ompanied by my spaniels and an old
retriever, and attended only by one man, to carry the game, I have
enjoyed as good sport as mortal need desire on this side of the Tweed.
Here is a rough sketch of a morning's work.

[Sidenote: PARTRIDGE AND WOODCOCK]

"Commencing operations by walking across a turnip-field, two or three
coveys spring wildly from the farther end, and fly, as I expect, to the
adjoining common, where they are marked down on a brow thickly clothed
with furze. Marching towards them with spaniels at heel, up jumps a hare
under my nose, then another, then a rabbit. I reload rapidly, and on
reaching the gorse 'put in' the dogs. Whirr! there goes a partridge! The
spaniels drop to the report of my gun, but the fluttering wings of the
dying bird rouse two of his neighbours before I am ready, and away they
fly, screaming loudly. The remainder are flushed in detail and I succeed
in securing the greater part of them. Now for the next covey. They were
marked down in that little hollow where the heather is longer than
usual--a beautiful spot! But before I reach it, up they all spring in an
unexpected quarter; that cunning old patriarch at their head had
cleverly called them together to a naked part of the hill from whence he
could observe my manoeuvres, and a random shot sent after him with
hearty good will proved totally ineffective.

"Now the spaniels are worming through the thick sedges on either side of
the brook which intersects the moor, and by their bustling anxiety it is
easy to see that game is afoot. Keeping well in front of them, I am just
in time for a satisfactory right and left at two cock pheasants, which
they had hunted down to the very edge of the water before they could
persuade them to take wing. Now for that little alder coppice at the
further end of the marshy swamp. Hark to that whipping sound so
different from the rush of the rising pheasant or the drumming flight of
the partridge! I cannot see the bird, but I know it is a woodcock. This
must be one of his favourite haunts, for I perceive the tracks of his
feet and the perforations of his bill in every direction on the black
mud around. Mark! again. A second is sprung, and as he flits between the
naked alders a snap-shot stops his career. I now emerge at the farther
end, just where the trees are thinner than elsewhere. A wisp of snipes
utter their well-known cry and scud over the heath; one of these is
secured. The rest fly towards a little p