Morning journal and courier., 1894-03-13
Partridge-KiIIing in EngIaud.

TT. F.. kebbel in Macmillan's 's Magazine
 Patridge-shootipg has, during the last fifty years, been losing more and more of It's old character as branch of field sports in which the art of finding and following up game stood upon level with the art of killing it, and has been acquiring more and more the character of au exercise In which, by the great majority of those who engage in 1t, regard Is paid to marksmsn- ship only. Yet the old system, from which the altered face of the country has made some departure inevitable, still holds Its ground co tenaciously, and Is looked back upon with longing, lingering eye by go many good sportsmen and good shots who are the greatest prohcients In the new, that both must be considered equally enti- tied to the attention of writers on the partridge. Which of the two affords the better sport Is a matter of taste whereon nobody has a right to dogmatizs.
 The change in partridge-shooting Is due partly to nece essity and partly to choice; what was begun by the first has been con- tinued and extended by the second. I cannot undertake to say exactly how many
 
 general disuse. and the wheat crop began to bs ehorn of close to the ground; at 6 rough guess the interval might cover about one generation. It must have been after the repeal of the corn laws that gradual change began to take place h English farming, it being found necessary both to reduce the cost and increase the yield of corn-growin2 if fires trade was to be weathered. Hedgerows were either
 -t~z1 l. limits; weeds and rubbish, thorns and missiles, were got rid of; turnips were more generally drilled. and more swedes were sown in proportion to white turnfpe. Then, when finally the old wheat stubblss disappeared. sporismen began to fad out that in the most highly cultivated parts of England at all events partridge-shooting was DO longer what 1t had been. But it was c long time before the change became general, and even to this day 1t is by no means universal. There are districts quite unsui able for driving where two men might get their thirty brace a day over dogs, who would hardly get ten brace without them. Whether this is to be re- garded as an enviable or s contemptible survival my sporting readers must deter mine for themselves.
 What the man who shoots over dogs considers real sport is to watch them hunt ing turnips, stubbles or large grass fields crossing each other and quartering the ground at full speed and with beautiful precision, then suddenly stopping short as they wind their quarry, and presently hardening to stone as they become quite sure of its proximity. If only one dog has found, then to see the other back him is one of the chief delights of such day. Such a sight will repay the partridge shooter for many miles of bad sport. But what he likes still better, perhaps, af- ter he has walked up to Don or Sancho and got his right and left out of the whir- ring covey which spread out all round him, is to follow it up till 1t Is thoroughly broken and dispersed, and then to pick up the odd birds by ones and twos, here out of @ hedgerow, there out of a patch of rushes in the middle of e badly drained pasture, now one from the brookaide, now another from the struggling bits of gorse which have sprung up in the grass field ly- | ing between the turnips and the fox-co | vert. These, most likely, will all be found by the dogs, and after five or tiI lovely points, followed by ss many successful shots, our friend will feel himself in the seventh heaven. But 1t is quite clear that for the full enjoyment of this kind of | shooting the bits of gorse and the badly l drained pastures and the rushes and the hedgerows must all be there, and iu many parts of Englaud we may look for them in vain Thistles and brsmbles. and all the odds and ends of rubbish in which single birds took refuge when the oovey
 was broken, only remain now In sheltered situatione; and 1t ws would find ground
 whore setters can be worked to the great