zigzag flight of the birds, increases the difficulty, compared with other shooting, of killing snipes. A man who wishes to kill them should never attempt to put them up against wind in the first place, they will not lie so well, and never rise so steady, as when the sportsman approaches them with the wind behind him. On the other hand he must also be careful, in going down wind, not to overrun his birds (I am speaking of shooting without a dog), and let them get up behind, by which means they often "'scape" in earnest-for a man cannot turn on his centre, who has both legs in a bog up to his knees, quite so quick as a dancing-master in a ball room. The best way to avoid their doing so, is to walk rather slow, and keep both eyes and ears open; you will not only shoot steadier, but are not so likely to pass your game. The best sort of weather for the sport is, a dull cloudy morning, when the wind has blown from the east a day or so-snipes then not being disposed to leave their situations in search of new ones. Indeed in this sort of weather I have frequently, after putting them up, watched them take a very extensive circuit in the air, and drop within almost shooting distance. But here let me observe, that the sportsman must stand as still as possible, for they will not alight if they see the least motion of arms or legs. If you are in want of snipes, and the wind should recently have changed, you must risk all sorts of shots; for it is ten to one, owing to this change of wind, that they fly entirely off, and you will see no more of them that day. With regard to the best situations to find them in-if the weather is mild and open, they may be found in bogs, swamps, marshes, and in short in all places where you find wet that is either occasioned by rains, floods, or springs. In frosty weather, they must be sought only in warm springs, running ditches, or river sides. In a gentle frost, I have had good sport with them in osier beds. An osier bed is an excellent place to initiate a novice in the art of snipe-shooting; as in those places they must rise higher to clear the osiers than is their usual practice, thereby offering a better mark to the sportsman. If you shoot at and miss a jack-snipe, be careful to keep your eye on the spot where he alights, for they have a damnable trick of getting up again almost immediately, and flying some thirty or forty yards in another direction. Whole snipes are not guilty of such tricks; they alight within a yard or so of, and run to, the spot they intend to feed on. PIGEON SHOOTING. This can scarcely come under the sportsman's vocabulary, because it is more a wager sort of business than any thing else; and is but little test of a gunner's abilities in game shooting, for a person from habit may knock down a pigeon from a trap, who would find himself posed with a partridge, snipe, &c. The Red House, since the desertion of the Old Hats at Ealing, in Middlesex, has been the rendezvous for the elite at this game, who, having no other way of killing time and losing money, have patronised this place when visiting London. Some good shooting used annually to take place, but it is believed the club is now defunct. Captain Ross, who is a first rate shot at any thing flying, introduced the mode of having five traps instead of one; so that the shooter could not be aware which trap he would have to shoot from. This unquestionably was more sportsmanlike; but taking the distance generally [21 yards] the immense charge of powder and shot, with the murderous guns shot with, one cannot but wonder how a pigeon ever escapes, and still more, that a person calling himself a sportsman could delight in such sanguinary work. Independent of is used by many persons, and if the all this, the gun is held up to the birds are strong, and can be hurried shoulder ere the string is pulled, so to some of the outside trees of the that the instant the bird gets on rookery, wide apart from each other, wing, he is covered with the sight, good flying shots may be had. It and perhaps blown to atoms in a should be observed, however, that twinkling. All this may do very the pellets do much injury to the well for a cockney sportsman, who spring shoots of the trees; and few takes up a gun as he would a hern- owners of a rookery or heronry, who saw, and in whose opinion pigeon have any regard for the beauty of shooting is as grand as tiger hunt- their trees, will permit their birds ing would be to an Indian. If to be thus killed. Many persons there was one iota like field shoot-shoot young rooks when they are ing in it, some allowance might be perchers; that is, when they are made for passing a summer's after- able to sit outside the nests, or on noon thus, by way of keeping the a branch of a tree nigh at hand, but hand in; but there can be none, as it is a dead mark, a {good shot and a by-stander who is a sports- will not resort to such tame work. man must blush for his fellows. If The afternoon is the best time to they would shoot with small rifles, have plenty of shooting, or after a carrying a very small ball, there shower, as the birds then come forth would be more true skill about it, to dry and refresh themselves in but that practice, unless in a spa- the sun or wind. May is the usual cious area, might be accompanied month for fledging of the rook, with danger; and as this bird flies though the first year birds hatch so unlike game, I cannot for the very late in the season, and some of life of me imagine why it is slaugh- the old birds twice, so that in June tered so unmercifully. What is good fun may be had. In the west termed a good hand at pigeon- of England, in