the next as long as they remain in that part, and that in successive years, as woodcocks are flushed in the same wood, and partridges sprung in the same field. I shot another ruff, and learnt from a goose-herd that he had seen several knots of them during the last few days, which made me prick up my ears and make a few inquiries of the old boy, from whom I learnt that the snipes came into the wash by hundreds towards dusk and left in the morning by day-break. This accounted for the droppings and feet-marks I had seen on the opposite feeding grounds, and led me to suppose that the fishermen had been busy with their springes, for as no gun had been fired but my own, I was puzzled to account for the extreme wildness of the birds. "If the weather and water are all right, there will be a fine flight of birds by and bye," said my informant; "and when the hay is got off I expect there will be as many snipes as there used to be before the drainage." I wetted him, and departed, not that I wet every lazy fellow who tells me should have been here last Friday, Sir;" or, "by next week at this time we shall swarm with 'em :" but this was an old acquaintance, whom I had known some years before on the Norfolk coast, where he was gathering samphire, and I was strolling along the beach after sea birds.

"You

The afternoon's shooting was good it is true. I had not many shots, but the birds lay better, and I picked up eight couple and another young duck, with two rare specimens for a stuffing friend in Leicestershire; and, had I not fired both barrels at one of the snipes, should have secured him a most magnificent male bittern, which rose from a reed bed within six yards of me.

Taken altogether I have had many a worse day, to say nothing of fagging over a wild country in a burning sun in September, with birds wild, no atom of scent, and, by way of finish, a row for trespass, when, after all, there was nothing worth going for-ills which sport is heir to, but which I hope may befal no true Sportsman on the day this scrawl sees the light.

August 6, 1839.

TRIGGER.

THE HON. GRANTLEY FITZHARDİNGE BERKELEY, DR. STYLES, AND THE SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS*.

THAT the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals may have done much good, we are not disposed to question; and as long as they direct their exertions to their legitimate object, of preventing brutality to the brute creation, they will receive and deserve the approbation of all good men. But let them not descend to join the pseudo-philanthropists of the day, and decry and interfere with all existing sports and recreations, palming upon the public all sorts of delusions and calumnies as to the cruelties attending the maintenance of many of them. We are led to these remarks from the perusal of a pamphlet

* A Pamphlet, dedicated to the Noblemen, Gentlemen, and Sportsmen of England, Ireland, and Scotland, by the Hon. Grantley Fitzhardinge Berkeley, M. P., in Reply to a Prize Essay by the Rev. John Styles, D, D. on the Claims of the Animal Creation to the Humanity of Man.Ridgway, 1839.

just published, by the Hon. Grantley Fitzhardinge Berkeley, M. P. for the Western Division of Gloucestershire, in reply to a Prize Essay, for which the Rev. Dr. Styles received £100 from the Society for "the best essay on the obligations of humanity as due to the brute creation." The Hon. Member takes up the cudgels against the canting casuistry which would discountenance all sports, however healthful or manly, and so successfully combats the positions of the Reverend Divine as to shew, that if his Essay be the best out of thirty-four, the adjudicators must have been surfeited with so much trash as to have induced them to cry "Hold, enough!" and select the Doctor's "affecting details," not for their truth, but because they go the "whole hog" in deteriorating the good old English sports of the field, and thus by their sanction joining in the senseless cry against the recreations of the people*.

In page 5 of the work before me (says Mr. Berkeley) we have a quotation from Dr. Chalmers, designated as "most affecting." An analogy is drawn, as to reciprocity of feeling in cases of bodily pain or mental affliction, between man and the beasts and birds of the field. A bird is thus described-"whose little household has been stolenas filling and saddening all the grove with melodies of the deepest pathos." Now this may be all very pretty, and "most affecting," if it were true; but Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Styles, either by ocular or auricular demonstration, have been led into an amusing error in natural history, and seem to have formed their conclusion from the Opera, or some other similarly dramatic representation; for there only, with the exception of the fabulous story of the dying swan, do creatures sing when on the eve of death, or under the oppression of grief and desolation. Othello, intending to murder Desdemona secretly and in her sleep, is made to indulge in the loudest strains, while she, having been awakened from her rest, sings beneath the armed hand which is about to deprive her of existence ! This may be very harmonious in dramatic spectacles; but if you carry forth the custom into the wilds of nature, the discord becomes obvious. If the nest of a bird is robbed, the one that most deplores the loss of the eggs is the hen: but, deep as her dismay may be, any man who has made zoology his study well knows that the hen-bird cannot sing, and that the only means she has of "saddening the grove with melody" is by uttering a short, sharp, and, nine times out of ten, harsh cry of distress; while the cock-bird, who can sing (with the exception of the robin that sings in winter), will not sing, but will only exert his powers when the sun is bright or the air bland, and when, decked in the full plumage of procreation, the breast and brain of the bird are teeming with that natural gratitude so mysteriously and beautifully engrafted in the heart of Heaven's meanest

creature.

