SCOLOPAX RUSTICOLA 29 



misses to three kills, as the birds do not fly so kindly for me. The 

 last spinney is best of all ; the birds seem determined to favour me, 

 and I get two shots to every one by the two guns inside, and when 

 they come out I am able to show them thirteen birds, of which six 

 have been the result of the last spinney, besides a wood-pigeon and a 

 pheasant. The others between them have fifteen cock, two rabbits 

 and a brace of pheasants, so we have every reason to be jubilant. We 

 have now eighty-eight cock, a bag never beaten here before, but we 

 are not yet finished. Another long pine wood with bracken and hazel 

 on the outskirts only gives us a single bird, but a hazel copse a few 

 yards further on gives us three more, and but for my bad shoot- 

 ing should have given us five. Then we pick up two odd birds, 

 one from a holly hedge near a pool, and another from a bracken 

 patch bordering some turnips. By this time it is getting late and 

 the birds are now in the open feeding, and H. gets one as it flaps 

 overhead, making its way from one feeding ground to another. Only 

 a few minutes more of daylight remain, and we hurry for the last 

 beat on our way home. Here we find that there are still lots of birds, 

 but it is getting too dark for good shooting, and we miss more than 

 we hit, so that only three more birds are brought to book. We have 

 now ninety-eight birds and our host insists on our trying to make up 

 the hundred, but three or four more misses in the gloaming at silent 

 things more like bats than birds, and one bird lost in the dark are 

 the only results, so we have to be content with making the biggest 

 bag of cock recorded in my host's shooting experience. A tramp of 

 two miles to the carts in the fast gathering dark and then home after 

 a long twenty miles' trudge and the best day's small game-shooting 

 I ever hope to have. 



Contrasting well with Colonel Wilson's account of shooting in 

 the Khasia Hills and with ordinary cock-shooting at home is the 

 account given by Tickell of cock-shooting in Nepal which is quoted 

 by Hume. 



Woodcock-shooting in Nepal is laborious work from the steepness 

 of the hills and the spongy nature of the ground which the bird 

 frequents. We found them on light, rich mould, thickly matted with 

 grasses, ferns, and other weeds, and everywhere furrowed by little 

 rills of water trickling through the tangle, or here and there stagnating 

 in little pools or ' bog-holes ' concealed under a layer of vegetation 



