"Bang went the Baby; round I spun like a weather-cock with the blood flowing from my nose, as the recoil had driven the top of the hammer deep into the bridge. My Baby not only screamed but kicked viciously. However I knew the elephant would be bagged, as the half-pound shell had been aimed directly behind the shoulder." We have the most minute descriptions of the effects of these projectiles in the head of a hippopotamus and the body of an elephant. "I was quite satisfied with my explosive shells," says the enthusiastic sportsman, and the great beasts appear to have been satisfied too. Now let me attempt to describe the feelings of a man not born with the natural instinct of a sportsman. We need not suppose him to be either a weakling or a coward. There are strong and brave men who can exercise their strength and prove their courage without willingly inflicting wounds or death upon any creature. To some such men a gun is simply an encumbrance, to wait for game is a wearisome trial of patience, to follow it is aimless wandering, to slaughter it is to do the work of a butcher or a poulterer, to wound it is to incur a degree of remorse that is entirely destructive of enjoyment. The fact that somewhere on mountain or in forest poor creatures are lying with festering flesh or shattered bones to die slowly in pain and hunger, and the terrible thirst of the wounded, and all for the pleasure of a gentleman,--such a fact as that, when clearly realized, is not to be got over by anything less powerful than the genuine instinct of the sportsman who is himself one of Nature's own born destroyers, as panthers and falcons are. The feeling of one who has not the sporting instinct has been well expressed as follows by Mr. Lewis Morris, in "A Cynic's Day-dream:"-- "Scant pleasure should I think to gain From endless scenes of death and pain; 'Twould little profit me to slay A thousand innocents a day; I should not much delight to tear With wolfish dogs the shrieking hare; With horse and hound to track to death A helpless wretch that gasps for breath; To make the fair bird check its wing, And drop, a dying, shapeless thing; To leave the joy of all the wood A mangled heap of fur and blood, Or else escaping, but in vain, To pine, a shattered wretch, in pain; Teeming, perhaps, or doomed to see Its young brood starve in misery." Hunting may be classed with shooting and passed over, as the instinct is the same for both, with this difference only that the huntsman has a natural passion for horsemanship that may be wanting to the pedestrian marksman. An amusement entirely apart from every other, and requiring a special instinct, is that of sailing.