* "The adjudicators were (says a writer in Fraser's Magazine), the Earl of Carnarvon, the Rev. Baptist W. Noel, and Mr. Serjeant Talfourd. Let it not, however, be imagined that these unfortunate Gentlemen were doomed to read the thirty-four essays. That would be such a cruelty to animals as the records of their own Society never presented. Lord Carnarvon is on the Continent, and we take it for granted saw not a line of the lot. Serjeant Talfourd surely has quite enough to do between pleas and plays, Tindal and Macready; and we doubt not that he took his brief from Baptist Noel, a Gentleman whose literary tastes and ecclesiastical sympathies would lead him to do ample justice to the merits of Dr. Styles."

After this specimen of zoological ignorance (continues the Hon. Member), and to prepare a point for the weapon of his charge against the Sportsman for being the sole creature addicted to wanton or unnecessary cruelty, we have the following passage :

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Secondly, those creatures which prey upon each other obey an instinct which destroys the life of their victim at the least possible expense of pain. It is usually in the night time, and in the hour of sleep, that they sink under the fangs and teeth of their destroyers. Twenty strokes sent home in an instant to the sources of life afford no leisure to reflect that they are about to lose it. That fatal moment is not embittered to them by any of the feelings which render it so fatal to most of the human race-regret for the past, and solicitude about futurity. They feel the pang of nature, but not of mind: it is momentary; and then follows the undisturbed repose, the slumber of eternal rest."

Now here again (says Mr. B.), we have presented before us, in a lofty strain, the grossest ignorance, or else the most wilful perversion of a common and well-authenticated fact. All beasts of prey, ranking under that numerous species distinguished by the name of the feline➡ and extending from the royal tiger to the domestic cat-are by nature addicted to the unnecessarily prolonged tormenting of the victim captured, as well for their amusement as food. Our author then ludicrously supposes the worthy Doctor transformed by the wand of a conjuror into a mouse-"the simile singularly fitted, as well to the illustration of the subject as to Dr. Styles's labor"-and after being subjected to the common mouse-and-cat test, asks if he would then advance the assertion that man was inferior to beast in his merciful disposition? He proceeds :-All birds of prey (with the exception of the owl), and many of the beasts, seek their food by day: it is most erroneous to assign the night as the usual hour.

That "animals and a large proportion of inferior creatures suffer by the agency of man," there can be very little doubt; but that their sufferings are unnecessarily prolonged, I am not disposed altogether to admit. The ox is killed by a blow, the sheep by the brief passage of the knife, the fox as soon as you can catch him-the hare the same; or, with pheasants and partridges, by the instantaneous discharge of the gun. In the great mechanism of the universe, causes should be judged by their effects, and the minor portions looked into and appreciated only as they tend to the general perfection. Without some inducements to the field, without some excitement necessary to call the high spirit, daring nerve, and muscular power into action, man would dwindle away into an effeminate course of life, in which the noblest energies of his nature might sink beneath the vicious inclination of mind induced by an inert frame. I would advise Dr. Styles to take care how, in the removal of one thing which he may consider as an abuse, he makes room for a greater or more sinful abomination....... Without the sports of the field, what would become of the breed of horses, which have made our cavalry superior to that of other nations? What would become of the marksman, and the state of perfection to which the weapon of his use has arrived? Unless muscular display and the rivalry of gallant spirits were encouraged, the limbs and hearts VOL. XIX.-SECOND SERIES.-No. 113.

of the sons of England would fail when in front of the foreign foe, and the established religion itself be lost, and that from remote causes, originating in the sickly assertions and erroneous doctrines of men affecting to be the healthful physicians and saviours of the soul.

Mr. B. proceeds to combat the position, that "had man retained his moral nature unimpaired, and had his reason been left to exercise its powers uncontrolled by depraved appetites and passions, there could be no doubt that his rule over the inferior creatures would have maintained them in their natural relations to each other, and with the least possible sacrifice of their enjoyments, and thus have held them in subordination to his will."

If the beasts (asks Mr. B.) were always intended to live in peace and beneath the subjugation of man, why were those of a particular species armed with the natural weapons of destruction? The lion would require no carniverous teeth-the eagle not a talon, if they were for ever to browse and feed with the lamb and with the dove."

