straight.' They do not, therefore, miss the unfortunate hare, as little bits of fleck floating in the air demonstrate; but what becomes of her? Occasionally she is picked up by the beaters, dead, in a hedgerow three fields away, but more often she is killed—an emaciated wreck—by some shepherd's dog or cur, three weeks afterwards. The error and the cruelty are not chargeable to the powers of the gun, nor to the aim of the owner, but to his bad and hasty judgment in firing shots, some of which no doubt will occasionally kill, but which in nine cases out of ten he ought to leave alone. I recollect the case being neatly summed up by a sportsman of my acquaintance, somewhat precise in language, but not very skilful with the gun, whom I had watched missing hare after hare that rose almost between his legs, and fled from him straight down the drills of a turnip field which, for some reason or other, we were beating in that direction. 'You see, my dear sir,' said he, 'the reason that I do not kill these hares is that, in running directly from me down the furrows, they persistently expose to my aim that part of their persons which is least immediately mortal.' It was very true, no doubt, but I do not think I have ever heard it put in that way before or since.
Thirty yards is the outside range at which hares should be shot when running straight away from the
