the hounds. There is a similarity of feeling in the anxiety with which you listen for a find, the joyous cry of "gone away!" the hope that when you come to a check the hounds will shortly again get on the scent, the tuneful cry of "tally-ho!" and last, not least, your triumph in being in at the death. In open weather, then, give me a stud of twelve good hunters in the Warwickshire country or Vale of Berkeley, and when "icicles hang by the wall" let me migrate to Beaudesert, Staffordshire, the hospitable seat of the truly noble and gallant Anglesey, where can be had the very finest woodcock shooting in England, with the additional advantage of having moors, and preserves full of black game, pheasants, and hares. At The woodcock usually arrives in England about the latter end of October. The time, however, in different seasons is more or less advanced or retarded, according to the wind and weather at the beginning of the autumn. East and north-east winds, especially when accompanied by fogs, bring these birds of passage over in the greatest numbers. their arrival in this country, on the first flight, they drop anywhere, as well under high trees as in hedge-rows, coppices, heath, and brambles; afterwards they take up their abode in coppices of nine or ten years' growth, and sometimes in those little shaws which, having been cut, are left to grow for timber. It is seldom that a woodcock is found in a young plantation. By taking up their abode, I must not be understood to mean that they remain in the same wood during the winter, for they seldom continue more than twelve or fourteen days in one place. Woodcocks stay here generally until the middle of March, although their departure, like their arrival, depends much upon the state of the weather. This bird rises heavily from the ground, and makes a considerable noise with his wings. When he is found in a hedge-row, or at the skirts of a wood, he frequently only skims the ground, and then his flight not being rapid, he is easily shot; but when he is sprung in a large wood, where he must clear the tops of the trees before he can take a horizontal flight, he sometimes rises very high, and with great rapidity in this case he is a difficult bird to get at, from the turnings and twistings which he is obliged to make in order to pass between the trees. There is a species of spaniel which is used in this sport, which gives tongue when the cock springs, or when he gets upon his haunt. These dogs are of a middling size, short legs, and very strong. They must be hardy, able to bear strong work, disposed to go into cover freely, to hunt briskly, and yet go very slow when upon scent. Two or three brace of spaniels, well broken, may be used together-and they will find ample work in a large wood on thick cover. In this sport, it is essential to have a good marker: with his assistance, if the wood is small, it will be difficult for a cock to escape; for it is a well-known fact, that he will frequently allow himself to be sprung, and even shot at, four or five times before he will leave the wood to go to an adjoining one or to a hedge-row. During the daytime the woodcock remains in those parts of the wood where there are void spaces or glades, picking up earthworms and grubs from the fallen leaves; in the evening he goes to drink and wash his bill at the pools and springs, returning at break of day to his "sylvan retreat. In the narrow passes and openings that, by their direction, lead from the woods to the waters, nets are spread to take the woodcocks in their morning and evening flights. The best time for making a bag is early in the morning, after a bright moonlight night. Grouse are found in some parts of the northern counties of England, and also in parts of Wales, but they are not now very numerous in either of these countries. In Scotland they are "plentiful as blackberries," and a tolerably good shot may bag from twenty to thirty brace a day during the first three weeks of the season. The size of the grouse exceeds that of the partridge, and the weight is about nineteen ounces. These birds feed principally upon the black and red whortleberries, but they also eat the common heath-berries. The grouse inhabit those mountains and moors which are covered with heather, seldom descending to the lower grounds. They usually fly in packs of four or five brace, and generally frequent mossy places, especially in the middle of the day, when the weather is warm. The old cock is known by the chocking noise he makes; and when the dogs point at a brood, he is generally the first on the wing; but, as grouse-shooting is similar in all its operations to that of partridge-shooting, it is unnecessary to enter more fully upon the subject: suffice it to say, it is one of the finest amusements the keen sportsman can enjoy. One word upon packing grouse ; for it too often happens that "a present from the Highlands" is a rather mortifying affair. The moment the bird is shot, he ought to be wiped perfectly dry before he is put in the game-bag; upon reaching home he ought to be placed for a few moments before a small fire, thus to complete the work of drying; he ought then to be wrapped up in a piece of coarse brown paper or heather, and be immediately despatched in his deal box for the