288 BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES 



quaint, timid little nestlings, calling a-chuck, a-chuck, and 

 alighting a yard or so ahead on the marsh, the young ones 

 running eagerly up to their parents chirping ; and so the 

 pretty little family goes its way to the spongy water-side, 

 where, under the rising light of the young moon, they take 

 their first lessons in bibbling. There they stay by the water- 

 side till they can fly, hiding like a mouse in the rank marsh 

 crops if a hen-harrier darken the sky, for that old bandit 

 loves a young snipe as well as any gourmet. And then the 

 family ranges the marshes, and a few friendly families join 

 company ; and by shooting-time herds of thirty or forty fly 

 restless in wet weather from marsh to rond, or from rond to 

 marsh. They won't " lay " in wet weather, for fear, mayhap, 

 of wetting their feathers, and such is a bad season for the 

 gunner. 



Should they have been robbed of their huge eggs, they 

 will lay again, so that young fledglings are at times found 

 as late as harvest — a fact the gunner regrets, as he walks on 

 a still, bright day down to leeward, never to windward, ever 

 ready for their turning to right or left of him, affording a 

 splendid mark ; for if you go down to windward the snipe 

 will rise and twist away from you, offering a poor mark. 



And at that season they are plump, as an acute lawyer 

 once found. An old gunner had been out snipe-shooting 

 with him one day in August, and on the way home through 

 the straggly village the gunner made excuse to drop into a 

 shop to buy some high-dried herring for supper, when the 

 heaviest snipe was weighed — six and a half ounces. 



On rejoining the lawyer, he offered to bet on the weight of 

 the heaviest snipe, backing it weighed over six ounces. The 

 lawyer said no — under. The money was staked and the 

 snipe taken to the post-office, and lo ! it weighed over six 

 ounces and a half; and the old gunner is happy to this day 

 that he bested a lawyer. 



This same old gunner remembers when it was quite easy 

 to kill eleven brace of a morning — twenty years ago ; and he 



