272 THE COVERTS 



breeding and multiplying at Aston Hall and in others 

 of the Warwickshire woods. 



But, after all, in our wilder covert shooting say, on 

 the shores of Loch Fyne or the innumerable sea-arms 

 in Western Scotland no one need complain of lack of 

 variety. The keeper sends word by a swift-footed 

 gillie to the nearest telegraph office that a flight of 

 woodcock has come in with the November frosts. 

 Responding promptly to the despatch, the guns drive 

 to the ground through all the autumn beauties of a 

 Scotch Riviera, along a winding road now commanding 

 broad views of the ocean sounds and archipelagoes, and 

 now dipping into the depths of the gorge or ravine 

 where the dimness is fitfully illuminated by stray shafts 

 of the flickering sunshine. The difficulty in these 

 back-of-the-world shootings is in recruiting a sufficiency 

 of beaters ; for men or even boys in these high edu- 

 cation days are as hard to come by as for the chamois 

 drives in the highlands of Tyrol and the Salzkammer- 

 gut. But the numerical inefficiency of the force only 

 increases the excitement, for as the guns are going 

 forward in line with the natives, they do a good deal of 

 the seeking and finding for themselves. The great 

 thing is to take it leisurely and do nothing in a hurry. 

 Indeed, not unfrequently you come on a place where 

 anything but the slowest progress is impossible, and as 

 you force your way through the thicket or make the 

 detour to get across the burn, friends and attendants are 

 constrained to wait for you. The walking may be 

 toilsome, but it is singularly picturesque. The rills 



