SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

Miscsuatirzons LITEakruns,

Fields Sports in the 'United States and the British PrOVillOeS of America. By Frank

Forester. In two volumes.

HISTORY,

A History of the Hebrew Monarchy from the Administration of Samuel to the bylonish Captivity Chapman. FICTION, Beauchamp; or the Error. By G. 1'. R. James, Esq., Author of 'The Smuggler,.

"Darnley," "Richelieu." Sm. &c. In three volumes Smith and Elder.

FRANS FORESTER'S FIELD SPORTS IN THE UNITED STATES.

MR. FORESTER is an Englishman, the son of a Dean of Manchester, who has resided for the last sixteen or seventeen years in America. Ar- dently addicted to field sports, he has pursued them in the new country with as much zest as in the old ; though his tastes have induced him to prefer a class of sport analogous to our partridge, pheasant, and grouse shooting, rather than water-fowling. Want of opportunity or of liking has prevented him from engaging in the more perilous but less scientific check of the far West, or of the remote forests of Canada and the Hudson's Bay territory : but he knows the theory of every kind of sport pursued on the continent of North America, from rail and plover shooting up to the moose, the elk, and the grisly bear of the Rocky Mountains • and he has examined both written and oral accounts with a critical mid, so as to deduce the principles of the sport from the practi- cal facts. Mr. Forester also appears to have used his pen in conjunction with other sporting spirits of the Western world, in periodical writings for the American public, with objects something more than literary. The description of a fine week's sport, or the dramatized account of an extraordinary feat, is all very well; but some of the writers have had higher aims. They would urge upon the State Legislatures the ne- cessity of more stringent game-laws, and upon the publics mind the propriety of observing such as do exist ; they denounce the gluttony of "snobs" and citizens, who encourage poachers and pot-hunters by pur- chasing their ill-gotten trophies in season and out of season ; they would direct the public mind to the approaching extinction not only of vermin and beasts of prey, but of some of the noblest animals or handsomest birds with which the States once abounded ; and they hold up to odium the rustic " savages " who take advantage of the accidents of the seasons to massacre entire masses of creatures for some wretchedly small gain, as well as the unsystematic, unsportsmanlike slaughter continually carried on by town loafers and village idlers, with bad guns and low-bred curs.

In fact, " sporting " would seem to be in a transition state in Ame- rica; the condition of nature past, and that of art not yet attained. It being understood that by sporting is not meant lying on your back or your belly in a punt, or some such contrivance, for an indefinite number of hours, in the worst kind of weather, in order to massacre large numbers of water-fowl, or the dangerous but exciting chase of the wild or savage animals of the wilderness. In Mr. Forester's ideas, "sporting" em- braces the enjoyment of air, exercise, and varying landscape; the exhi- bition of animal instinct, increased by breeding, cultivated by art, and displaying sagacity that looks like a high effort of mind, together with the exhibition of judgment, readiness, and gunner-like skill on the part of the sportsman. And these, it strikes us may be nearly as well enjoyed

at home as in America,—unless the thickness of the woods, the freshness of the landscapes, the wildness and extent of the marshy wastes, be an object with the sportsman ; for in all these 'America must carry off the palm. She seems to us to want game. Her hare is so small that it is popularly called and considered by persons above the vulgar a rabbit; the nice scrutiny of a naturalist being requisite to discover the difference. Partridge and pheasant she has not; ruffed grouse (in American par- lance, partridges) cannot be followed with success from the rocky and woody nature of their haunts ; the Canadian grouse is still more difficult of access, rare even to the naturalist. Grouse-shooting proper may still be met with on the Western prairies; in other places it seems to be prac- tically extinct., through the practices Mr. Forester denounces.

"In the State of New Jersey, it is said that a few birds still linger among the sandy pine barrens, along the Southern shore; but if so, they have become so rare that it is worse than useless to attempt hunting for them. On the brush plains of Long Island they were entirely extinct even before my arrival in America. Among the scrub oaks in the mountains of Pike and Northampton counties, in Eastern Pennsylvania, a few packs are supposed to be bred yearly, and a few sportsmen are annually seduced into the attempts to find them. But annually the attempt is becoming more and more useless, and anything approaching to sport is absolutely hopeless.

"Many years ago I spent a week among the forest land Northward of Milford; and with no success whatever, not so much as seeing a single bird.

"In Martha's Vineyard they are so strictly preserved, that I have never taken the trouble of travelling thither on the chance of obtaining permission to shoot at them; although I am well aware that there are sportsmen from New York who resort thither yearly in pursuit of them. On the barrens of Kentucky, where they formerly abounded, as in the Eastern States, they have become extinct; and in truth, unless the sportsman is prepared

to travel so far as Chicago, St. Joseph's, or St. Louis, he has not much e of obtaining anything to reward his pains in the way of grouse shooting."

