"horn of chase," and the loud halloos of the huntsman as he cheered them on in full pursuit; and the music then gradually died away as the affrighted animal led them onward. The forest was again hushed for nearly an hour, and my hopes of sharing more of the amusement were fast fading; but my friend, the piqueur, encouraged me to remain, as the game would certainly cross the railway unless he swam the Seine, and if that had been the case, information would reach him by the preconcerted signals. In the midst of our dialogue, something brushed by us, and turning round, we saw a noble stag bounding rapidly, as if hurrying from some pressing danger; but it was nearly out of the frying-pan into the fire, for the piqueur's dogs, by a sudden bound, dragged him to the ground, and it required our united efforts to restrain them. If he were the object of pursuit, he must have outrun his enemies by miles, for no solitary cry denoted present or remote danger; but as time wore on, a single strong, and well-built dog was seen at a great distance along the banks of the railway, his nose close to the ground, advancing slowly towards us, and having, beyond dispute, his game before him. It was still doubtful whether this was the stag just seen; but a few moments removed all doubt, for arriving at the bridge, he turned short, sent forth a shout of triumph, and hurried off at full speed. The piqueur blew his horn, to tell that the chase was in his department, and also to assist the bewildered pack. But the lesson was not needed; scarcely had the last notes of the horn ceased, when the whole pack appeared, tracing the route of the solitary dog; and their music, although neither loud nor continuous, was a guarantee that the exact path of the forest tenant was discovered, however far he might have headed them. Arriving at the bridge there was a sudden check, for it was thronged with spectators, who confused the scent. The piqueur was now permitted to unleash his eight dogs, and they flew towards the avenue which the game had chosen, followed by the other dogs, and a full cry gave notice that there was no dissentient voice as to the correct road. But the "more haste the worse speed;" at the end of the avenue they found they had been pursuing a phantom, and humble and dispirited they retraced their steps-very unlike the biped race, whose obstinacy is proportioned to their error. They now suspected he had turned short for safety, beneath the friendly shade of the trees; a consultation was called; a dead silence followed; each side of the avenue was cautiously and skilfully examined; a short sharp note of "Eureka" was heard from a lady named Dido, the pack rushed to the spot, a simultaneous shout confirmed the discovery; in a moment they were buried in the thicket of the wood, and their cries, which were redoubled, announced their victim as visible, for the unfortunate wight, imagining he had completely baffled his foe, had rested in the thicket; and as he now emerged from his cover, it was evident the dogs had hard work before them, his bounding, elastic step, showing him still fresh and vigorous.

What an extraordinary sense is that of smell, especially in the dog tribe! If its effects were not demonstrated daily, it would be incredible. Man who, through the telescope, sees stars and planets, invisible to the unassisted eye, who can collect and concentrate the impalpable waves of sound, cannot assist in the slightest manner the

organ of smell. We are lost in admiration at the wisdom of the Deity, in bestowing a faculty on animals denied to man, useless be

canse

"Os homini sublime dedit, cœlumque tueri ;"

a power enabling them to trace, unerringly, their foe or their friend, although unseen, unheard, and unfelt; when to the senses of man all is hidden. If the fact was suspected for the first time, what person wishing to preserve a character for truth would be the relator of this extraordinary phenomenon?

I was soon left alone in the midst of this noble forest, and, although full of hunters, horses, hounds, and horns, no sound reached my ear, so extensive is the forest; and more extraordinary, not even the hum of an insect, or the chirp of a bird. For two hours I wandered in its most retired parts, and during that time met with no living creature except one jay. This paucity of birds of all kinds in the north of France is remarkable. I have travelled in summer on the banquette of the diligence, from Paris to Boulogne, and have seen a few magpies only-even the swallow was not visible. This scarcity may be explained by the absence of hedges or plantations; for the finch tribe must have hedges. And in vain you

look round for a herd of oxen, or flock of sheep; they cannot be permitted to roam abroad, there being no hedges to restrain them within their respective bounds. The people live in villages; there is therefore an absence of life, and consequently of cheerfulness, in la belle France, which sadly pains an English eye.

Unexpectedly I reached a large open space, surrounded with paling, and apparently a preserve for pheasants and partridges. While leaning over a gate the music of the pack was again heard, and I hurried down a leading avenue, and found there a piqueur stationed with eight dogs still fresh; he motioned me to turn into the wood, for the stag was coming towards me.

"Sed quantum mutatus ab illo."

