Partial as I am to the habits and all the concerns of the country, I regret to say that rural amusements, connected as they commonly are with the creatures about us, are frequently cruel; and that we often most inconsiderately, in our sports, are the cause of misery and suffering to such as nestle around our dwellings, or frequent our fields, which, from some particular cause or motive, become the object of pursuit. I say nothing of the birds known as game, as perhaps we cannot obtain them by less painful means than we are accustomed to inflict, and the pursuit is frequently conducive to recreation and health; but the sportsman’s essaying his skill on the swallow race, that “skim the dimpled pool,” or harmless glide along the flowery mead, when, if successful, he consigns whole nests of infant broods to famine and to death, is pitiable indeed! No injury, no meditated crime, was ever imputed to these birds; they free our dwellings from multitudes of insects; their unsuspicious confidence and familiarity with men merit protection not punishment from him. The sufferings of their broods, when the parents are destroyed, should excite humanity, and demand our forbearance. But the wheatear, in an unfortunate hour, has been called the English ortolan, and is pursued as a delicate morsel through all its inland haunts, when hatching and feeding its young, the only period in which it frequents our heaths. I execrate the practice as most cruel: their death evinces no skill in the gunner; their wretched bodies, when obtained, are useless, being embittered by the bruises of the shot, and unskilful operations of the picker and dresser. No, let the parental duties cease, and when the bird retires to its maritime downs, if doomed to suffer, the individual dies alone, and no starving broods perish with it. I supplicate from the youthful sportsman his consideration for these most innocent creatures, the summer wheatear and the swallow.