00 WING-SHOOTING. 



to battle with the greatest scourge of this centiny. I re- 

 member that July ,and August were hot and dry, but 

 about the tw^entieth of August, the epidemic nature of 

 the disease suddenly ceased, and about the twenty-fourth, 



1 made up my mind to look for cock. Within a mile of 

 my home was a nice little covert where at the beginning 

 of the season two or three broods could be easily flushed, 

 but after the tenth of August, as a rule, not a bird could 

 be found. Well, when danger from the epidemic had pas- 

 sed, after having spent seven anxious weeks attending to 

 and looking after the welfare of several'hundred labour- 

 ers, I was ready for sport, and on that afternoon I had it. 

 From the excessive drought I fully expected to find a fair 

 number of birds in this springy covert, but on fairly get- 

 ting into it, I found that the covert seemed to swarm with 

 them. It contained three depressions, of about twenty by 

 thirty yards, and in each of these nearly a dozen were 

 flushed. In three afternoons twenty-one couple were se- 

 cured, and that was a greater number of birds than I ever 

 remember of being taken out of that covert in any one 

 season, and I attribute it to the drought, which caused 

 the coverts in its vicinity to become too dry for suitable 

 feeding grounds. After a few days a heavy rain set in 

 and all the cock disappeared, but what glorious shooting 



