general, and the interior economy, if we may so call it, of a hunting establishment.

What a deal of trouble, management, annoyance, and arrangement, is included in the simple expression "taking a country." taking a country." Little do the gentlemen who spend their summers in London, and their autumns in Scotland, and who in November see their hunters for the first time, and find everything prepared for them to give those hunters a breathinglittle do they think of what the master has been undergoing for their sakes. Little do they think, and less do they know, of the difficulties and annoyances, first of the subscription, with its accompanying correspondence and canvassing; then of the coverts, with landowners to be won over; fields where gorse is likely to grow to be rented, coverts where it will not grow to be "sticked;" touchy country gentlemen to be conciliated; deceitful keepers to be feed, and I could name one of our crack countries where such fees alone amount to £200 per annum: then the farmers must be managed, though to their credit be it said, they are generally a friendly race; still fowls will sometimes be taken, fences broke down, and wheat ridden over. Puppies, though usually from mistaken kindness, have been known to come back from walk only fit to hang. Then the master must subscribe to races, go to hunt-balls and hunt-dinners, whether he will or no, and at whatever distance his own domicile may be from such gaieties. In short, there is no end to the difficulties of the position; and with all these weighty matters upon his shoulders, can we wonder that a master should feel and express his annoyance, when Cornet Cut-and-Thrust, over-rides and brings his hounds to a check at the very particular moment which makes all the difference between the run of the season,' and "a long dragging day;" or when Mr. Never-right holloas away a fresh fox, which he swears is the hunted one, pointing towards an interminable woodland, at the close of a December afternoon? No, rather let us admire the temper with which he rebukes Cornet Cut-and-Thrust, and expostulates with Mr. Never-right, and devote our first bumper after dinner to the health of one who will take such pains, and encounter so many annoyances, for the pleasure and amusement of his friends.

I am quite sure that it must be the first wish of every sportsman to lighten the burden of a master of hounds, by rendering him every assistance in his power, in the way of taking puppies, breeding foxes, and making coverts, if he be a landowner; and should he not occupy that enviable position, at least to confer the negative benefit of never overriding hounds, or becoming in any other way the cause of annoyance and mischief in the field.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PHEASANT.

EDITED BY SARON, FROM AN ORIGINAL MS. IN HIS POSSESSION.

СНАР. І.

"Argivâ primum sum transportata carinâ ;
Antè mihi notum nil nisi phasis, erat."

"Ah! nutbrown partridges! Ah! brilliant pheasants!
And ah! ye poachers! 'tis no sport for Peasants."

MARTIAL.

BYRON.

My ancient Lineage; and how my Ancestors were "fleeced" by the Greeks-The Family Tree extends to Europe, Asia, and Africa-My immediate Parents-Anecdotes of Fontainbleau and Schönbrun-My Birth-Quit La belle France for England-Country Quarters in Sussex-"Home, sweet Home"-The Woods and Forests-A Day's Sport in bygone times-Hairbreadth Escapes.

Punch-the talented, the witty, the inimitable Punch—in his suggestion for a new coat of arms for Sir Robert Peel, gives the following graphic account of the love of the world for an ancient lineage :

:

"The savans of the Herald's College can always find appropriate arms for any one who is desirous of having, and willing to pay for, heraldic honours. The veriest plebeian may have an escutcheon quite as ancient as the most venerable family in the land; and we believe the date may be put back as far as you please, at the moderate charge of sixpence per century. Upon this very reasonable scale of fees one may be carried back to Noah for little more than the fare between London and Liverpool; and to accommodate the public generally, a quarter of a century may be had at the wholesale price, by those who cannot afford to pay too dearly for the remoteness of their ancestry.'

Without availing myself, then, of the system so facetiously, yet truly, put forth in the above extract, I am prepared to prove, before Garter King of Arms, the legitimacy of my ancient descent, from a period antecedent to the taking of Troy some seventy-nine years; and were I to consider the various ramifications of the family tree, or pedigree, I could point out how my ancestors had paired and matched (alas! how unlike the modern marriages!) with divers houses of honour. With what contempt, then, could I look down upon the descendants of Hengist, Egbert, Alfred the Great, Canute, William of Normandy, King John, the Plantagenets, Tudors, and Stuarts. But, in the words of " Jonson,"