He came trotting along, dirty, fatigued, and heart-broken; for a moment he stopped, listened, and again heard his merciless pursuers close behind, encouraging each other in their bloody sport; he turned aside, cleared the palings with one bound, his last great effort, and crossed the open space. The piqueur loosed his untied dogs, they joined themselves to the others, now wearied enough, and entered the enclosure, when he at once became visible to the whole pack, and this was the only spot where any thing I saw could be called a chase. It was evident that they were rapidly gaining on him, and that the truth of the old hunting song would soon be realized

"This day a stag must die."

The piqueur told me he was making towards a small lake, and, opening a wicket, requested me to accompany him, and in about five minutes we were on the borders of a small lake, or rather large pond. The judgment of the piqueur proved correct, for the stag, exhausted and breathless, trotted fearlessly towards us, the greater fear swallowing up the lesser; and stopping only for a moment on the brink,

he plunged in, the pack being in full cry and close at his heels. He was scarcely half over when he was espied by his hereditary foes, and here they made a most sagacious distribution of their forces. The young dogs, with all the ardour of youth, at once divided the water, and the cries in this new element was melody itself. The old dogs separated, some going one side, some the other, to meet him as he landed. Alas! they were too successful; he was now hemmed in on every side, while his nautical pursuers gave him no rest in that element which he believed to be a dernier ressort; but his mental agonies were not prolonged, he was seized in the flank, and turning round to punish his adversary, he found too late that this mode of defence was available only in his native forest; for the moment he bent his head to butt with force, it went under water, and almost before it was raised, he was literally covered with foes. The struggle was short, and he died like a hero, without a groan.

The hounds were now called off, and, as if conscious the duties and pleasures of the day were terminated, immediately obeyed the signal. A reward of thirty francs was offered to bring the booty on land; and although the day was rather cold, two hardy peasants jumped into the water, one in his birthnight suit, the other in full dress, and by pushing and dragging brought it within reach of a piqueur; it was then carried in triumph to an open spot, and the usual ceremonies at the death of hunted game were performed. The huntsman unsheathed his knife (every Frenchman carries a knife to cut his bread), took up a fore-leg, made a circular incision through the skin, above the knee, and four perpendicular incisions as far as the hoof; the skin was then cut away along with the hoof. This operation seemed to me analogous to removing the brush of the fox, or tail of the hare, and the "spolia opima" were presented to one of the gentlemen, but why or wherefore deponent cannot say, but from the apathy with which they were received, I judged him to be an Englishman.

The animal was now opened the whole length of the chest and belly, and the huntsman taking out a small bag, placed in it, as his perquisites, the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, and testes; the other viscera of the abdomen were placed on the ground, and the body of the stag thrown over a horse. The huntsman wound his horn, sounded the mort, collected his hounds around him, and in a few moments the contents of the abdomen disappeared.

Of all the unmusical sounds, not excepting even the Scotch bagpipe, that ever were given forth by a musical instrument, those of the French hunting horn are the most disagreeable. They are nearly similar to those emitted by a cracked iron pot, but with all the pretensions of a Cremona violin; but you might as well tell the huntsman to reform his diet, and dine without soup, as to reform his instrument. And certainly it must be of French and not of English hunting that Talleyrand uttered his memorable sarcasm, when, after a day's sport, he replied, on being asked how he enjoyed it? "Oh, delightfully;" but a moment afterwards he slyly demanded, "Do people ever hunt twice!"

Paris, March, 1847.

G. W. B.

LITERATURE.

:

THE HANDBOOK OF ANGLING. By Ephemera. London: Longman and Co. 1847. In the volume before us, we are told by Mr. Erasmus Wilson, who has contributed a chapter to it, that, "from the humble position of the fish in the animal kingdom-namely, at the very foot of the scale of the vertebrate series in other words, the lowliest of the large group of animals distinguished by the possession of a spine-it may naturally be inferred that those higher attributes of animals, which depend on the presence of nerves, and of a nervous system, present a corresponding degree of inferiority." Considering this exposure of the physiology of the people of the waters, one is struck with astonishment at the world of science, skill, and patience that are required in the angler. Nobles and gentles, with no end of possessions and expectations; heiresses already at majority, with whole orchards of "plums" in the funds-nay, even widows with large jointures are to be caught with a thousandth part of the trouble that apparently goes to the capture of a trout or a grayling. The author makes nothing of allusions to learned philosophers writing on angling in ponderous encyclopædias-and it's true to boot. "Salmonia" is the production of a sage; and who know show much of "Paley's Theology" had an amphibious origin? And yet there are people, with reputations for sound minds and good sense, who turn up their noses at the pursuits of sportsmen! What would they have human nature attempt? Let them read but half a chapter of this practical and fact-telling "Handbook" of Ephemera the subject " Fly-fishing"-it shall be "On Artificial Flies," or "Fly-dressing" (such a toilette! beats loops and powder to sticks!), or " Flies for the Season," or anything appertaining to the craft. Let them, we say, read, mark, and learn the stores of knowledge, adroitness-in short, of all the best properties of man's nature, both moral and physical, that it requires to make an angler-and ask themselves, if such qualities are requisite for the circumvention of the coolest of vertebrated animals, by what miracle has a human being ever possessed himself of a fox's brush?

