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will not suffice without the vigorous exercise. The exercise eliminates the effete particles, melts down the superfluous fat, purges the congested glands, clears out the 1000 miles of skin drainage, makes the joints lissom and the ligaments elastic, whilst the accessaries brace the nerves, dissipate the mental ennui, and give tone and health to the new deposits that are to replace the used-up atoms. If it be true that the materials of our frames are renewed once in seven years, that must apply to those engaged in sedentary occupations, for we feel convinced that with a month of hard mountain climbing we have renewed and renovated our organism from top to toe. Therefore first and foremost of all holiday recreations we would advise mountain climbing. If mountains subserve no other purpose in the economy of nature, they are invaluable as everlasting sources whence the used-up denizens of towns may draw repeated supplies of life and health. So to our busy clients of the middle age, whose spirits are depressed and bodies flabby with town life, we say, go to Switzerland, Tyrol, Scotland, Wales, where you will, and climb about among the hills for a month at least, and you will come back to work fresh as giants and brisk as larks. But mind you walk. To mount a hill on horseback or muleback is to deserve a prosecution by the Cruelty to Animals Society, and to forego one of the best of God's gifts to used-up man.

But we cannot pass our holidays for ever in climbing. To scale the same peaks year after year would be monotonous, and the great charm, the variety of it, will be gone by frequent repetition. In our own country the hills are limited in number, and it is not always convenient to go to Switzerland or Tyrol, where the hills are practically unlimited, at least it will take most men a lifetime to scale all the accessible ones. Variety must be found in recreation.

What more delightful or healthful recreation than shooting grouse over a well-stocked moor? If you can afford to take a moor in the Highlands, or if you have a friend who can afford to take a moor and is obliging enough to give you a week's shooting over it in August, before the birds have become too wild, what more invigorating exercise could you

desire? On the 12th of August you rise with the sun, your breech- or muzzle-loader is in excellent order, your equipment perfect. The gamekeeper is in waiting with his brace of eager pointers and his bag; and after a moderate drive in a light dog-cart-if your moor is not within easy walking distance you reach the purple heather-clad hills where you expect to find your game. You have some stiff hills to climb, and you must lift your foot high at each step among the heather, you must keep your eyes well skinned as you go; and yet, after marching over hill and dale from early morn till dewy eve, with perhaps a half hour's rest for your midday meal of sandwiches and a drop of usquebhae, you are conscious of no fatigue. The excitement keeps you up to the last. The fresh air, the interest attending the evolutions of the dogs, the delightful start you experience from the sudden whirr of a covey of six or eight birds rising at once, the triumph you feel when they drop to your well-aimed right and left, the pleasant episode of a hare or a rabbit cleanly knocked over, the satisfaction you feel with your light and handy breech-loader, the novelty of the whole affair, the unusual sights, sounds, and perfumes that appeal to your senses-all these keep off fatigue; and it is only when you return home and, stripping off your sporting habiliments, indulge in the luxury of a bath, that you begin to wonder how you could have done so much in one day, and to imagine you must be tired-which you are not, only hungry. The next day and the next, and for many days afterwards, you find you can go through the same amount of exertion, and the wildness and scarceness of the birds alone puts a stop to your indefatigable pursuit of the feathered game.

On moors where grouse is scarce, black game is often plentiful. Climbing up a heathery knoll, your good dog makes a point-up rises a fine old hen-bang! and she drops with a thud on the ground. You load, your dog advances a few steps and again points; you walk up, and up goes a fine young cock; you repeat the same process over and over again; the birds rise singly, or at most two at once, which you bring down with your right and left; you count

your spoil, and find you have bagged an old hen and six fine pults within the space of a few yards.

Grouse-shooting is the finest of all shooting, to our mind. We are unable to speak from personal experience of deerstalking, which is, perhaps, a nobler sport. The professional or mercantile cockney, the main part of whose life has been spent in a smoky city, takes quite naturally to grouseshooting, thereby betraying his derivation from a race whose chief occupation was the pursuit of game.

