an hundred deaths, yields in caresses, the poor remnant of her life. Another dog has an opening bored with a gimlet into his brain; he cries, and no chastisement can force it to be silent. "Stripes are used in vain. No infliction can terminate or alter the prolonged monotonous howl. A burning iron is then inserted in the orifice, and the animal becomes so stupid and imbecile, that after all its agony, in an attempt to eat some scorching fritters from a hot fryingpan, it burns its lips, showing that the nervous channels of discrimination are destroyed."* Are the perpetrators of such atrocities, I ask, fit candidates for an academic chair and tutelage of youth? To the catalogue of promoters of cruelty we may add the fashionable and impatient traveller, who by chance may be a subscriber to "The Society," but evinces not the least compunction, by "the extra shilling in the driver's hand," in indirectly or directly if you please, ministering to the infliction of cruelty upon a pair of "wretched posthorses, who, from their pitiable position, may be truly said to serve three masters, viz., the postmaster, the driver, and the person who hires them; if the cattle are fatigued with previous work, the postmaster dare not refuse them to his customer, who demands four horses to fly from somewhere, where he has been doing nothing, to somewhere where he will do nothing still. Nothing so restless as idleness -or what pace so great as his who struggles to escape himself? Each master has his separate demand upon the blood and sinews of these poor animals; two coin his life into gold, the third, the busy idler, into the wages of cruelty and wanton sin!" I ask, is this unfeeling tyranny towards the poster one atom lighter in the scale of cruelty, than it is towards the animal that figures in the trottingmatch, the steeple-chace, or even the overloaded cart of the unreflecting costermonger? "Fair play's a jewel," was always a favourite motto with real Englishmen. The law ought to be administered to all grades of society with justice and impartiality; nor ought the hoary impaler of the butterfly, the wanton cager of the wild song bird, or the pluckers of living geese for the sake of their down and quills to escape the condemnation of the merciful, any more than the dogfighter, the cock-fighter, or bear-ward. And let those misguided zealots who are so continually preaching against the healthful and manly recreations of the sportsman in the field, cease from their illtimed vituperations. Let them not, by their very questionable interference, disturb the peaceable and contented inhabitants of this blessed island, while they exhibit a far more enviable and healthy character to the rest of mankind, excelling, as they do in their accomplished and enthusiastic pursuit of field sports, the effeminate and listless inhabitants of the continent. Let these destroyers of the true national character attend more to alleviating the numerous and crying evils which a disgrace to the very name of our poor-laws and their abominable administration; and may they not, by annihilating the true spirit of nationality, convert the bold peasantry of this country into a set of artificial monsters, partaking more of the vices than the manliness of every nation under the sun; and let * From "Wrongs of the Animal World," by D. Muchet, Esq. + Ibid. are them remember that it is not alone by their denunciations against what they may term cruelty, that they can hope to better the condition of either the higher or lower orders of society. I shall conclude these few pages by an extract from the noted speech of Lord Erskine, upon the "Bill for the prevention of cruelty to animals," in which his lordship, by his language, far from denouncing field sports, justifies them by the following remarks. "It may be now asked, my lords, why if the principle of the Bill be justly unfolded by this preamble, the enacting part falls so very short of protecting the whole animal world, or at all events those parts of it which come within the reach of man, and which may be subject to abuse? To that I answer, it does protect them to a certain degree, by the very principle which I have been submitting to your consideration; and to protect them further would be found to be attended with insurmountable difficulties, and the whole bill might be wrecked by an impracticable effort to extend it. Animals living in a state of nature would soon overrun the earth, and eat up and consume all the sustenance of man, if not kept down by the ordinary pursuits and destruction of them, the only means by which they can be kept down and destroyed; and it is remarkable that other animals have been formed by nature, with most manifest instincts to assist us in this necessary exercise of dominion; and, indeed, without the art of man these animals would themselves prey upon one another, and thus be visited by death-the inevitable lot of all created beings, in more painful and frightful shapes. They have besides no knowledge of the future, and their end, when appropriated fitly for our use, is without prolonged suffering. This economy of Providence, as it regards animals, which from age to age have lived in an unreclaimed state, devoted to the use of man and of each other, may serve to reconcile the mind to that mysterious state of things, in the present fallen and imperfect condition of the world. This state of wild animals is further strikingly illustrated by the view of such of them as have been spared from the human huntsman, or the more numerous tribes of animals of prey. They are swept away by the elements in hard winters, retiring, as most of them do, to a solitary, protracted, and painful death." SPORTING WRITERS. BY NIMROD. EXTRACTS FROM "THE DIARY OF A HUNTSMAN." BY THOMAS SMITH, ESQ., LATE MASTER OF THE CRAVEN HOUNDS. Mr. Smith makes a capital beginning, in his preface, by telling the reader that he not only had hunted his own hounds with fair success, but that he had killed ninety foxes in ninety-one days' hunting in one season, in a bad scenting country. All I can say of this-as far as my knowledge of hunting extends--unparalleled success, is, that either much good luck must have attended him, or else the foxes could not have been good ones. Observe, reader, I do not attempt to dispute the fact; but the killing of ninety foxes, if of an average stoutness, in as many days," in a bad-scenting country," is a feat that, I will answer for it, will never be recorded again. One word more about the preface. Mr. Smith prepares his readers not to expect in his pages "so strict an observation of rules as one who makes a profession of writing, and gains a reputation by his pen" -and verily, in this one sentence, he has set all rules of composition at nought-but, for the credit of sporting literature, I much wish this fine sportsman had been a little more careful throughout in his language, or had it revised by another; for, as Mr. Delmè Radcliffe, in his "Noble Science," observes, it is in places "past man's understanding." What was my old acquaintance and brother-sportsman, Mr. Whittaker, his