The English Sportsman, However, Does Not Cut, Or Carve, Or In Any Way Shape His Gun-Stock To His Imagination.

The stock is as smooth and as plain as polished wood can be.

There is a sort of speckling on the barrels, and there is a conventional design on the lock-plate; conventional, indeed, in the most - blase - sense of the word - quite - blase - and worn out, this scratch of intertwisted lines, not so much as a pheasant even engraved on the lock-plate; it is a mere killing machine, this gun, and there is no Art, thought or love of nature about it. Sometimes the hammers are filed, little notches crossing, and there imagination stops. The workman can get no farther than his file will go, and you know how that acts to and fro in a straight groove. A pheasant or hare at full speed, a few trees - firs as most characteristic - could be put on the plate, and something else on the trigger guard; firs are easily drawn, and make most appearance for a few touches; pheasants roost in them. Even a coat of arms, if it were the genuine coat-of-arms of the owner's family, would look well. Men have their book-plates and stamp their library volumes, why not a gun design? As many sportsmen scarcely see their guns for three-fourths of the year, it is possible to understand that the gun becomes a killing machine merely to them, to be snatched up and thrown aside the instant its office is over. But the gamekeeper carries his gun the year through, and sits in the room with it when indoors, still he never even so much as scratches an outline of his favourite dog on it. In these landscape days we put our pictures on the walls only, and no imagination into the things we handle and use. A good deal of etching might be done on a gun, most of it being metal, while more metal could be easily inlaid for the purpose. Etching, I suppose, is the right word; at all events, designs, records of actual sporting feats, or outlines of favourite sporting places - nooks in the woods, falls of the stream, deep combes of the hills - could be cut in with aquafortis. So many draw or paint nowadays, and in this manner they could make some use of their skill, drawing perhaps for those who only understand the use of cartridge-paper when it has gunpowder inside it. Sportsmen see the very best of scenery, and come across old hollow trunks and curious trees, effects, and 'bits' of every kind, from a twisted hawthorn to an antlered stag; if they could get an artistic friend to see these, there would be some good gun-etchings done.

BIRDS' NESTS

'Perfectly lovely!' 'Such pretty colours!' 'So neat; isn't it wonderful how the little things do it with their beaks?' 'The colours are so arranged as to conceal it; the instinct is marvellous;' and so on. These comments were passed on a picture of a bird's nest - rather a favourite subject with amateur painters. The nest was represented among grass, and was tilted aside so as to exhibit the eggs, which would have rolled out had they been real. It was composed of bright-green moss with flowers intertwined, and tall bluebells, rising out of the grass, overhung it. Nothing could be more poetical. In reality, the flowers - if ever actually used by a bird - would have faded in a day, and the moss would never have had so brilliant and metallic a tint. The painter had selected the loveliest colours of the mead and gathered them into a bouquet, with the nest in the centre. This is not exactly like nature: a robin's nest for instance, the other day was discovered in an old shoe, discarded by a tramp and thrown over the wall into the shrubbery. Nests are not always made where flowers grow thickest, and birds have the oddest way of placing them - a way which quite defeats rational search. After looking into every nook, and places where if built a nest would be hidden from passers-by, suddenly it is found right in front of you and open to view. You have attributed so much cunning to the bird that you have deceived yourself. In fact, it sometimes happens that the biggest fool is the best bird's-nester, and luck in eggs falls to those who have no theory. But December throws doubt even on the fool's capacity, for as the leaves fall there appear nests by the dozen in places never suspected, and close to people's faces. For one that has been taken ten have escaped.

The defect of nest-building lies in the absence of protection for the young birds. When they grow large and feel strong they bubble, as it were, over the edge of the cup-shaped nest. Their wings, though not yet full-grown, save them from injury in descent by spreading out like a parachute, but are powerless to assist them after reaching the ground. In the grass they are the prey of rooks, crows, magpies, jackdaws, snakes, rats, and cats. They have no means of escape whatever: they cannot fly nor run - the tall grass stops running - and are frequently killed for amusement by their enemies, who do not care to eat them. Numbers die from exposure in the wet grass, or during rain, for they are not able to fly up and perch on a branch. The nest requires a structure round it like a cage, so that the fledglings might be prevented from leaving it till better able to save themselves. Those who go to South Kensington to look at the bird's-nest collection there should think of this if they hear any one discoursing on infallible instinct on the one hand, or evolution on the other. These two theories, the infallible instinct and that of evolution, practically represent the great opposing lines of thought - the traditional and the scientific.

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