100 WATUEAL HISTOEY SKETCHES. 



to run, and you will rarely rise one just at the spot where 

 you saw it pitch. They often perch in the tea-tree scrub, 

 and I have twice killed them sitting on the bare limb of 

 a large gum-tree. Whether for sporfc or profit, I consider 

 the snipe the finest small-game bird in Victoria. They 

 remained in our district longer than any other summer 

 game. There is no pot-hunting in snipe-shooting, they 

 must be killed in a sportsmanlike manner, or not at all. 

 It is fair to shoot them whenever they are found. Every 

 one knows the pleasure he experiences in a good day's 

 snipe-shooting, and what was of the most consequence 

 to us, we had always a ready sale for them in Melbourne, 

 at 2s. 6d. per couple; and occasionally some free-liver 

 will give 5s. in the first of the season : in 1853, I sold 

 the first snipe that I killed for 5s. Although this is 

 certainly a great country for snipe, yet I have never 

 seen such wisps here as in Sweden, when the old and 

 young birds were on their way down from their north- 

 ern breeding-haunts in September. The most I ever 

 bagged here myself in the day was thirteen couple and 

 a half; and although I have heard of some extraordi- 

 nary days' snipe-shooting, I never myself saw twenty 

 couple of Australian snipe fall to one gun in the day. 

 No bird has been driven from this district more than the 

 snipe, and to get a good day's shooting a man must now 

 go a long way afield. 



As a specimen of a day's sport out here, I will give an 

 extract from my game-book of December 22nd, 1854, on 

 which day "the old boy" and myself shot on the island 



