He'll get a good day's sport--no barndoor birds" (for he encouraged his pheasants to remain lean, that they might fly the better), "but don't let him expect one of these battues--sheer butchery, I call them." He was excessively fond of birds--it was, in fact, his hobby, and he had collected under glass cases a prodigious number of specimens of those species which are in danger of becoming extinct, having really, in some Pendycean sort of way, a feeling that by this practice he was doing them a good turn, championing them, as it were, to a world that would soon be unable to look upon them in the flesh.

He wished, too, that his collection should become an integral part of the estate, and be passed on to his son, and his son's son after him.
"Look at this Dartford Warbler," he would say; "beautiful little creature--getting rarer every day.

I had the greatest difficulty in procuring this specimen.

You wouldn't believe me if I told you what I had to pay for him!" Some of his unique birds he had shot himself, having in his youth made expeditions to foreign countries solely with this object, but the great majority he had been compelled to purchase.

In his library were row upon row of books carefully arranged and bearing on this fascinating subject; and his collection of rare, almost extinct, birds' eggs was one of the finest in the "three kingdoms." One egg especially he would point to with pride as the last obtainable of that particular breed.