the counties of Devon shooting will, with the missiles in and Cornwall, pies, made of the vogue, kill commonly twenty-five rook, are esteemed an excellent out of thirty shots, or even more. dish. The heads are pulled off imMr. Osbaldestone, when in the ze- mediately after being shot, so that nith of his glory, brought to the the blood may flow from the large ground, I am informed, thirty-six arteries; the body is then skinned, birds in succession, a feat which split open, and laid in water and has never, I believe, been equalled, salt for a night; the day following certainly not excelled. they are well seasoned, and with ROOK SHOOTING. This is an some rashers of bacon intermixed, amusement merely followed to wile and baked in a pie, make as excelaway a few hours during the sum-lent a dish as a sportsman could mer days, when the young rooks desire. are fledged and enabled to fly from RABBIT SHOOTING. This amuseone tree to another in the rookery, ment is considered by the true preparatory to their leaving for the sportsman of the same grade as fields with the parent birds; and rook shooting; for it is only resortwith a rabbit rifle, it is very pleased to when a strayed rabbit is found ing pastime. They are, however, in general shooting, or where nooften shot at with air-guns and cross-thing else is to be found to while bows; but as the first is a danger- away an hour. Shooting rabbits is ous weapon to handle, and the other requires so much practice to use it with success, the rifle is to be always preferred. The common gun quite a different mode of exercising the gun to other or game shooting; and as a snap shot is ever the most successful, I would not advise a be : small rabbit rifles now made by some of our best town gunsmiths, as it is then a trial of skill, and becomes a pleasing amusement. If with shot, the directions for aiming, &c. must be followed as in pointing on the hare. Some persons have ferrets with them, and shoot them as they are bolted from the burrows; but I prefer ferreting in the morning, and then, when the rabbit is driven out, stopping up the mouth of the burrow with ferns or straw; then take (if the animals are gone to a neighbouring brake for shelter) a couple of good spaniels, and either stand on the outside, or a place cut through such brake, and plenty of shooting will be your reward. SHOOTING SHOES. See WATERPROOF. ginner to try his hand on them; if creeping before the dog on the he does before he is properly settled hedge. Neither pointer or setter to other field shooting, the chances should ever be entered on rabbit. are much against his ever becoming A good shot will shoot with the a steady shot on game. He perhaps gets the knack of banging instanter, and killing his mark, by which he becomes so elated, imagining no partridge or pheasant can escape before him, that he attacks them before he is au fait at the lesser birds, and finds to his chagrin, that he knows nothing of the art of shooting flying he is then tempted to alter his method; but the difference of principle betwixt the one and the other brings him to no fixed rule, and he never is a good shot as long as he lives. I prefer searching for rabbits with a steady spaniel, and that on the borders of a warren, where the holes are not too numerous; because, then, a rabbit has some way to run, and you have a fair chance. But where the little animal is so plentiful, and of course burrows equally so, he springs to earth in an instant, ere you can bring the gun up; and besides, if he is not hit very hard and mortally, he will nine times out of ten manage to scramble to his hole, and there die. The screw of the gunrod [the cleaning rod being in your pocket], may then be of service, for it is not unlikely you may be enabled to drag him out. The ramrod should never be used for any other purpose but loading. If the weather is dry, rabbits generally prefer being above ground, and in a stubble or long grass field near a warren or brake, where they are plenty, will commonly be found, some of which (as above remarked) having a distance to get to shelter, afford the gunner a good opportunity of committing slaughter. A person should always accompany the sportsman to beat the opposite side of the hedge or patch of furze, and no rabbit be ever shot at, if seen ever so well, SHORT-JOINTED. A horse is said to be short-jointed that has a short pastern. When this joint, or the pastern, is too short, the horse is subject to have his fore legs from the knee to the coronet all in a straight line. SHOT, SMALL, or that used for fowling, should be well sized, and of a moderate bigness; for should it be too great, then it flies thin and scatters too much; or if too small, then it hath not weight and strength to penetrate far, and the bird is apt to fly away with it. Its principal good properties are to be round and solid. The following table may prove useful to the young shooter (having been drawn up by an old and experienced lover of the trigger) in his choice and application of shot for different descriptions of game. It is extremely important that the sportsman should proportion the size of his shot as well to the particular species of game he means to pursue, as to the season of killing it. TABLE OF SHOT. Mould shot, commonly called slugs. B. B. or double brister shot, about 58 pellets to the ounce............ B. single brister shot, about 75 to to the ounce .......... SGenerally used in blunderbusses and spring guns. In large guns mounted on a swivel at the stem or stern of a boat, in rivers or lakes, for shooting wildfowl. In guns four and five feet barrel, of one inch to one inch and a half bore, in marshes or fens, for wildfowl shooting. No. 1 patent shot, about 82 to the Generally by gamekeepers, for kill ounce. No. 2, about 112 to the ounce ...... No. 3, about 135, and No. 4, about 177 to the ounce................................ No. 5, about 218, and No. 6, about 280 to the ounce................ No. 7, about 341 to the ounce ...... No. 8, about 600 to the ounce ...... No. 9, about 984 to the ounce, or dust shot........... ing vermin of all sorts. Ditto. At the latter part of the season, when the game have become wild and seldom lay to the dogs; also for hares and pheasants in October. At the commencement of the season in open countries. For quails, larks, and rabbits. Colonel Hawker observes, "The | each mandible supplied with thin shot of different manufacturers varies laminæ, that lock into each other much in size: for example, an ounce when the mouth is closed; the irides of No. 7, from Messrs. Walker and Parker, amounts to 341 pellets; and the same weight, from Mr. Beaumont (late Preston) 398 ditto, &c. In some places the numbers are reversed." As a general remark, we add, that in game shooting, from two and a half to three drams of powder to one ounce of shot may be considered a fair average proportion-the larger quantity of powder for single barrel guns, the smaller for double guns. SHOULDER OF A HORSE. That part of his forehand that lies between his withers, forethigh, counter and ribs. SHOULDER-PEGGED. Horses are so termed when they are gourdy, stiff, and nearly incapable of mo tion. SHOVELER (Anas clypeata). The bill of the shoveler is black, three inches in length, and remarkably broad at the end; furnished with a small hook, and the edges of are of a bright yellow; the head and upper part of the neck of a blackish green; the scapulars, the breast, and lower part of the neck, white; the back brown; the coverts of the wings sky blue; those next the quill feathers tipped with white; the larger quill feathers dusky, the middle a glossy green; the tail consists of fourteen feathers; the outside white; those in the middle black, edged with white; the vent feathers black; the belly of a very light orange colour; the legs red. The wings of the female are similarly marked with those of the male, but possessing less brilliancy. The rest of the plumage resembles that of the common wild duck. The shoveller is sometimes, though not very commonly, met with in England. It is found in most parts of Germany, and throughout the Russian dominions, and in North America, in New York and Carolina, during winter. This moor, which watered the walles of the citie on the northe side, is frozen, many young men play upon the yce." Again, "Some stryding as wide as they may, doe slide swiftly; some tye bones to their feete, and under their heeles, and shoving themselves by a little picked staffe, doe slide as swiftly as a birde flyeth in the air, or an arrowe out of a crosse-bow." Here, although the implements were rude, we have skaters. It seems that one of their sports was, for two to start a great way off opposite to each other, and when they met, to lift their poles and strike each other, when one or both fell, and were carried to a distance from each other by the celerity of their motion. The Icelanders, according to Fosbroke, also used the shank bone of a deer or sheep. Of the present wooden skates, shod with iron, there is no doubt we ob SIR PETER TEAZLE. superior racer and first-rate stallion, foaled in 1784, bred by the Earl of Derby, was got by Highflyer (a son of Herod), out of Papillon by Snap; grandam, Miss Cleveland, by Regu-tained a knowledge from Holland. lus; great grandam, Midge (sister to Squirrel), by a son of Bay Bolton; great great grandam, by Bartlets' Childers; great great great grandam, by Honywood's Arabian, out of a Byerly mare, the dam of the two True Blues. SITFASTS. These appear like dark coloured scabs on the back, but are really dead hard skin, and cannot be removed until they have been poulticed a few days. Then they may be separated by means of a pair of pliers; but it requires some force to remove them, and generally a few strokes with the knife. When this has been done, the cure may be completed with the astringent paste, applied once in two days, and the scab removed previously to each application. A little sallad oil may be necessary to soften the cicatrix after the wound is healed. SKATING. It is very uncertain at what period skating made its first appearance in England. We learn, however, from Fitzstephen, the earliest historian of London, who flourished and died in the twelfth century, that "when the great fenne or Those who wish to be proficients should begin at an early period of life; and should first endeavour to throw off the fear which always attends the commencement of an apparently hazardous amusement. They will soon acquire a facility of moving on the inside; when they have done this, they must endeavour to acquire the movement on the outside of the skates; which is nothing more than throwing themselves upon the outer edge of the skates, and making the balance of their body tend towards that side, which will necessarily enable them to form a semicircle. In this, much assistance may be derived from placing a bag of lead shot in the pocket next to the foot employed in making the outside stroke, which will produce an artificial poise of the body: this afterwards will become natural by practice. At the commencement of the out side stroke, the knee of the employed limb should be a little bent, and gradually brought to a rectilineal position when the stroke is completed. The following rules should |