Mr. B. confutes the assertion of Dr. Styles, "that whenever our eyes open upon the scene of animated nature which lies around us, everywhere, and in almost every spectacle, we feel that a breath from the air of pandemonium is passing over the living world; and that, as it regards the animal race, man, who should be their protector, because he is their sovereign, is their persecutor and their tyrant." This may be very effective in a Prize Essay, but shews that the Doctor is little sensible of, or thankful for, the bounties and the beauties of creation. "Wild beasts scarcely ever kill their own kind. Man, in fact, is the only being who enjoys the terrors, wounds, and death of others, the only animal who kills in sport and for sport.' So says Dr. Styles; but in this sweeping assertion how does he get rid of the known combat of the elephant and rhinoceros, the battle between the lion and the tiger, the whale and the sword-fish, and last of all, though not the least, that personal animosity-independent of the cravings of appetite, as on the excitement of insult or injury-which exists in the indomitable courage of the game-cock? It is enough that these birds see each other, without the presence of any stake for which to contend, to make them assail-nor yield to anything but death. If in the farmyard, and living in a state of nature, they hear each other crow, it is sufficient to make them seek a meeting with no other view but that of the natural pleasure to destroy, and, having met and engaged, the conqueror struts back with the blood of his enemy on his spurs. He takes not possession of the walk-he fights not for possession of the female-he hates his foe, and seeks his destruction, and, having achieved it, quits the walk and female, as if the gratification of any other passion than that of hatred was beneath his lofty and disinterested consideration.

Our author then, sweeping with the besom of ridicule and sarcasm" the alleged cruelty to hounds as a wilful misrepresentation for the purpose of obtaining the reward of the arbitrators, proceeds to shew that the recent ill-judged act of the Society at Hillingdon, in prosecuting individuals for cock-fighting-intruding their informer into private premises, whilst they neglected in other places the more public and glaring-was an illustration of the fact that abuse creeps into all

our institutions, and thereby, under the semblance of religious intentions and purity and humanity of purpose, abused their power, if they did not lend themselves to still more unworthy designs.

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We cannot follow our author through all his exposition of the calumnies and absurdities of this Prize Essay-the sallies against the management of the greyhound, and the assertion that no angler can be a good man :"-the former are as ridiculous as they are void of foundation; and the latter position is refuted by the piety, the benevolence, and the Christian charities of numerous "brethren of the craft."

In recommending the study of natural history, the Doctor says, "Among the advantages to be derived from the pursuits of natural history, it is not the least that they have a tendency to purify the heart, and raise it above the low and grovelling desires for sensual, turbulent, and unnatural enjoyments."-Mr. B. says, if Dr. Styles had studied natural history, "it might have purified his heart, and raised it above the low and grovelling desire" to attain the prize of £100 at the expense of the Christian characters of some of his neighbours! I have now noticed (continues Mr. Berkeley) such portions of the Prize Essay as seemed to me to be aimed at the continuance in Old England of that most useful member of society, a COUNTRY GEntleMAN, and to affect the nature of our sporting establishments, and through them the welfare of the people. We Masters of Fox-hounds, and Sportsmen generally, have been condemned by this Prize Essayist -and of course by the donors of the £100 prize-as monsters of cruelty and unchristian members of society: the whole of us have been held up as deserving of public antipathy! I will, for an instant, suppose "Othello's occupation gone," and that, deprived of their amusements in the field, the immense establishments of Noblemen and Gentlemen were broken up, and the thousands, the millions of money spent upon them to be borne abroad and frittered away in foreign places-what would then become of the multitudes of people thrown out of employment? and in what way does Dr. Styles point out a remedy for the calamity, misery, and distress which must inevitably spread itself over the face of the land, were his most mischievous advocacy to obtain its obvious consummation? We all know-at least your practical reasoner knows-that rich men will have their amusements, aye and poor men too; and that, if they cannot have them in one place, they will in another. We know that England has been indebted to her ancient pastimes for the muscular power of her men, the might of her war-horse, and to the overwhelming power of the cloth-yard shaft. We also know that she is indebted at the present moment to her sporting establishments, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, for their presence on their estates of the landed Nobility and Gentry: and we know that thousands of her population derive their bread from the bounty of the castle, hall, and manor-house; and that, by the immediate presence of these Lords and Gentlemen, the laws of the constitution are locally dispensed and maintained. It is in the hunting-field too where the rising aristocracy become acquainted with the best portion of the yeomanry, and learn to appreciate their merits. The landlord and tenant are joined in one amusement. There is a noble emulation in the