I may say at once that I have a decided preference for the rifle as opposed to the gun, though I should be the last to minimise the pleasures of pheasant and partridge shooting. I am not one of those women who prefer the excitement of a regular "battue" to the more sober joys of a quiet pot-hunt. To begin with, there is no doubt that a woman is a great bore at anything like an organised shooting party. It would do the intending lady-shot good to see the faces of the men on hearing that they are to have the honour of her company during the day. The smothered grumbles of the younger sportsmen are drowned in the more forcible ejaculations of the older generation. But apart from this, and I am not for one moment assuming that it is the duty of women to consider exclusively the whims of the sterner sex, there always seems to me to be some special enjoyment in sallying forth with the object of replenishing an exhausted larder, and with the certainty of having to work one's hardest to accomplish the task. Every shot then becomes of importance, and the comparative scarcity of the prey redoubles one's vigilance and activity. Should the wily partridge elude your aim on these occasions, you feel as if some tremendous disaster had occurred, and your spirits do not recover their normal condition until some special success has rewarded your efforts, and a long and difficult shot has added another victim to the bag. In shooting, as in so many other pursuits, it is quality not quantity that should be sought. [Illustration: _From a Painting by Miss Maud Earl._ _POINTER ON PARTRIDGE._] One of the most amusing day's shooting I ever remember was a hare drive in Austria. We left the house at one o'clock and drove about eight miles through a very flat country to the "rendezvous," where we found a perfect army of beaters who were chatting volubly in an unknown tongue. I discovered later that they were talking Polish, which is the common language of the peasants in that part of Silesia adjoining the Austrian-Russian frontier. The men were mostly barefooted, but in other respects resembled the average English beater. The keepers were distinguished by their green livery and Austrian conical hats. They carried horns slung from their shoulders, and when a line had been formed some quarter of a mile in length, the signal was given by the head-keeper on his horn and was taken up by his subordinates. An excellent method was observed in allotting a certain number of beaters to the care of each keeper, who was then responsible for their maintaining a good line and preventing stragglers.