As suce,edanea for our principes of the field, the moor, the wood, and the table, the Americans have snipe and woodcock shooting in far greater perfection than we have; and quails, so numerous and so different in habits from those of Europe that they may be considered a new style of sport. There is also rail shooting from boats, made pur- posely to push through flats just covered by the rising tide, where the so-called sportsman stands in the bow, iscapable of missing unless he is the merest bungler or he tumbles into the mud, but where all the merit is due to the boatman. And there is plover shooting, which is practised in England; though not exactlr in the fashion in which the sandpiper is pursued. "This sandpiper flies very swiftly, and when on the wing shows like a :nary large bird, owing to the great length of its sharp-pointed wings. At first sight, you would suppose it to be as large as a pigeon; although its body is not, in truth, very much larger than that of the common snipe, or intermediate be- tween that and the woodcock; while the extent of its wings from tip to tip ex- ceed either of these, by nearly one-fourth. Like many other species of wild birds, this sandpiper is extremely cunning, and appears to be able to calculate the range of a fowling-piece with great nicety; and you will constantly find them sitting perfectly at their ease, until a few paces more would bring you within shot of them, and then rising, with their provoking whistle, just when you believe your- ea sure of getting a crack at them. In the same manner they will circle round you, or fly past you, just out of gunshot, tempting you all the time with hopes that will still prove false, unless you have some such device as Eley's cartridges, by which to turn the shrewdness of this cunning little schemer to its own de struction. "In Rhode Island, where alone the sport is now pursued systematically, the mode adopted is this: the shooter, accompanied by a skilful driver, on whom, by the way, the whole onus of the business rests, and to whom all the merit of suc- cess if attained is attributable, is mounted in what is termed in New England a chaise, that is to say, an old-fashioned gig with a top. In this convenience he kneels down, with his left leg out of the carriage, and his foot firmly planted on the step, holding his gun ready to shoot at an instant's notice. The driver, per- ceiving the birds as they are running and feeding on the open surface, selects one according to his judgment, and drives round it rapidly in concentric circles, until he gets within gunshot of it, and perceives by its motions that it will not permit a nearer approach. Ile then makes a short half turn from it, pulling the horse short up at the same instant; and at that very same instant., for the sandpiper rises invariably at the moment in which the chaise stops, the shooter steps out lightly to the ground, and kills his bird before it has got well upon the wing.

In the timing of all this various work on the part of the driver and the gunner,

there is a good deal of skill requisite, and of course a good deal of excitement. But the real sport and the real skill are both on the part of the driver; whose duty it is to deliver his marksman as nearly as possible to the game yet never to run the thing so close as to allow the sandpiper to take the wing before he has pulled up.

"The 'difference in the judgment and skill of the drivers is immense; and there

is one gentleman in New York, a well-known and old friend of the public, who is said to be so infinitely superior to all others, that the gun in his chaise, even if it be handled by the inferior shot, is sure to come off the winner. It is not un- usual, I am told, to bag from twenty to twenty-five couple of these delicious birds in a day's sport in this manner; and I have heard of infinitely greater quantities being brought to bag."

In wild-fowl or water-fowl shooting America has the advantage over England, from the number of her lakes, the immense extent of her rivers and embouchures, with the varied character and climate of her sea-coast. A still greater advantage arises from the comparative paucity of popula- tion: irregular fowlers may pursue the water birds; but they cannot on the same scale as in the case of land birds, where every parish-boy with a musket may do mischief. To those who are partial to this kind of sport America still offers great temptations; but it is chiefly on the sea-coast or towards the embouchures of rivers. The inland waters, even in Ame- rica, appear to have been acted upon by improvement; at least in New York and the older free States, with which Mr. Forester seems most con- versant. This is his account of duck-shooting on the inland waters. "In the Eastern and Midland States, unless on the borders of the great lakes, this sport of late years can hardly be said to exist at all. The birds are becoming rare and wild, and although still shot in sufticient numbers by the local gunners, on the stre.ams of New Jersey, to supply the demands of the markets, they are not found numerous enough to justify the pursuit of the sportsman. "Formerly on the drowned lands of Orange county, on the meadows of Chat-

ham and Pine Brook, on the Passaic and its tributaries, before the modern sys- tem of draining and embanking, hundreds, nay thousands of acres, were annually covered with shallow water at the breaking up of winter; and the inundated flats were literally blackened with all the varieties of duck which I have heretofore enumerated, affording rare sport to the gunner, and alluring gentlemen from the larger cities to follow them with the canoe; in a day's paddling of which among the inundated groves and over the floated meadows, it was no unusual event, nor regarded in anywise as extraordinary good fortune, to kill a hundred fowl and upward of the different varieties; all of which, however, are alike in one respect, that they are all delicious eating. I have myself been in the habit of considering the summer duck as the most delicate and succulent food of the inland, as dis- tinguished from the ocean ducks: but this, I believe, owing greatly, if not en- tirely, to its being the best fed of its genus in the regions wherein I have been wont to eat it; for I understand that on the great lakes, and in the Western country generally, the blue-winged teal is regarded as its superior in epicurean qualifications.