south. Snipes visit this country in the autumn, and remain until the spring. It is generally believed that they return into Germany and Switzerland to breed; a great number, however, remain in "merrie old England” during the summer, and breed in the marshes. Snipes always fly against the wind, and, to the inexperienced sportsman, are difficult to kill, on account of their numerous turnings and twistings; but if the "gunner" does not get flurried, and takes his time, he will find that these birds are easy to bag, as they will fall with the slightest portion of the charge of shot. When the frost sets in, snipes are to be found in great plenty in those places where the water lies open from the nature of their bills they cannot feed in hard and strong ground, and therefore always select soft and muddy spots. Perhaps, after woodcock and snipe-shooting, there is no "gunning," as the yankees call it, to be compared to that of wildfowl. The great difficulty of getting at your birds constituted the pleasure to the true English sportsman of the olden time. I allude not to the one of the present day, who, since the introduction of the battue system, has his game driven up to him, and destroys them very much after the fashion of shooting tame barn-door fowl. Give me the walk through the stubble after the partridge, or through the gorse or closely-wooded cover after the pheasant, or the ankle-deep in the marshes after the snipe and wild-duck. A few hours of such labour sweetens the pleasures; and I leave the idle, pampered sportsman to enjoy the gratification of shooting for book, often blowing to pieces every hare and pheasant that comes within a few yards of one of his numerous murderous weapons, regardless of everything so long as the diary records the quantity, not the quality, of his day's sport. But, to the wild duck, windy weather-a north-easter-is always most favourable for shooting them, as the noise made by the rustling of the trees and movements of the reeds and rushes prevents your approach being heard. Your dog should be a firstrate water-spaniel, one who knows his duty well, and who takes to the liquid element kindly, as winged teal and ducks are difficult to retrieve, Owing to their diving. Wild-ducks are birds of passage, and arrive here in great flights from the northern countries in the beginning of winter. Many of them, however, remain in our marshes and fens during the whole year, and breed there. They pair in spring, and lay from ten to fifteen eggs. The duck usually constructs her nest at the edge of the water, upon an elevated tuft of rushes, and begins to lay in March and April; her incubation is about a month, so that the young ones are generally hatched in May. Their wings grow so slowly that it takes three months before they can use them with proper effect. In the beginning of autumn the pools are frequented by teams of wild-ducks, and the best method of shooting them is from a boat. The sportsman must be careful to make as little noise as possible, for the ducks will often, having flown up, merely make a circle, return in a little time, and again alight upon the pool. In winter, during the frosty weather, you may watch them in the dusk of the evening, at the margins of the water where they come to feed, and when the pools are frozen over you must select a spot where the ice is broken, and you will be certain to fall in with no inconsiderable quantity of this web-footed race. The proper site for a decoy is a large piece of water, surrounded with wood, and beyond which a marshy and uncultivated country; for if it is not thus protected, the wildfowl will soon be driven from their quiet haunt during the day by the noise and tumult of the busy country world. As soon as the evening sets in, the decoy rises, and the birds feed through the night. The decoy ducks are fed with hempseed, which is thrown over the skreens in small quantities, to bring them forward into the pipes or canals, and to tempt the wildfowl to follow, as the seed is light enough to float. There are several pipes, as they are called, which lead up a narrow ditch, that terminates with a funnel net. Over these pipes, which grow narrower from their first entrance, is a continued arch of netting, suspended on hoops. It is necessary to have a pipe for almost every wind that can blow, as upon this depends which one the wildfowl will take to; and the decoy man must always keep to the leeward, for fear the fine nostril of the bird should scent him out. Along each pipe are placed, at certain intervals, skreens made of reeds, which are so situated that it is impossible the wildfowls should see the decoy man before they have passed towards the end of the pipe, where the net is placed. The inducement to the wildfowl to go up one of these pipes is, because the decoy ducks thus trained lead the way: no sooner do they approach the net than the aquatic Fagan, that king of artful dodgers, dives under water, leaving his victim to be easily caught. It ofter, however, happens that the wildfowl will not follow the decoy ducks in "taking their pipe ;" and then use is made of a well-trained dog, who passes backwards and forwards between the reed-screens, in which are small poles, for the decoy man to see and the dog to pass through; this