274 THE COVERTS 



rocketing cock-pheasant, or perhaps a hen. Lord or 

 lady, it makes little difference : in those solitudes you 

 are not over-particular as to sex. Climbing one of the 

 watercourses to the broad belt of skirting upper 

 plantation, the guns are disposed in it and above it, 

 to do their best. Were you to attempt to walk the 

 lower side systematically, you would topple over into 

 the abyss. That wood is a famous haunt of the black 

 game. As the cock skims the tops of the fir trees in 

 his powerful flight, it is into that abyss he goes crash- 

 ing when stopped by the charge. For somehow the 

 black game always appeared to head to the seaward, 

 and hard work it often was to retrieve them in the 

 labyrinth of brushwood. On the upper side were the 

 heather hills and the open moors, and more than once 

 the beating has roused outlying red-deer from their 

 lairs. The close of the day's proceedings was almost 

 invariably satisfactory, nor need it be said that the 

 mixed bag made a trophy that would have gladdened 

 the soul of a Weenix. 



Talking of woodcock, it is somewhat surprising that 

 killing a cock should still be considered a triumph. 

 No doubt it is partly because woodcock are really wild 

 game birds of passage, here to-day, and fled to- 

 morrow. Consequently there is a certain romance 

 about bagging them. But it comes chiefly, we believe, 

 from a surviving tradition of the primeval days when 

 the sportsman made awkward play with his single- 

 barrelled flint gun. It was no joke bringing that 

 unwieldy weapon to the present, and the flint ignited 





