File:Nature and sport in Britain (1904) (14564922590).jpg

Identifier: naturesportinbri00bryd (find matches)
Title: Nature and sport in Britain
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: Bryden, H. A. (Henry Anderson), 1854-1937
Subjects: Horses Game and game-birds Hunting
Publisher: London : G. Richards
Contributing Library: Webster Family Library of Veterinary Medicine
Digitizing Sponsor: Tufts University

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little brass scoop, which fitted witha catch into the top of the pouch. The contents of thescoop, when charged, were then poured down the gun-barrel. What an operation—of itself only a part of thevery serious business of loading—for frozen fingers ona winters day ! That belt was in use only sixty orseventy years ago. When one contrasts the ancientparaphernalia of shooting with the luxurious and labour-saving equipments of the present day, one can only liftup ones hands and exclaim, with Dominie Sampson,* Prodigious ! It is a curious fact, perhaps worth recalling, thatpartridge-netting was pursued by country gentlemendown to the end of the eighteenth century. My owngrandfather was born in 1774 ; he lived to see the flint-lock superseded by the percussion cap, but not to wit-ness the triumph of the breechloader over the percus-sion system. In his youth it is quite probable that hemay have seen or known of partridge-netting. Thismethod of sport—for it was undoubtedly classed by 274
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H H K bi) H .S OS SH 2 c HH W z X a h < QUIET PARTRIDGE-SHOOTING our ancestors as a fair and honourable way of takingbirds—was of course the survival of a period whenguns were so cumbersome and so heavy that it wasimpossible to shoot birds flying with them. Shootingflying was not, in fact, much practised in Englandbefore the period of Charles II. The illustration,taken from an old drawing of 1799, by Samuel Howitt,shows excellently well the method of netting partridges.A well-broken setter was employed to find the game,when, the partridges located, two men advanced veryquietly with a net and secured the covey. It is probablethat in those days, the birds, from not being much firedat, lay much more closely than they do at present. Itis certainly curious to find this sport obtaining so latelyas the close of the eighteenth century, and evenincluded in a book of plates of British Field Sportspublished by Howitt at the beginning of the nineteenthcentury. In the Gentlemans Recreation, p

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