ise in England within that average
distance. Quail even, the hardest bird to kill, the swiftest and the
boldest on the wing, are very rarely killed further than twenty-five to
thirty, whereas you may shoot from daylight to sunset in England, after
October, and not pick up a single partridge within the farthest, as a
minimum distance."

"Well! that's all true, I grant," said Forester, "yet even you allow
that it is harder to kill game here than at home; and if I do not err, I
have heard you admit that the best shot in all England could be beat
easily by the crack shots on this side; how does all this agree!"

"Why very easily, I think," Harry replied, "though to the last remark, I
added in his first season here! Now that American field sports are
wilder in one sense, I grant readily; with the exception of
snipe-shooting here, and grouse-shooting in Scotland, the former being
tamer, in all senses, than any English--the latter wilder in all senses
than any American--field-sport.

"American sporting, however, is certainly wilder, in so much as it is
pursued on much wilder ground; in so much as we have a greater variety
of game--and in so much as we have many more snap shots, and fewer fair
dead points.

"Harder it is, I grant; for it is all, with scarcely an exception,
followed in very thick and heavy covert--covert to which the thickest
woods I ever saw in England are but as open ground. Moreover, the woods
are so very large that the gun must be close up with the dog; and
consequently the shots must, half of them, be fired in attitudes most
awkward, and in ground which would, I think, at home, be generally
styled impracticable; thirdly, all the summer shooting here is made with
the leaf on--with these thick tangled matted swamps clad in the thickest
foliage.

"Your dogs must beat within twenty yards at farthest, and when they
stand you are aware of the fact rather by ceasing to hear their motion,
than by seeing them at point; I am satisfied that of six pointed shots
in summer shooting, three at the least must be treated as snap shots!
Many birds must be shot at--and many are killed--which are never seen
at all, till they are bagged; and many men here will kill three out of
four summer woodcock, day in and day out, where an English sportsman,
however crack a shot he might be, would give the thing up in despair in
half an hour.

"Practice, however, soon brings this all to rights. The first season I
shot here--I was a