THE SHOOTING SEASON.
The following is from a gentleman at present trying to get a shot in the South of Scotland. It will be seen that his game is various. His hits are pretty palpable in some cases ; if the partridges escape, the peoa pie do not.
" Our game season has made game of us Southern sportsmen, in the Southern districts of Scotland. Wet, wet, wet daily ! and no chance yet, that I can see, of a change. Even the eclipse failed of exciting any but an unfavourable sympathy in the rain-laden clouds. The even- ing and the morning are the same- " Noctepluit totta redeunt spectueula mane."
"The barometer, the thermometer, the manufacturer of weather manuals, and siclike' trashy dabblers in Nature's laws (as governed by what has heretofore been put down in leaves of books), are this year all wrong. Give me a herd on one of these hills for a weather seer ; he consults an oracle which has never yet failed its true votaries.
"A word or two of things and persons here. I do not think what term civilization, is on the increase in Scotland ; I should say it is the re- verse. On the Southern border, pauperism as a trade is daily increasing; and the great landlord—such as the Duke of Buccleugh (he is almost the only great feudal lord in the South), through the indolence of his agents—for he never brings himself into relation with the state and con- dition of the lower orders on his domain, or his provinces, as I may rather say—absolutely encourages the ruiaous influence which pauperism, acting like a plague, has on the whole of the conununity. My picture is not overdrawn. There may be spots where Nature acts against a Duke ; but in general the Duke, by his very aristocratic skin, is a foe to the condition of all below him."
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