ADVERTISEMENT. SINCE the article "Shooting," written for the current edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica," was published in that work, the "Oakleigh Shooting Code" has been withdrawn as a separate publication; but so much of it as was deemed worth preserving has been embodied in the treatise from the Encyclopædia, which is now re-published, with large additions, in the following pages. 1st May, 1840. Rich in content; in Nature's bounty rich, In herbs and fruits; whatever greens the spring, When heaven descends in showers; or bends the bough When summer reddens, and when autumn beams; Or in the wintry glebe whatever lies Concealed! The Seasons, Autumn. INTRODUCTION. THAT his book might have its hero and scene of operations, the author in his former work drew a sportsman, a manor-house, and a manor. The sportsman was-and how could he be otherwise? -what Wordsworth somewhere calls "A lover of the meadows, and the woods, who rhapsodized on purple heaths, like a true Highlander. He dwelt in the centre of his own domain, where, in a richly wooded and craggy dell, stood the Oakleigh old Manor-Hall, "a vast and venerable pile," begrimed by the dusty hand of Time, but crumbling not beneath his mouldering touch. It presented a rude mass of Gothic masonry, whose stony strength" had laughed "a siege to scorn!" Not far from the Manor-hall reposed, in primeval simplicity, the secluded village of Oakleigh. As the houses there were remarkable for their uniform antiquity, so the people and the trees, the vicar's |