In a letter of 19 March 1854 he says:--“In my growing up we heard nothing of game preserving hereabout, and game was in abundance; and at certain seasons you could see at times all classes of people out for a day’s sport. They would kill but little; but then it was an amusement, and a day’s holyday, and apparently an unrestricted right to go where they liked unmolested: so they enjoyed a right old English liberty, and came home tired and happy, not caring whether they had game or not. But since the game is preserved, and they are restrained from killing it in the old way, they appear determined to kill it some way or another. Consequently game is not so plenty now as heretofore.” In a letter of 7 October 1852 he notes another change here:--“The old barn-door or dung-hill cock appears to be extinct, being crossed with China, Minorca, etc. I well remember when a boy you could not go out, particularly up the vale of Lustleigh, but you heard them all crowing in all directions, each on his own dung-hill, challenging each other, and their shrill clarion-like sound echoed through the valley.... The sort they have now are so hoarse and dull in their crowing that there is nothing to attract attention, nothing agreeable in their sound, and not loud enough to be heard by one another, so there is no answering each other. In my boyhood the whole valley would ring with them.” Again, on 6 March 1854 he writes:--“I am going up again soon, and shall take some feathers from two cocks I saw, a blue and a red, which I consider will do. The real colours are very scarce: people mix up their breeds so, that there are but few of the old sort left.” I presume that he wanted the feathers for making flies for fishing. He always made his own flies, and made them very neatly: so also did my father; but I never made a fly that could even be offered to a fish. On 21 May 1848 he gives my father a little lecture on his fishing:--“Kneel down on one knee. I have done so many a time, when the water has been clear, and thrown my fly with the greatest precision, and almost sure of a fish, but seldom succeeding in the second throw if failing in the first. That sort of careful fishing is practised by all good fishermen, though no doubt one threshes away and often takes fish--not so with your grandfather or with myself in my early days: we were more particular, and took large catches of fish.”