WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 31 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE covers of Ty-meur, in Finisterre, are, perhaps, as favourable 

 for woodcocks and woodcock-shooting as any in Lower Brittany. 

 Its alder-beds and oak-copses, abounding with holly, are fringed 

 with narrow water-meadows ; and if, here and there, an occasional 

 black bog, devoid of all growth, compels the chasseur to wade 

 knee-deep in its mire, it affords rare feeding for cock and snipe, 

 as well as open ground, to catch them when they rise in the 

 adjoining covers. In many respects there is a great similarity 

 between the glades of Finisterre and the coombes of Devon ; and 

 were it not for the occasional appearance of a Breton peasant 

 dressed in antique and quaint costume, or of a tethered black and 

 white cow, indicating by its diminutive stature the poverty of the 

 land, a Devonshire man in Lower Brittany might fancy himself 

 wandering among the hollow vales and hanging woods of his own 

 unrivalled county. The broad banks enclosing mere strips of 

 pasture, and unnegotiable by any horse less favoured than 

 Pegasus, the vegetation of the valleys, the sparkling brooks 

 alive with trout, and doing the duty of irrigation in every mea- 

 dow, are precisely what he sees at home : but the moment he 

 ascends to the hill-tops or table-land, where it can be said to 

 exist, the country in general is an uncultivated wilderness, over- 

 grown with timber, broom, furze, and heather ; less wild, perhaps, 

 than the Forest of Dartmoor, but serrated, as it is, with vast 



