"PAYING THEIR SHOT."
A Party of excursionists from the Tyne thought it a pleasant way of spending a Bank-holiday to go wantonly shooting swarms of sea-birds on the Farne Islands. When remonstrated with by the more humane man in charge, they considered it still greater "sport" to threaten to push an oar down his throat, and make a target of him. These sportive souls indeed managed amongst them to "hit his felt hat and graze his left thumb" with shot. But when 239 of them were summoned under the Wild Birds Act, and had to pay fines and expenses to the tune of some £70, they probably modified their notion of the nature and claim of "Sport," and found that "paying the shot" in that sense was the least pleasant part of shooting. Some of them were probably left without "a shot in the locker." A few more such wholesome lessons, and the "Cad with a Gun," the "Brute with a Double-Barrel," may no longer be found depopulating Nature's feathered preserves and disgracing the name of honest Sport.