SPORT AND BIRD-LIFE 87 



among the trellised poles in the hop-gardens, and 

 although the birds will rise wild from the close-shorn 

 stubbles and from among the straggling roots, yet if 

 we do mark them down in gorse or " short-cut," we 

 are very likely to make up for lost time. And there is 

 good fun on an off day among the pheasants in the 

 hedgerows, with lots of rabbits thrown in. A gun on 

 either side, and another ahead ; a couple of spaniels 

 routing in the ditches ; a rustling upwards among 

 the branches, a swishing to and fro of the topmost 

 sprays, and up goes a rocketer to be cleverly grassed, 

 if he does not play hide-and-seek with you behind the 

 spreading boughs of some hedge oak. There is heavy 

 firing, too, on a big " shoot " among the rabbits in the 

 beginning of the winter, when the frosts have thinned 

 the undergrowth and cut down the last of the leaves. 

 Now you are picketed along the rides cut in the furze 

 covers ; now you are set in stations round a copse of 

 oak and hazel saplings ; now walking in line through 

 the tree-stems in an open wood among the tufts of 

 withered bracken ; or, best of all, beating the face 

 of a down dotted over with patches of furze and 

 broom, where bunny, stopped short in his scuffle from 

 his lair, is knocked head over heels to roll down like 

 a ball, till the body is brought up of a sudden some 

 hundred feet lower down. We could wish there were 

 more snipe left ; and ancient keepers delight in dilating 

 on the flights of ducks and plumps of teals that used 

 to haunt some of the ponds in the good old days ere 

 the country was " spoiled " by ditching and draining. 