publisher, about, to suffer a manuscript to go to press with so many glaring improprieties of language? Did he imagine that sporting readers were not able to detect them? But away with cavilling-let us look to the matter of the work. Chapter the first is the best in the book, and treats of the duties of a huntsman; who, to be a good one, he says, must possess, in addition to a melodious voice, the qualifications of "health, memory, decision, temper and patience, voice and sight, courage and spirits, perseverance, activity." With these, he asserts, he will soon make a bad pack a good one: if quick, he will make a slow pack quick; if slow, he will make a quick pack slow. He, however, insists upon the necessity of his having a fair chance of not being interfered with by any one after he begins to draw, the covers to be drawn being already fixed upon by his master. When noticing what may appear trifling circumstances to a field, but which are material ones to a huntsman, Mr. Smith thus writes:"The pack is running best pace; he (the huntsman) sees one hound turn his head, and fling to the right or left a pace or two; shortly after there is a check (say 500 yards); when he has made the usual casts, he recollects the hound turning his head, and then goes back, and finds that the fox has headed back so far, and hits off the scent; but he could or would not tell any one why he was going back. It is such like trifling observations that huntsmen profit by, though unnoticed by others." What Mr. Smith means in this sentence by the huntsman not being able to tell any one why he was going back, is more than I can comprehend; but that the circumstance he alludes to, of the one hound flinging to the right or left, is one that ought to be attended to, I can assert from my own experience, having been the means of recovering a check by pointing out to the late Mr. Villebois's huntsman, Forster, a similar act of a hound in his pack, called Trouncer. Mr. Smith next says a huntsman" must be allowed and encouraged to have a good opinion of himself." Human nature is rarely backward here; but Mr. S. is right when he says, that unless a man have a good opinion of himself, he will not have confidence in himself, and, consequently, will be wanting in decision. It all depends how far the man in question is justified in forming a good opinion of himself in so very difficult a calling as that of huntsman to a pack of fox hounds. The following passage is good, partaking of the enthusiastic spirit of the foxhunter:-" It is necessary for a huntsman to be thoroughly acquainted with the nature of the animal he is hunting, and also that he hunts with; for he will learn more from them than from the whole world besides. From the fox he will learn cunning, and from an old hound sagacity-in short, he will do well when in chase to consider what he would do was he himself the fox he is hunting; thereby he will always anticipate a check, and cast his hounds the way he should have gone had he been the fox-which, generally may be observed, would be a line of country where he would avoid being seen, unless some local cause for it. By attending to this he will be prepared for a check, in many instances, a mile before he gets to it, if he knows the country and keeps his eyes open; he must, to do this, have only half an eye for the pack, and the other eye-and-half beyond it, and he will soon discover whether it is one he has hunted before by the line he takes and other peculiarities-even the ring he takes in cover, the racks he uses in fences; which observations are of great assistance a second time, but more particularly so later in the season, for a whole litter of young foxes have been known to run the same line of country." Again, in the following paragraph, there is something well worthy of notice:-"A huntsman," he says, "will find it no uncommon thing for a fox in chase to pass over several earths which are not stopped, and go on straight for several miles beyond them; but when he finds that he cannot shake off the pack and is a little distressed, he will head back to the nearest earth he has come over which was open and go to ground, unless the whipper-in is desired to clap back quickly, and get there first and stop it. Even in a neighbouring country, the laws of fox-hunting allow a whipper-in to stand on an earth, though not to stop it; but it is no uncommon thing when a fox heads back in this way to an earth, if the whipper-in gets there first, for the fox to be killed immediately on the earth, so very nearly do they calculate their remaining strength. This knowledge, and recollection of the fox having passed over earths which are supposed to be open, will be a guide for a huntsman to make a cast, if beaten out of scent by coldhunting back." I acquiesce in all these remarks, save that of the nice calculation of his strength by the fox. This is, I think, attributing to him something more than cunning-something too nearly allied to reason. In drawing for a fox, Mr. Smith is an advocate for the up wind system, saying that hounds naturally draw up wind to any scent or drag of a fox; but he gives another reason for so doing. He says, "Early in the season it is of the greatest consequence to young hounds to draw up wind, because when some are running riot, most likely down wind, behind the huntsman, they can hear his voice; and then a rate and a smack of the whip from the whipper-in sends them on to him at once; but if the huntsman was down wind of them, they may stop at the rate, but, not hearing him, go at it again, and probably be left to run riot for the day. Even if the pack have found and went [gone?] away, they would not hear it, being up wind; but if they were left running down wind, and the pack were running, then the young hounds must hear it, and would probably join the cry.' Our author recommends-what, indeed, he always practised when he could do so, for there never was a better man to go through a cover or get quicker out of it—a huntsman to go steadily through covers when drawing them; but if it is not possible to do so from the want of convenient ridings, he advises him to take the best side wind of it first; then, when a cover is supposed by him to be thoroughly drawn, he recommends him to notice whether he has got all his hounds, inasmuch as, should any old ones be left back, he may be sure there is some cause for the same-such as a drag of a fox-and especially if such hounds are noted as good finders. In this case he recommends a little encouragement to be given to them; and I do not dissent from him, provided the hounds are of the character here specified; in all other cases, I had rather see the whole pack come away at once, and try another cover, lest a trick of hanging on a stale scent may be acquired. MOONLIGHT. BY MAJOR CALDER CAMPBELL. There is a charm in moonlight's stilly hour, On mortal misery, neglect, and strife, That weave together a dark web of care, Where shines no light-hued thread, no blossom fair. Breathes sadly through the wild Eolian lyre;- Reviving every dormant spark anew, The italics in the passage are the writer's. |