"All that kind of shooting is now at an end in this district of country; and although they still abound on the great lakes, along the Canada frontier, and Eastward in the British Provinces, the vast extent of those inland seas which they there frequent renders it impossible, or at least so difficult as to become irk- some to take them, except by lying at ambush on points over which they fly, and on the woody margins of the forest-streams and inlet; which they frequent for the purpose of feeding and roosting. In such localities, where streams, de- bonding into the great lakes, flow through submerged and swampy woodlands, the ducks of all kinds are wont to fly regularly landward, in large plumps, or small scattered parties, for an hour or two preceding sun-down; and a good shot i well concealed n such a place, with a good double-gun, loaded with No. 4 up to BB, as may be the nature of his ground and the species of his game, will fre- quently return from a single evening's expedition loaded with twenty or thirty couple of wild-fowl."

It may seem strange that Mr. Forester should give accounts from

which a conclusion is deduced so much at variance with the usual idea of game in America; and perhaps something may be allowed for the fact just mentioned, that he seems more conversant with the older settled free States than with those of the South and West, or with the British pos- sessions towards the North. In the West, however, sport—that is, shooting systematically and over trained dogs—is not introduced ; and in the South it is not every one that could stand the climate. Possibly, also, Mr. Forester's agitation in favour of game-laws may have tempted him to paint the scarcity of game as greater than it really is. Still, the faci- lity of locomotion by steam-boat and railway does to a great extent the work of increasing poaulation ; easily transporting the city poacher (though in law no more a poacher than Mr. Forester) to a distance, and enabling the pot-hunters of in.mote places to transmit their spoils to the gourmands of the city. This is %is lamentation over snipe and woodcock shooting on the "Drowned Lauds" of Orange county.

"The shooting on that ground is now ceded. The Erie railway passes within

ten miles of it, and it is now overrun with me, poachers and pot-hunters; besides being shot incessantly by the farmers' boys anct village idlers of the neig.hbour- liw&, who have begun to compete with the New Yu/ vagabonds in supplying the markets with game. "I confess that I have often wondered that the owners of these tracts have not had the shrewdness to discover that by enforcing the laws, and prohibiting tree.. passers, they might annually let the shooting of these ranges for very consider- able sums. ' The Drowned Lands ' are in general held in large farms, and the best shooting is all owned, comparatively speaking, by a very few individuals. I have not the slightest hesitation in saying that if some half-dozen or eight farmers, whose land I know, would resolutely put an end to all shooting on their premise; they could readily let the right of shooting to an association of gentlemen, at a price which would put a hundred dollars annually into each of their pockets. " I could find the gentlemen who would give it, and be but too glad of the op- portunity; and who, looking forward to enjoyment of the same sport in future years, would neither wantonly annihilate the stock, nor do the mischief to the grass crops and fences which continually results from the incursions of the loafers and vagabonds who compose the great bulk of rural sportsmen. I really should greatly rejoice at seeing something of this sort attempted. Its effect would be most beneficial on the preservation of game generally throughout the United States."

It is Mr. Forester's opinion that little of the mechanical part of sport- ing can be taught, and that that little is better taught by example than by precept. Practice is the only method of acquiring certainty of aim and readiness in firing. The different results which are found in the success of equal shots are owing to a kuowledge of the haunts and habits of different birds, and special observation of nature in the field. To facili- tate the acquisition of this kind of knowledge is the main object of Mr. Forester's book ; and he draws very freely upon the natural historians of America—Wilson, Audubon, Giraud, Godman, and others. American shooting is divided into three parts,—upland, analogous to our common shooting; bay or water-fowl shooting; and wild sports of the wilderness.

Under each of these three heads Mr. Forester gives a list of the animals included in the division, with a full description of their forms and habits, quoted from one or more historians, occasionally interspersed with his own remarks, when he thinks addition, qualification, or correction needed.

The directions, remarks, and anecdotes more distinctly applicable to the sportsman, follow in like manner, arranged under distinct heads, and,

with some advice on dogs, guns, and the miscellanies of the sportsman, form the original part of the work ; the natural history not being com- pilation so much as direct quotation.

Mr. Forester's manner is frank and earnest, with a little of the pecu- liar "hail fellow well met" style which belongs to the modern school of sporting writers. It does not, however, seem to be imitation in him, but natural, part of the mind and maimers of the man ; and his matter is of the same racy and original kind,—always clear and characteristic, with some of the freshness of the scenery in which his art and its subjects live, move, and have their being. He has poetical feeling too, and can paint a picture. Here is one from summer woodcock shooting.

