68 WING-SHOOTING. 



to shoot a good deal, informed me of the following inci- 

 dent ; but by the way this friend was a very careless*and 

 lazy fellow, and through carelessness and laziness lost the 

 finest opportunity for making a large bag of cock that he 

 ever had. About three o'clock one drizzly afternoon a 

 neighbour made him aware of a large number of snipe 

 lying in a field near by. This field was within a quarter 

 of-a-mile of his house, and it was one in which both he 

 and I used to pick up a cock or two, two or three times 

 a week, on going and returning from our shooting excur- 

 sions in the month of October. It contained a small 

 thicket, and the remainder was devoted to the raising of 

 corn and potatoes. He seized his gun, foul as usual, and 

 proceeded to the field, and on jumping the fence flushed a 

 woodcock. From that time till dark he had a succession 

 of snaps, misses, and successful shots as a bird was flushed 

 at every few steps, but at last darkness put a stop to the 

 agony, when he had secured only seven couple of very 

 fine woodcock. On leaving the ground he had occasion 

 to pass through some tall weeds, and here, he thought 

 that between twenty-five and thirty cock arose while he 

 was walking a distance of not more than a hundred yards. 

 That night he was very industrious in order to have a 

 clean gun in the morning, but at midnight the rain 