During the last half score years we have had, by one chance or other, considerable experience of fishing books. Our friend Hofland often consulted us when he was getting up his " British Angler's Manual ;" and all manner of volumes, down to the least in size, but by no means least in our good love-the tiny tome of John Younger, of St. Boswell's-have fallen into our hands. One after another, as we read them seriatim-it was no joke-the more were we convinced that " quaint old cóxcomb" Walton used no misnomer when he dubbed his favourite sport "craft." If there is a subtlety under the sun, surely it is flyfishing! So subtle is it that you can scarcely lay hold of a proof to establish the hypothesis. You would never suppose that constructing a

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blue-bottle in effigy, for instance, was any such mystery; yet hear what our St. Boswell's friend says on the subject:- Despairing to give any practical idea by mere description of the manner of dressing flies, it might, perhaps, be as well to refrain from attempting it." Madame de Pompadour's femme de chambre could not have been in a deeper dilemma as to how she might convey a spice of her quality into an article for the Belle Assemblée. Perhaps this very difficulty it is that has sent so many brave spirits to essay the forlorn hope; the subject, too, stands high. The learned Gotlieb Boccius lately wrote a book, whereof the onehalf is devoted to "Twenty-three Recipes for Cooking Fresh-water Fish." It is, therefore, in no way surprising that we find a new work making its appearance on the abstruse science of angling; and both that it comes in opportune season, and moreover is filled with excellent matter, it is especially welcome. It is due both to the reader and the author that we offer some support of this latter assertion, to which end -after rejecting many passages marked for extract, quite as worthy of selection, we quote the following " On Artificial Flies."

"Of late years a new doctrine-in my opinion a totally wrong onehas been sent forth about artificial flies. Some Scotch writers were the first promulgators of it, and they have carried it to ridiculous extravagance. They positively maintain that there is no likeness between the natural fly and the artificial one, and that when natural flies are on the water the angler will be more successful by using artificial flies as widely different from them in shape, colour, &c., as may be. A nondescript artificial fly will succeed better, they say, than a bad resemblance, and every attempt at imitation, in their opinion, produces at the best but a bad resemblance. These angling heretics contend that fish rising at a natural fly immediately detect, by comparison of course, the bad imitation, and refuse to rise at it, whereas they will rise at some outlandish artificial that differs, more than chalk does from Cheshire cheese, from the living fly on the water. They say that when they go fly-fishing they catch some of those flies that are on the water, and fish with artificial flies totally different from them, and invariably meet with more success than if they used so-called, as they name them, imitations. The majority of mankind are mad on one subject or another. Perhaps the majority of animals are similarly so. These mad fly-fishers are successful, no doubt, because they meet with mad fish, which are more readily taken with fantastic flies than with naturally coloured and shaped ones. That is the only way I can account for their heterodoxy.

"My friends, do not mind what these cracked sectarians say. They are learned philosophers, writing the article Angling' in ponderous encyclopædias, from visionary data: but we are lowly scatterers of information gathered by the water-side. We grant that there is very great difficulty in imitating, by means of feathers, fur, wool, &c., the waterinsects fish feed upon; but we maintain that a fair deceptive imitation can be made, and that it is beyond all comparison more attractive to fish than no imitation at all. We maintain that the less imperfect an imitation, the more attractive will it be found in fishing.

"We said that philosophers-naturalists with barnacles on nosereading insect nature through the glass-cases of museums, find, they assert, no likeness whatsoever between the natural fly and what, to the vulgar, appears the best artificial imitation ever dressed. The micro