28 Sporting Sketches in Pen and Pencil. 



polluted with china clay running through it. It was so unnatural, so 

 unaccountable, so ghastly, that it almost made me sick to look at it. There 

 was the green foliage, the grey rocks, the heather and fern intermixed, 

 to which the sparkling water would have made such a finish ; and, instead of 

 that, there was a milk-white loathsome channel running through the valley. 

 You cannot realise the effect of this unless you see it ; and (always 

 supposing the china clay works do not belong to you) the indignation 

 which fiUs one's bosom at this outrage on nature is exceedingly strong. 

 These feathery streams and pretty valleys, in my young days, were rare 

 places for woodcock, while the moorland abounded in snipe. 



I remember my first woodcock, it was a triumph of stratagem and design 

 which I have laughed over many a time since. I had a schoolfellow and 

 companion, " Marshy B.," with whom I used to shoot. Near his place there 

 was a little swampy three-cornered plantation- in which I had discovered a 

 cock. The whole place wasn't a quarter of an acre, but it was uncommonly 

 thick, and three or four times I flushed that cock in that tangle ; but it was 

 so confoundedly thick that I never could get a clean shot at him. I always 

 went in the same way, and the cock always went out the same way. One 

 day I was shooting with Marshy. We had had a pretty good turn with the 

 snipes, having got five or six couple in the Mainporth Marsh, and we came 

 in sight of this thicket. 



" By the way. Marshy," I said, in the most unconcerned, innocent way, 

 " I was told that there's a cock in that plantation." 



" Where ? What, down in our ' Three-corner ? ' No, you don't say so ! 

 It's just the place for one ! Hang it, we'll look him up." So we walked 

 straight to the thicket. 



Now Marshy was rather a jealous sportsman, and a wee bit selfish, and I 

 had experienced this before, so I had no scruple in " landing him " as I did. 



" Whereabout does he He ? " 



"Bight in the middle, I'm told. Do you go in and get the shot ; I'U wait 

 around in case you miss him;" and, seeing Marshy well into it, I cut round 

 to a lane that ran the other side, and across which the cock usually fled from 

 my attentions. Snugly I crouched myself behind a thorn bush so as to 

 command the road both ways, with my gun half up and ready for the fray. 



