the smallest shot and went down to the reed bed and
concealed himself among the bushes at a suitable distance. The birds
were pouring in, and when it was growing dark and they had settled down
for the night he fired his big piece into the thick of the crowd, and by
and by when the birds after wheeling about for a minute or two settled
down again in the same place he fired again. Then he went home, and
early next morning men and boys went into the reeds and gathered
a bushel or so of dead starlings. But the birds returned in their
thousands that evening, and his heart being still hot against them he
went out a second time to slaughter them wholesale with his big gun.
Then when he had blazed into the crowd once more, and the dead and
wounded fell like rain into the water below, the revulsion came and he
was mad with himself for having done such a thing, and on his return to
the house, or palace, he angrily told his people to "let the starlings
alone" for the future--never to molest them again!

I thought it one of the loveliest stories I had ever heard; there is no
hardness comparable to that of the sportsman, yet here was one, a very
monarch among them, who turned sick at his own barbarity and repented.

Beyond the flowery wet meadows, favored by starlings and a
breeding-place of swans, is the famous Chesil Bank, one of the seven
wonders of Britain. And thanks to this great bank, a screen between sea
and land extending about fourteen miles eastward from Portland, this
part of the coast must remain inviolate from the speculative builder of
seaside holiday resorts or towns of lodging-houses.

Every one has heard of the Fleet in connection with the famous swannery
of Abbotsbury, the largest in the land. I had heard so much about the
swannery that it had but little interest for me. The only thing about
it which specially attracted my attention was seeing a swan rise up and
after passing over my head as I stood on the bank fly straight out over
the sea. I watched him until he had diminished to a small white spot
above the horizon, and then still flying he faded from sight. Do these
swans that fly away over the sea, and others which appear in small
flocks or pairs at Poole Harbour and at other places on the coast,
ever return to the Fleet? Probably some do, but, I fancy some of these
explorers must settle down in waters far from home, to return no more.

The village itself, looked upon from this same elevation, is very
att