attracts the eye of the wildfowl, who advance to drive the contemp tible-looking quadruped away. The dog, in the meantime, draws nearer and nearer to the net, when the decoy man, showing himself in rear of the wild-fowl, leaves them no alternative but to rush into the meshes spread for them. Sometimes the dog will not attract their attention without having a gaudy red Bandana thrown round his throat. The season for catching fowl in decoys is from the latter end of October until February. The Lincolnshire decoys principally supply the London markets; there is a splendid one near Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire, the property of Earl Fitzhardinge, and the ducks caught there are very superior to any others taken in England. The dawn of our second day's expected enjoyment in the Highlands by no means fulfilled the hopes we had reasonably anticipated from the glorious setting sun of the preceding evening, the last golden rays of which we had watched with delight, sinking behind the distant mountain-tops "Till the moor grew dim and stern; And soon an utter darkness fell The first thought of an ardent sportsman when he awakes refreshed by the slumbers of night-whether he has a twenty-mile ride to cover, a walk to a neighbouring moor, or decides on a cast for salmon or trout in the sparkling river which glides through the glen at handis the weather; a fickle jade at all times and in all climates; but in none is this fickleness and eccentricity, so detrimental to sporting gentlemen and sportive, picnicking damsels, more incomprehensibly displayed than in the mountainous districts of the western highlands, and in no part of the wide world do you find so many reasons offered for this variety of atmospherical changes, which so unpleas ingly and constantly occur. We shall, however, leave the solution of this question to astronomical philosophers; for whether it be that the fleeting clouds, attracted by the mountain-tops, suck up the moisture from the Atlantic on their passage to this hilly region for the mere frolic of spouting their contents on grouse shooters in the glens below, or that the particular soil requires more moisture than elsewhere, we cannot pretend to explain, but the fact admits of no argument that there are few parts of her Majesty's dominions so favoured with the tears of heaven. And thus we can well understand the anger of a citizen tourist who once accosted a Highland lad of the west with the question-" Does it always rain in these parts ?" and are not surprised at his facetious reply" Na, sair; it sometimes snaws." Instead, therefore, of beholding another day break with a clear, blue sky over head, and balmy breezes from the glen, the wind whistled, the rain fell heavily, the mists were dense in the valley and on the mountain-tops, and all was damp and dreary and blue-devilish. We could not, however, permit ourselves to be thus easily discouraged, so we forthwith prepared ourselves by adopting a costume for the worst, and, hoping for the best, proceeded in search of the gamekeeper, whom we found exhaling the comforting weed from two inches of clay, with a bowl at the end of it as black as time and smoke could well make it; in fact a well-seasoned bit of clay is the delight of a Highlander. And while on this subject, we recommend no sportsman visiting the moors to go unprovided with a good supply of the pig-tail; no compliment is accepted by a Highlander with so much pleasure as a small supply of the fragrant weed, and many a good day's sport may emanate from this trifling douceur which might otherwise not be obtained: in fact we made it an invariable rule never to go on any sporting expedition unprovided with a well-filled pouch of tobacco and a pound or two of first-rate tea. But to return to our subject: we found the keeper puffing a light cloud at the heavy ones, and admiring the weathercock on the top of the château. We forthwith questioned this trusty native of the glen as to the hopes of a clearing; and having been assured by him that, although then decidedly moist, he anticipated a braw time about mid-day, we wrapped our plaid around us, and whiled away an hour in the external scrutiny of our ancient and pleasing quarter, which, nevertheless, looked grim and dreary enough as it stood in its solemn loneliness on this dark and dismal morning. Who might have been the architect of this interesting relic of lawless times we cannot pretend to say; but he had doubtless, and with reason, satisfied the original owner of days lang syne, when might was right-in fact when Highland chiefs lived and kept their own as long as they could, not by right of law or purchase or entail, but by the force of arms; in fact "The good old rule Sufficed then-the simple plan, That they should take who have the power, Sportsmen, however, like other people, must eat, for life, strength, and energy. If so be they do not exactly live to eat, nevertheless this gastronomic sport is a very pleasant pastime on most occasions, but never more so than when your inward man is reminded by the keen, though it may be somewhat moist, mountain air of the morning, of the unquestionable fact that the cravings of hunger expect to be satisfied even at fifteen miles from a baker's shop. We therefore lost no |