346 A FARMER'S YEAR 



zagging up wind to my right. I manage to kill him, and at the 

 sound of the shot others rise, which I do not kill, as I flatter 

 myself, because I have made a mistake with the cartridges and 

 am banging at them with No. 5. Then presently the air 

 grows full of snipe, which appear in wisps in every direction, but 

 their very number is confusing; also they are wild, being so 

 says Lees just arrived from across the ocean and not yet settled 

 in their winter quarters. It is charming shooting, but in a high 

 wind, such as blew to-day, these snipe are terribly difficult and 

 great absorbers of cartridges. This, however, makes it all the 

 more satisfactory when you bag one of them. 



With many men there comes an age when, although they still 

 do the deed from force of habit or of circumstances, they begin to 

 feel a very active dislike to depriving anything of life. At times 

 I suffer sadly from this complaint, especially where hares are con- 

 cerned ; but my qualms seem a little difficult to explain, as I have 

 small objection to shooting snipe, woodcock, duck, or any other 

 creature that is downright and bond fide wild. Such things breed 

 by the hundred thousand in vast swamps across the sea, and, after 

 all, it does not seem unjust that those who protect them here should 

 take a tiny tithe of their number for sport and food. Of course, 

 however, that is the man's and not the creature's point of view. 

 But the whole system of our inexplicable world is built up on this 

 great corner-stone of death dealt out remorselessly by everything 

 that lives to every other thing, and neither man nor beast can 

 change its rule. 



Having secured several couple of snipe in the meadows, we 

 entered the //##?/ or bog, that on its surface is a beautiful bright 

 green with a substratum of oozy red mud such as snipe love, 

 through which, however, it is both difficult and disagreeable to 

 walk. Here, oddly enough, the birds were not so plentiful as in 

 the meadows, though I am told that later in the season they are 

 found in great numbers. When they are flushed from the 

 swamp, after wheeling round and round high in the air, they 

 settle about on little marshy patches among the hills, whither 



