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“H. W. Holland”

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It is difficult to know where to start an account of the early history of shooting. The long-bow was used in deer shooting, as also was the cross-bow, and if we may believe the early artists—and I do not see why we should—deer running before hounds and horses were shot from the saddle with the cross-bow, and the arrow went in behind the neck and out at the throat. The artists of old were obviously as imaginative as Royal Academicians when it came to sport. For instance, nearly every picture of a woodcock or snipe on the wing, including one of J. W. M. Turner’s, puts the beak of the bird sticking out in front, on the principle of “follow your nose”; but every woodcock and snipe treats even Turner with contempt, and hangs its beak in spite of the greatest master of English landscape. Mr. Thorburn makes no such mistake, but even he has made a couple of cock partridges court one another; and it is really very difficult to believe in the accuracy of artists such as the delineators of the Bayeux Tapestry, where five men may be seen applauding Harold’s coronation and with only eight legs between them, most of them clearly disconnected with the men.