"I do not stand so much on my gentility,
Which is an airy and mere borrowed thing
From dead men's dust and bones,"

rare Ben

but pride myself on the name I have made and held myself. To return, to my parentage, a brief account of which will suffice, and I will then proceed to frame my adventures from such authenticated materials and

traditional memorials as appear to me to deserve the most regard. Were I, however, disposed to plume myself, or blazon forth the antiquity of my ancestors, I could point out how, before the expedition of that bold body of adventurers in search of the golden fleece, they were confined to the banks of the Phasis, in Colchis. I could describe how my first parents were abducted from the borders of that celebrated river to the classical land of Greece; and, from that period, how they have spread nearly over the whole globe. From Colchis, Mingrelia, and other countries bordering on the Caspian, they have proceeded westward, through Greece, from the shores of the Baltic to the Cape of Good Hope and Island of Madagascar. Eastward, they have extended through Media to the most remote part of China, Japan, and Tartary. In Africa they are known on the Slave Coast, the country of Issini, kingdom of Congo, and Angola. In Europe, too, has the race colonized Spain, Italy, the islands in the Gulf of Naples, Germany, Silesia, Bohemia, France, and England. I could draw a vivid sketch of how one of my forefathers was patronized by Atalanta, daughter of Schoneus, who accompanied the Jason expedition in male attire; how another formed one of those gastronomic victims who were sacrificed to the whim of the depraved and gormandizing Heliogabulus, as a bonne bouche for his pet and pampered lions.

It is said of Homer that no less than seven illustrious cities of Greece contended for the honour of having given birth to this celebrated poet : "Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodos, Argos, Athenæ, Orbis de patriâ certat, Homere, tuâ.”

And I have no doubt but that nearly an equal claim from the "woods and forests" would be put in for the place of my nativity; for my parents being of foreign extraction, although naturalized in England, France, Germany, and Great Britain, might call me their countryman. Without entering, therefore, into the various ramifications of my family pedigree, I will briefly state that my father had the honour of holding a lease in the Fontainbleau forest, under the Napoleon of Peace, Louis Philippe, and that my mother's family were brought up in the neighbourhood of Schönbrun, under the auspices of the son of the Napoleon of War, the late king of Rome. My father was wont to talk of the "hairbreadth 'scapes" of himself and his progenitors in the royal forests, both under the Bourbons and the House of Orleans. My most respected parent on the female side was wont to talk over a celebrated chasse (for such is the term applied to the pursuit of all game in Germany) which had taken place in the neighbourhood of Schönbrun, during the Congress of Vienna. Within a large arena, prepared for the purpose, the crowned heads, and those who were to take part in the battue, were placed. Among the distinguished sportsmen may be mentioned the Emperors of Russia and Austria, the hereditary Princes of Prussia and Austria, the Viceroy of Italy, Eugène Beauharnais, the Duke of Saxe Coburg, and his brother the Prince Leopold, now King of the Belgians, and other great nobles from almost every European nation, Russia, Prussia, Austria, England, France, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece. Each gunner was attended by four chasseurs, splendidly attired in gold and Lincoln green, to assist in loading, with a certain number of gardes de chasse, armed with swords,

U

rifles, and spears, to protect them from any danger. The plan of operation for this unsportsmanlike massacre was as follows. At a very early hour, a number of beaters, mounted and on foot, and attended with dogs of every species, had formed an immense cordon round the spot selected for the chasse; the game, including wild boars, deer, hares, and foxes, were thus driven by degrees into a narrower circle, where a double line of keepers and beaters were formed, so that not one animal could escape. The heroes of the trigger took up their respective stations, and then commenced a scene of almost unparalleled slaughter, such as few pens (certainly not a pheasant's quill) can describe. So anxious were the guardians of the chase to procure a large return of killed, that sticks, spears, cudgels, the butt-ends of rifles and fowling-picces were brought into action; and the poor maimed and scared animals easily fell a prey to their relentless pursuers, who revelled in this scene of butchery. At the period we refer to, battues were only known in France and Germany. Happily they had not been introduced into perfidious Albion : we speak feelingly upon the subject. Now, the intercourse with the Continent, and the gigantic march of intellect, have" taught the young idea" (of England) "to shoot" in this tame manner. Truly may it be said that the once-hardy sons of Great Britain have most grievously degenerated, and that, instead of following the manly and soul-stirring sports of their daring ancestors, they now content themselves with the spiritless pursuits of their foreign neighbours. A day with the barn-door fowls in a poultry-yard, or a morning with the pigeons in a dove-cot, would have horrified our brave progenitors; and yet such unsportsmanlike amusements would be but little inferior to the pleasure of a modern battue.

