[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I hasten to correct
an error that I made, when writing to you the other day on the subject of the holocausts that are made of our finest sporting birds. I wrote from a very failing memory, but I have now had an opportunity of checking it, and I find that the number of grouse shot by Lord Walsingham
(we need no longer rob him of the honour and glory) was 1,056 grouse to his own gun, in fourteen hours and eighteen minutes. I also find—and it deserves to be recorded—that one Rim- ington Wilson, with eight of his friends, shot 2,648 grouse in one day ; and my friend, who like myself has shot over dogs for fifty years or more, and who sent me this information adds :
This blood lust is a queer thing." He is quite right, for to call it sport is ridiculous ; it is no more entitled to that honour than are the men who go out hunting for the riding only, and who do not take the slightest interest in the hunting of the hounds. It is hardly fair, perhaps, to compare the two, except to stress my point that the men who can do these things are not sportsmen, and I think that in the case of the grouse (and of course the pheasants and partridges) the size of the bag is the only thing that counts.
If. as we are given to understand, these things are now done by men who practically never miss a shot, every bird is killed in the air, it only makes matters worse, for they cannot claim that it gives them even excitement, any more than I could claim that fishing would give me excitement if I were sure of killing every fish that rose at my fly. With apologies.—I am,
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