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52 THROUGH NORWAY WITII A KNAPSACK.
orange and warm red brown. Its habit is to grow
on the dry well-clrained spots, while peat moss occupies
the swampy localities.
Though early, I halted at the Jerkin station, which
is the largest and most famous on this highway from
the modern to the ancient capital of Norway, and found
it a bustling, rather business-like place : a Norwegian
modification of a Swiss hospice. Most sporting tourists
make it a resting-place for some days, game being
rather abundant on the Fjelde.
I found Mr. Gould hard at work, skinning and
preparing his day’s spoil, which was very considerable; a
young bird I had caught on the way was added to the
collection. I was surprised at the variety of birds
Mr. Gould had killed; he had, in mere numbers, more
than double the amount of what an ordinary
sportsman, accounted a crack shot, would consider a good
day’s sport hereabouts. The skilful naturalist, without
any of the paraphernalia of sporting—no pointers or
setters with wonderful instincts, nothing but a
very-old-fashioned looking gun, and the bare requisites for
making it go off—comes to the place for the first time
in his life with a predetermination to shoot particular
kinds of birds only, and those of particular ages ; he
walks straight to their haunts, and shoots nearly all
he seeks, and beats the mere bird-slayer who bangs at
everything he sees. How any man can be a sportsman
without being a naturalist, I cannot understand. Such
a phenomenon would, I suspect, be unknown, if in the
curriculum of our great Universities science and natural
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