I have digressed. To return to my mother, who was fortunate enough to escape falling a victim to the royal dames and cavaliers who attended the Congress at Vienna; for be it known to my readers that the Empress of Austria was so good a shot, that she would occasionally kill a hare at a long distance with a rifle-ball. My respected parent, however, had two very narrow escapes, not from a royal ordnance, but from the unerring aim of a young Englishman then attached to the staff of the Duke of Wellington. At the conclusion of the beforedescribed battue, one of the crowned heads was describing his prowess, when that curiosity which has proved so fatal to the sex induced my mother to leave her snug hiding-place, to take a peep at the sovereigns. In a moment, the Monarch raised his exquisitely-mounted doublebarrelled gun, and fired both barrels at my inquisitive parent. Fortunately, the royal aim was defective; when the young Englishman raised his Manton, for the purpose of "wiping the autocrat's nose," as he unceremoniously called it, and was about to pull the trigger, when he discovered the sex of my mother, and paid a homage of gallantry to it, without which the subject of this autobiography would have never seen light. The other occasion upon which my parent might have been sacrificed took place near Fontainbleau, where, thanks to the liberality of the Emperor of Austria, she, in company with many of her friends and relatives, had been sent as a peace-offering to the newly-restored monarch, Louis XVIII. Within a week of her residence in this magnificent forest of La belle France, the Dukes De Berri and D'Angoulême, accompanied by the Duke of Wellington and two of his attachés, að

sembled at the Palace to have a day's shooting. An English gamekeeper attended one of the latter, for the purpose of carrying his loading-rod and attending to his dogs, and, according to his account, my mother ran the greatest risk throughout the whole day; but I must record the anecdote in his own language, as repeated by him to a fellowcountryman over a flask of vin ordinaire, after the chasse, at the cabaret of the Cheval Noir.

"That 'ere D'angulame is an out-and-out shot," said the worthy John Bull; "quite wonderful for a parlywoo Frenchman. He killed fifteen brace of pheasants, and would have doubled that quantity if he had attended to his keeper's orders, and pulled whenever he told him."

"Pulled!" said the other, who had picked up a smattering of French, " you're mistaken. When he cried 'poule,' he did not mean pull. Poule stands for hen, and was meant as a caution."

"Who's to understand their outlandish terms?" persevered the keeper. "Why, just as it was getting dark, young Lord W nearly knocked one of their hens over. He don't understand their foreign gibberish."

And true it is that the youthful nobleman, who had been brought up at a public school where the polite languages were not attended to, had nearly victimized my parent, owing to his ignorance of the language and the duskiness of the evening.

Whether my father had imbibed, during his séjour in France, the proverbial gallantry of the descendants of Pharamond, I know not. Suffice it to say that, like the Roman victor, he came, he saw (my mother), and conquered. In due course of time, my respected parent found herself, as the Yankees say, "in a state of domestic solicitude;" or, as the Homely Scottish tragic author describes it, "in the way that ladies wish to be who love their lords.' Towards the end of the month of June, I was born; and it is no flight of fancy to say that, like a second Icarus, I, at an early age, soared so high, that I at once fell a victim to my ambition. The fact was that, for a length of time, an English poacher had set his eye, like that hell-kite, Macbeth, upon "our dam and all our pretty ones," to take them "at one fell swoop.'

During the twilight of a summer evening, our family circle were considerably disturbed by the footsteps of our common enemy, man. My mother, with the most remarkable instinct, made a speedy retreat into the neighbouring brushwood, followed by her hopeful progeny, with the exception of myself, who, wishing to emulate the example of my respected father, flew, or rather attempted to fly, into the umbrageous branches of some overspreading larch. He, Dædalus-like, by a proper management of his wings, alighted safely out of reach of the poacher; while I, whose pinions, fragile as those of the Athenian waxwork, fell into the net that was laid for the whole of my relatives. Here I found one of my sisters, who had in vain tried to follow her mother's movements. In less than twelve hours, I, in company with others who had been taken prisoners, was packed off in a huge waggon, en route to Calais. Here we were transferred to a steam-vessel about to sail for London, and, after a most prosperous voyage, were landed safely at the Tower-stairs. Without giving us an opportunity of seeing the sights of London, we were forthwith booked by the day-coach to Chichester, to the neighbourhood of which we were consigned.