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The Spoils of the Cover (Bountiful Providence)

bountiful Providence for his sustenance and delectation, none lends a greater grace or ministers more to the variety of the table than game. The offspring of wild nature, nursed upon its fruits, its mast, and its vegetation, and exhaling the very essence of its most secluded recesses, it sheds an added lustre even upon the most elaborate repast. Its comparative rarity, together with that quality which may be best defined as distinction, invests it with a heightened charm; while to the sportsman it is indelibly associated with scenes the recollection of which causes the pulse to throb with a renewed joy in the sense of living. Its pursuit naturally leads to an abiding love for nature; so that the bird in the thicket, the wild fowl in the marsh, and the hare in the covert become to the votary of sport more than mere adjuncts of gustatory delight. Who shall ever forget the first game-bird he has killed, or the first "pound trout" he has captured with the fly?the souvenir comes like a burst of autumnal radiance, or the redolence of vernal flowers. To what enchantments is not game the open-sesame; and what halcyon visions does it not enshrine! It is the emblem of plenteousness, the symbol of maturity. The gilded woods and ripened fruits, the teeming fields and garnered sheaves, the purple haze and mellow afterglow, the harvest moon and the elixir of the frost-all the largesse of the year is typified in the least of the wild life that is included in the term "game."

These woodcock, for instance, do they not at once bring to mind the beauties of their native haunts?the devious alder tangle and jungle of wild grape where the dragon-fly flits above the murmurous stream, and the cardinal-flower reflects itself within the glassy pool. This ruffed grouse, in turn, how he recalls the pageant of the upland! Once more you scent the breath of the wildwood and drink the exhilarating draught of October. Again are you thrilled by the roar of strong pinions as the quarry rises in his strength, to fall beneath the leaden charge and fold his wings in everlasting sleep. Or, with the advent upon the board of that much-in-little, the snipe, the lonely marsh with its whispering flags and shifting cloud-shadow extends in imagination before you-where the killdeer calls, and the bittern booms, and the bird of mottled breast twists away with raucous cry to be lost in the grey horizon's marge.

Thus game to the sportsman embodies an æsthetic attribute unknown to the majority, the very associations of sport in themselves conferring the keenest appreciation of the true instincts of gastronomy. The range and the breech-loader are closely allied, and the field and the table become merged in ties of mutual affinity. Nor may we overlook the great worth of game in the sick-room, and as a ministering agent for the invalid and convalescent. It possesses, in addition, a virtue equalled by scarcely any other form of food, in calling forth the bouquet and flavour of wine -whether it be a white wine with the denizens of fresh and salt water that figure as game-fish, or a grand growth of Bordeaux or Burgundy that is appropriately served with the furred and feathered tenants of Sylva's court. Then if one has killed it himself, or a friend whose skill has checked its flight has been the means of contributing its graces, its quintessence becomes all the more adorable.

Combining so many advantages, it is to be deplored that the preservation of game in this country is not more carefully guarded, and that the scarcity of many species is becoming more and more apparent. The practice of spring shooting of snipe, duck, and shorebirds, when on their migrations to their northern nesting-grounds, cannot be too severely censured; while the laxity in enforcing the laws and the dissimilarity of close seasons in different counties operates still further to cause the depletion of wild life. The pothunter and the spaniel, the trap and the gin, are gradually exterminating the ruffed grouse; the olden flocks of plover and wild pigeon have well-nigh vanished; while snipe, woodcock, quail, and duck are now as rare in many localities where they formerly abounded as the trout which once swarmed in the streams. Deer and its congeners, it is true, have received better protection of recent years, the increasing numbers of deer at least attesting the wisdom of stringent laws stringently enforced. It will therefore be readily evident that preservation and protection become a question of paramount importance which may no longer be loosely considered, or soon the last grouse will have sounded his reveille, and the whistle of the woodcock will remain only as a memory. The remedy is easily prescribed, and may be briefly summarised-legitimate shooting and fishing, rigid enforcement of the laws with heavy penalties for the offender, a single close season for the smaller species that are found in proximity, abolishment of spring shooting, and a rigorous surveillance of the covers. By this means the table may possess one of its greatest luxuries in abundance, and sport resume its former sphere as the greatest of recuperative and edifying recreations.

In its relation to the table, the term "game" is held to include wild fowl as well as most furred and feathered spoils of the chase. Or, defined more accurately in its connection with gastronomy, it embraces everything belonging to the province of sport that is edible. Correctly speaking, no species of wild fowl, or species like the plover, rail, pigeon, etc., may be accounted game, the quality of which consists in the subtle presence of scent, instinctively recognised and followed by thoroughbred dogs, -a trait expressed by Hollar's lines, "The Feasant Cocke the woods doth most frequent, Where Spaniells spring and pearche him by the sent." Yet species foreign to the blue blood of flax and feather may, nevertheless, afford sport, and prove acquisitions for the table. The little spotted sandpiper, accordingly, whose musical peet, weet, weet rings along the brooksides and moist meadow-lands, and even the squirrel if killed in cold weather, are entitled to rank as table-game, providing they be properly prepared.

It should not be supposed, however, that all individuals of a given species taste alike, flavour being the result of two important conditions. Neither should it be presumed that a game-bird, usually referred to as masculine, is preferable for the larder in that gender; the truth being that for culinary purposes the hen is generally preferable to the cock. Every sportsman will recall the difference in the taste of certain game-birds, more especially snipe and woodcock-depending upon the nature of their feedinggrounds, and upon the season. Like celery, moreover, most game requires a touch of the cold to develop its qualities. The snipe that bores in sweet, moist pastures, and the woodcock shot on high grounds during late autumn, would hardly be recognised as the same birds bagged under widely dissimilar conditions. The bobolink of our summer fields is scarcely prized until as a migrant he has fattened on the rice-fields of the South, to acquire an added bloom under the name of reed-bird or rice-bunting. Similarly, the sheep of Pré-Salé, the succulent salt-marsh mutton of the Brittany coasts, renowned for its delicious flavour, owe this quality largely to the herb absinthe which grows amid the herbage on which they browse. The mutton of sheep fed on pastures where thyme abounds also acquires a particularly fine savour. In like manner, when the ruffed grouse through stress of weather has been compelled to feed on birch-buds, or when he has dined on the berries and foliage of the wintergreen, his aroma is strikingly accentuated, becoming a veritable "steam of rich-distilled perfumes." The wild duck is an apposite example of the effect of food upon flavour; and even a pheasant à la Sainte Alliance must pale before a celery-fed canvasback or redhead bathed in its own carmine juices. The redhead, who dives down for the roots of the Vallisneria which the lazier canvasback purloins, is identical in quality with the latter when shot on the same feeding-grounds; the only difference between the two when cooked consisting in the larger size of the canvasback. Equally, the blackbird and starling, when killed on the shocked corn-fields where the hazy sunlight broods, or in autumn woods where they are garrulously discussing the date of their approaching flight and marvelling at the exquisite gradations of the maples' changing hues, become possessed of a tenderness and succulence unknown to the glare and greenness of summer.