WOODCOCK. 



221 



very much according to the season, but there is no rule that appHes 

 to all places equally. The coverts in Herefordshire are not 

 generally shot early enough for the Woodcocks, or more would be 

 killed. The best days on record are these ; on December 9th, 1873, 

 twenty-one Woodcocks were killed in the woods at New-Lodge, in the 

 parish of Peterchurch ; and in the following year, at about the same 

 time, the result of four successive days' shooting, was forty Wood- 

 cocks. As a general rule, from four to ten are killed in the early 

 quarter of the December moon, and they are found chiefly on the 

 high ground on the south side of the Golden Valley. 



At Stoke Edith, Mr. Cook, the park-keeper, whose father was 

 the head game-keeper, and who has himself always lived on the 

 estate, thinks that upon the whole. Woodcocks are more plentiful 

 than formerly. He remembers one or two extraordinary seasons 

 when from twenty-five to thirty couples were killed, but nothing 

 approaching this has happened in recent years. The exact 

 numbers killed on the estate of late years, the head-keeper 

 gives as follows : — 