"I have taken the opportunity of making these observations on dog-breaking and dog-hunting in this place, because in summer woodcock shooting, above any other phase of the sport, an implicit obedience, great steadiness, and perfect

stanchness is requir.ed in the dog. In quail or snipe shooting, you can see your dog the greater part of the time; you can observe his every motion; and can

usually, if you are quick-sighted and ready-witted, foresee when he is about to commit a fault in time to check him. In summer shooting, wo betide you if you entertain so wild a hope. You bunt darkling, catching sight of your four-footed companion only by snatches, often judging him to be on the point, because you have ceased to hear the rustle of his sinuous movement through the bushes; or because you have not seen his form gliding among the water-flags or fern so re- cently as you should have done, had he turned at his regular distance, and quar- tered his ground without finding game. "It is not once in ten, nay in twenty times, that you see him strike his trail, draw on it, become surer, and stand stiff. You lose him for a moment,look for him where he ought to be, and find him because he is there, pointing as you ex-

pected. A step or two forward, with your thumb on the hammer, and the nail of your forefinger touching the inside of your trigger-guard. Still he stands steady

as a rock; and you know by the glare of his fixed eye, and the frown of his stead-

fast brow, and the slaver on his lip, that the skulking cock is within ten feet of his nose, perhaps within ten inches. You kick the skunk cabbages with your

foot, or tap the bunch of cat-briars with your gun-muzzle—and flip-flap up he

jumps, glances, half-seen for a second, between the stems of the alder bushes, and is lost to sight among the thick foliage of their dark-green heads, before your gun-butt has touched your shoulder. But your eye has taken his line—the trig- ger is drawn, the charge splinters the stems and brings down a shower of green leaves, and among them you fancy that you have seen an indistinct something

falling helplessly earthward—that you have heard the thud of his tumble on the moist ground. Nevertheless, anxious although you be, and doubtful of your own success, you stir not from the spot. At the report of the gun, your dog couched instantly; you can scarcely see him, so closely has he charged among the water- grass, with his nose pressed into the very earth between his paws. "You drop your butt upon the toe of your boot, if the ground be very wet, and begin to load, rapidly, yet coolly and deliberately. Yes: you have killed him;

you may see the feathers floating yonder, in the still murky air of the windless swamp. You half-cock your locks, and apply the caps; and, expectant of the coming order, Don lifts his nose wistfully. Hold up, seek dead!' and care- fully, gingerly, as if he were treading upon eggs, knowing as well as you do that the bird is dead, and knowing pretty well where he is, at a slow trot, moving his nose from this side to that, snuffing the tainted air, and whipping his flanks with his feathered stern, he draws onward at a slow trot. Now he has caught the seen; he straightens his neck, quickens his pace a little, decidedly and boldly, and stands firm. Good dog: fetch.' He stoops, picks up the dead bird, by the tie of the wing only, and brings him, without ruffling a feather. How con- scious, how happy, how perfectly aware that he has merited your approbation, that you have both played your parts handsomely, as he hands you the trophy!

A more general feature of interest than the sporting decriptions, merely as descriptions, is the illustration they afford of American opinions and the progress of agriculture and society. Some of these have been exhibited in the passages already quoted, and the book abounds with them. Field sports in America cannot be pursued so exclusively as in the old country ; nor can game be preserved in the same way. There are, however, game-laws, as to seasons; and the laws against tres- passers would suffice for game-preserving if the landowners pleased. With the mass of people the game restrictions are as unpopular as they ever were in this country ; and the sympathy of non-sporting citizens is with the poachers. Yet, strange to say, while game and game-laws are assailed in aristocratic Great Britain with a view to their abrogation, and the Legislature is gradually yielding to the assault, something like a favour- able leaning seems entertained for them by the States in Democratic America. This may be owing to the exertions of the sporting clubs, and of individuals through the periodical press, as well as to a fear that may arise in the minds of men not addicted to field sports, lest the indigenous races of animals should be wantonly extinguished. Be this as it may, a taw against summer woodcock shooting, suggested by Mr. Forester, (though, as we have seen, he indulged in the sport himself,) has been passed in two of the States of New York, while his book was passing through the press. Hear his "Jo triumphe." "At the moment of correcting the press of this page, I learn that the game- law, which I mentioned above as having been prepared by myself and submitted to the Sportsman's Club of New York, has been presented by petition from the counties of Rockland and Orange, has passed the Legislature of the State, and is now law for those two gallant counties. There is no more summer cock-shooting, gentlemen, in Orange or Rockland—the first two counties of America in which I ever pulled a trigger. Bravo, the river counties! Who will he the next to follow the glorious example? Long Island, Westchester, Putnam, Dritchess—and last, not least, New Jersey—the eyes of men are upon you I"