An extended disquisition, redolent of truffles and odorous of the herb-garden, might be devoted to the subject of sauces, of which Charles Ranhofer in his recent manual, "The Epicurean," presents two hundred and forty-six. But this were invading the practical domain of the cookery books, and wandering too far from the lines of the subject under consideration--the history and province of Gastronomy. [Illustration] THE SPOILS OF THE COVER "It is difficult to imagine a happier conjunction than the blending of the symbols when the arms of a sportsman are quartered with those of a cook. The tints of the autumnal woods reflected in the plumage of mature and lusty game are types of rich experiences and genial sentiments which flit about the sportsman's board and linger at his hearth with as gracious a fitness as that which diffuses a faint blush through the russet of a well-cooked mallard's breast, and with a zest equal to the relish which lurks within a woodcock's thigh."--JOHN ALDERGROVE. How that beechwood on a distant hillside, its tall trees despoiled of their foliage, and its skirts lighted with the clinging gold of the saplings, stands out against a hoar November sky and the tablets of memory, as one recollects an accommodating covey of grouse, a successful "right and left," and the hoarse clamour of the crows whose conclave was disturbed by the salvo of the barrels! Of the wealth of aliments bestowed upon man by a 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."