

"Now, Tim,' said Archer, we shall want breakfast before daybreak-say half past five o'clock. Do you drink tea or coffee, Fred-oh, either-very well, then black tea, Timothy-dry toast -no hot meat-that cold quail pie will do. The double wagon, with Lucifer and Pluto, at six precisely-we bring the nags home, and you to go with us. the game-bag-the flasks all filled. I will shoot over Sancho and Jem Crow and Shot to-morrow-do you understand?" "Ay, ay! sur,' answered Tim, and exit.

666

shall want Dick to Some luncheon in

And now, Fred, this is your bed-room-all's right, I fancy -you shall be called at five to-morrow, and, please the pigs, I'll let you know, and that before sunset, that a day's tramping in the swamps of Warwick is quite another thing from our friend Lee's Day in the Woods.""

Duck guns, general directions for, 119.
shot, 124.