86 THE MYRTLE BKE. 



more especially with the gun and rod, and as having taken the largest Trout 

 ever caught with hook and line in the Thames, which weighed 15^1bs ; one 

 thing more I must premise, and which my readers could not otherwise know, 

 and that is, the honest, straightforward, and soldier-like bluntness with which 

 the stoiy I am about to tell was given. Captain Brown set out by disdaining 

 any pretensions to a knowledge of British Ornithology, to which, in part, is 

 probably to be ascribed the fact of the present subject having not earlier 

 been brought under the attention of Naturalists. It was at the termination 

 of the last war, that the Captain returned to his native village, where he has 

 ever since resided ; and every locality within a range of six miles from 

 Egham was well known to him, as far, at all events, as its sporting capabilities 

 went. The spot to which I would now refer is known as the " Long Arm," 

 and is a valley lying on the north side, and running parallel with what was 

 the Guards and Cavalry Stables' Quarter of the Camp at Chobham, and 

 which terminates eastward in a piece of water, which was of essential use 

 on that occasion. Twenty-five years since, this valley was one quaking bog, 

 incapable of sustaining the weight of a man, and in which even pointers 

 floundered about leg deep ; it was then covered with what my friend calls 

 " Bog Myrtle ;" and I presume, by his description, this was a small species 

 of withey, which grows in such localities ; at all events, it flouiished here, 

 in large or small patches, or single bushes, more or less. This valley abuts 

 on the eastern part of the Portnall Estate, belonging to Colonel Challoner, 

 and was a good Snipe-ground, and the constant resort of the Captain, his 

 father and their friends. On these occasions, he says, that he remembered 

 his father complaining of " those troublesome Bees " which diverted the 

 attention of the dogs, and kept them pottering about in the bushes to the 

 great loss of time ; and this occurred every time they went to the spot ; 

 and being in the habit of meeting with the aforesaid "Bees," it became so 

 usual, that he never thought of its being anything peculiar, but looked upon 

 them as some species of small bird which usually frequented such places. 

 They were veiy minute, and flew, or rather buzzed from bush to bush, im- 

 mediatelj' concealing themselves at the foot, in the grass around the stem, 

 and seldom or never again appearing; and he well remembers his impres- 

 sion being, that the dogs must often have trod them into the moss, and so 

 killed them. The tail appeared long for the body, and in flight, gave them 

 a pleasant-like appearance. The parties with whom he was in the habit of 

 shooting in this place, were his father, Mr. Samuel Mumford of Chobham, an 

 old man named Spong, and well known as a man living on the produce of the 

 "wild," who dealt in plovers' eggs, snipes, and wildfowl, and a Mr. Isherwood, 

 brother to the present Eector of Old Windsor. Being out shooting in the 

 locality in question, with this latter gentleman, and the " Bees" flying from 

 bush to bush, as usual, one of the pointers followed a bird into a bush and 

 made a dash at it, as dogs will, and came up the bank with a bunch of grass, 