Partridge-shooting is a recreation little inferior to grouseshooting. It is no mean exercise to stamp through many fields of stubble and turnips on a fine September day; and the excitement afforded by the feathered game whirring up at a short distance, and requiring a quick eye and a steady hand to overtake their rapid flight with our small leaden messengers, is by no means to be despised. Partridge-shooting has, moreover, this advantage-that it is to be had within easy reach of the town we live in. Every one has a friend or two in the country ready to give him a day's shooting over a few hundred acres, and the good done to the sedentary citizen by a few outings of this sort is incalculable. Nor are the delights and benefits to be derived from a good day's cover shooting inconsiderable. When the leaves are mostly fallen, when even the ground is crisp with frost, what can be more agreeable than to form one of a select party at a grand battue? Forming line, with skirmishers and flanking parties of beaters, we march steadily through the plantation, crushing the small fallen branches and rustling the dead leaves on the ground. We start as the first cock pheasant rises with a loud cackle. We are almost too much surprised to take an accurate aim, and perhaps we miss the easy shot, to our own disgust and amid the good humoured banter of our friends. However, we soon get used to the sensation, and as we march along pheasants, hares, rabbits, and perhaps a woodcock or two, go to swell the number of the slaughtered, which we triumphantly count over at the end of the day's work.

All descriptions of shooting are healthy recreations. Each requires the sportsman to be in the open air and to take a great

deal of exercise. The sense of fatigue the same amount of exertion would otherwise induce is kept off by the excitement of the chase and the tonic stimuli of the fresh air, the scenery, the vivifying scents and pleasing sounds of the country. Nothing can contribute more to bring the health up and keep it at the highest possible standard than the pursuit of game, be it grouse, partridges, ducks, snipe, or any other kind. Each has its peculiar charm, and all are healthful and strengthening recreations. As hygienic agents, they assuredly occupy the first rank.

Scarcely if at all inferior to shooting, as a valuable hygienic agent, is the gentle craft of fishing. By this we do not mean the cockney amusement of sitting on a chair in a punt at Richmond and catching, or trying to catch, useless and tasteless roach or dace, poisonous barbel or contemptible gudgeon, with a pitcher of porter at one side, a basket of sandwiches at the other, and a pipe in your mouth. It must have been the contemplation of such a booby that caused the great lexicographer to give his celebrated definition of angling. The only boat-fishing that is tolerable is catching mackerel in a stiff breeze, trolling for pike or trout in a fine lake, and once in a way fishing for whitings or haddocks half a mile from the shore on a pleasant summer evening. But these modes of fishing have little of the hygienic character about them. Far different, however, is fly-fishing for trout or salmon in a fine Highland stream. There everything combines to make a healthful recreation. With a light pannier slung at our back, a supple sixteen-foot rod in our hand, and a selection of the best flies in our fishing-book, we sally forth on a fine summer morning to decoy the wary fish. It requires no small exertion of legs and arms to fish half a dozen miles of stream up and down between breakfast and dinner, but the excitement of the sport prevents fatigue, and obviates all ill-effects from wet feet-aye, or wet clothes up to the middle, which often occurs when we hook a twenty-pounder, and he gives us good play. A thorough drenching in a mountain shower is a harmless episode in our day's work. When the mind is pleasurably excited such catastrophes

make no injurious impression on the body. We seem to inhale a new and vigorous vitality at every breath. The excitement of hooking a couple of lively sea-trout, say of a pound or two in weight, at the same time on our line, must be experienced to be understood, and we feel the triumph of a conqueror when we succeed in landing them both. Two or three dozen of such beautiful fish in our pannier is a very good day's work, and has required an amount of vigorous exercise combined with amusement that represents so much new health.

Here is a change for the smoke-dried Londoner! We leave town by the night train, breakfast in Glasgow, then by steam and rail to Loch Lomond, and again by steamer up to the head of that island-studded lake. Now, on foot, we

merrily climb the steep pass of Glencoe. At the watershed of Rest-and-be-Thankful we begin to get out our rod. Down the opposite slope we leisurely wander, whipping the brawling stream that gets ever larger as it descends. Our basket well filled with fat trout furnishes a succulent first course for our well-relished dinner in the comfortable little inn of Ardkinglass, and we can hardly believe that less than four and twenty hours ago we were still inhaling the smoky atmosphere of the great metropolis.

Or, after a hearty breakfast at the tidy little inn at Cladick, we secure the services of old John Mackintosh, and are rowed straight across Loch Awe. The mighty Ben Cruachan rises steep and rugged in our front, the insulated ruin of Kilchurn frowns darkly on the placid water on our right, and the lake stretches far away on our left, surrounded by its hilly banks, clad with alders, birks, broom and heather. Arrived at the point where the River Awe connects the lake with the sea, we leisurely fish down the stream, and John, who carries our basket, begins to groan beneath its ever-increasing weight, and requires sundry reinforcements of Glenlivat ere we reach our evening halt at Taynuilt, on the shores of Loch Etive. Days passed in this exciting sport, amidst such grand scenery and pure air, raise the health up to its highest attainable standard; they brace us up to go through

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