iif>i liiifiii 



T IS nearly forty years since I shot my first snipe, 

 and I shot him sitting. I had flushed snipes scores 

 of times when pottering ahout down on the western 

 moors with a noble converted percussion single barrel, 

 of which I was proprietor, but their meteor-like flight 

 put them quite out of my reach, and waiting " till 

 he stop " was out of the question. Therefore did I 

 wait till I saw one drop, and, marking the spot care- 

 fully, I crept up within distance, and blazed at the spot. 

 Nothing got up, so I walked up, and there was my snipe. Ha ! ha ! 

 How proud was I of that exploit ! I carried the bird through the town 

 by his extremest toe-nail all the way home. But a day or two after I 

 shot one flying. The bird got up, and, pointing somewhere in the direc- 

 tion he had gone, I let fly on the chance. The old gun scattered flne, 

 and would have covered a barn-door comfortably, and it wasn't above five 

 to one against some of the shots going within a yard or two of the object. 

 The bird continued its flight towards a thin belt of short fir trees, but I 

 did not see him go beyond the firs, so I walked to the spot, looked 

 carefully up, and there, amongst the topmost branches, I saw my snipe 



